160 hours to go

One week to go before I set off by train for Land's End. I finished planning the Scottish part of the route last night, although I use the word planning in the loosest possible sense since there really isn't much choice of routes. Out of Glasgow along the A82, following it up to Fort William where I'll stay the night. Then another day on the A82 along Loch Ness and up to Tain for another night's sleep. And finally a day cycling up the A9 to John o'Groats. At least navigation will be easier as I spend two days on the A82.

I'll link to my route as soon as I've transfered it to a Google map. For the distance planning I exchanged the traditional length of string for gmaps-pedometer. I would link to the maps I created on there, but the only downside is there is no option to share as a read-only map. I'd recomend it to anyone planning along cycle ride and I suspect more accurate the trying to curve a piece of string around hairpin bends on a three-miles-to-the-inch map.

Back in February, when I pencilled the last week of August in to do this ride, I didn't realise that this would mean stradling the busiest bank holiday weekend of the year. I've booked a lot of my accomodation now (mostly youth hostels), but I just couldn't find anything available on the bank holiday Saturday. The best I was offered was £70 for a bed, breakfast not included. So I've decided to take a tent and jetison it on to my sister when I meet her on Sunday. It's extra weight, but much better than cycling through the night.

Zoe and I cycled 125km from Reading to Bath at the weekend, mostly along the A4. We averaged 24.5kph. Was pleasantly surprised, the road was wide enough that traffic was able to overtake fast but not close. May work some more A roads into my earlier routes as a result. The plan was to cycle back on Sunday, but still suffering from a bad throat at the tail end of a cold we decided to catch the train back instead.