Day 4 - Eardisland to Northwich 06/06/12

Today was definitely the hardest day yet and quite frankly not one that is going to rank as one of my favourites for reasons that will become clear. It all started out quite well in decent weather as we headed up into an area we didn't know but were fairly confident would be nice and flat - all the nasty hills were behind us now surely...hmm. Turns out Shropshire has hills too. I'm starting to think we should have researched our country's topography a bit more thoroughly. Anyway, we headed roughly due north, the drizzle started and we soon found ourselves in the middle of nowhere and pushing our bikes along sheep tracks among other things. The scenery was great around here actually and things went pretty well all in all . Finally we got to the end of the hills and we saw a beautiful flat landscape open up in front of us (photo above)...we rocketed down one of the longest downhills so far - The Long Mynd as its apparently called - and Dave recorded something like 45mph on Garmin. Good, hairy fun.
And then, on an innocuous little slope, out of nowhere, Dave's whole gear system snapped, almost pulling his back wheel off and (we thought) bending his bike frame in the process. We're prepared for punctures, chain repairs and the other minor things you might expect - well, we've watched the DVD that came free with Total Bike anyway - but this was in a different league altogether and we had absolutely no idea how to get ourselves out of the mess we suddenly realised we were in... I sort of seized up a bit actually - I think my brain went into shutdown because I just couldn't think how we were going to get any further. I stared at the broken bike blankly as Dave said things like "I don't know what we're going to do" and "Mate, you're not saying anything". The game was up. The show was over. The Fat Lady was singing.
However...we were lucky in that it all happened near a pub which happened to have a very friendly landlord and a chap working for him who had a van and was willing to take us the 10 miles to Shrewsbury, where he dropped us off outside a bike shop. Salt of the Earth is the phrase, I think. Anyway, to cut a long story short we finally got the bike fixed in a different shop on the other side of town and about two hours later we were ready for the off. I was deeply depressed by this time (depression is something no one had warned me about but it was around now that I found out about the mental challenge that LeJog presents) and I honestly wanted Dave's bike to be unrepairable so that we could go home. But Dave took the bull by the horns and was determined to pull us through the afternoon - which he did, but it was a looooooong afternoon. The GPS let us down and we ended up going way off course and back into Wales, through Wrexham. I'm not a fan of Wrexham.
Tired and emotional, we got into a Happy Eater Motel near Northwich at about 9pm after a final 20 miles that was fraught but thankfully fairly flat.
Had to call out for pizza because we were too late for anything else and the traffic kept us awake, but the beds were soft and warm and that was all that mattered.
Dreamed about roads and fast lorries.

Day 3 - Axbridge to Eardisland 05/06/12

A long slog in the rain. In fact the word slog is starting to take a rather new meaning. A fairly steep climb out of Cheddar was followed by A-roads with cars and lorries zooming past at breakneck speed and then GPS problems in Bristol ( I had a feeling there would be - for some reason Garmin, although fantastic in some respects, insists on causing problems in places where you could really do without it - and always on a pissy day!). We kept it together through some of our most stressful moments so far, which I'm pleased about. You've got to be good friends for this sort of lark, I now realize, and you've got to know each others' strengths and weaknesses otherwise there would be arguments all over the place.
The Severn Bridge (when we finally got to it) was a bit of a treat - I'd been looking forward to it because Philip Gross's poetry collection "The Water Table" is all about the Severn Estuary and its shifting, sliding flats and you could really see them as we rode over this huge great structure... wonderful stuff.
Wales and Herefordshire are, I'm sure, lovely but we couldn't see them because of mist and rain so all I will really have as memories of them are some hillbitchmothers like the 25%-er up to Arthur's Seat right at the end of the day. I'm not ashamed to say that I didn't even attempt this one. Even Hillmaster Dave was beaten here, but he made a valiant attempt and got about two thirds of the way up before being whupped into submission.
We are now in a pleasant-ish little family-run tearoom-cum-B&B after a lasagne at the local pub (the White Swan - with the nicest landlord in the world, he even offered me some Radox) which we just made it in time for. I'm very happy to be in bed - and I've taken a photo of myself to illustrate just how bad you can look after only three days of LEJOG...

Day 2 - Bude to Axbridge 04/06/12

O0f. 10 hours in the saddle!! Devon is ridiculous. Some of the hills can only be described as tarmacked walls; one sign said 25% and it just seemed to go on and on. This was less than 2 miles out of Bude - it started steep but manageable, then upped things a bit, then seemed to get a little easier as it turned a corner, then...wall. My bike stopped and I had to get off. It was either get off or fall off because all of my weight on the pedal didn't seem to do anything. My first failed hill...never mind, I think it was inevitable.
Dave made it up in true Come On! style and waited for me at the top.
We had lunch in South Molton and soon after that things started to flatten out and the second half of the ride was a bit more sensible - although we had a couple of little spikes we could have done without when we were around the 95 mile mark. Having seen no Jubilee parties all day we arrived in Axbridge at about 8.30 in the middle of a huge bash complete with live rock music and a village square full of drunken revellers. Wondering what kind of night's sleep we'll get in our hotel facing the village square...
We were kept half-awake that night by music until 1ish I think and thereafter various drunken villagers shouting or sobbing to their mates. But we were too tired from the ride to be hugely bothered by it.

Day 1 - Land's End to Bude 03/06/12

Due to a mixture of technical incompetence, exhaustion and lack of internet access I couldn't do the blog as we went along - but I did write notes in my phone so I will copy them out here just in case the world is interested: Blimey! Cornwall is very up and down! We had a good morning of passing tin mines and old men on motorbikes and sidecars, and the coast was suitably rugged around the northern tip of the peninsula to St Ives. We hit a couple of incredible hills, the first of which Dave steamed up and I all but ground to a halt, and the second of which just went on and on and on...and on. We had a pub lunch just outside Newquay and then gritted our teeth through 40 miles of the A38 in the rain. Somewhere along the line a car whizzed past me a whacked my elbow with its wing mirror; the wing mirror flew off but I didn't come off my bike and the car just whizzed on by as though nothing had happened. The wind was behind us thank God and now we're in the Globe Hotel in Bude, warm and fed. My bum's already sore, I'm starting to realize this is going to be a bit of a slog...

Training.

We did about a year's training, from buying our bikes  and starting out on 20-30 mile rides, building up to 100 milers and finally getting in a back-to-back 100 miler and a 100 on the Chiltern course the "Big Dipper" - we fit this one in because we live in Cambridge and so we wanted to get in a few hills (this proved vital as our route was very hilly - I'm pretty sure any LEJOG route is going to have it's fair share but I think we chose ourselves a stinker in some ways). We also joined gyms and I started a Spinning class, both of which were important in building up the strength we needed for the day after day slog. I'm not sure I believe anyone who says they did not need to train for LEJOG - if it's true I can only guess that they started off a lot fitter than I did!