Lands End

Well, what a final day!

Total statistics for the trip - I rode 1,013 miles in 9 days in 66:42 an average of 15.2 mph over the hilliest possible route between John O Groats and Lands End! Dave rode for 60:47 and covered 896 miles (more than the minimum JOGLE distance despite being unable to ride Day 8 due to illness) so in my book that makes him and End to Ender whether he accepts it or not! Wear that jersey with pride Dave :-).

For the purposes of the 'Guess the time competition' we are are giving Dave my ride time for the day he was too ill to ride (as we would have ridden together that day and we think this is the fairest was to work it out) so his total is 67:08 so our grand total is 133:50. We did however have one 'kind' soul who guessed - '1 didn't finish' and I suppose technically speaking Dave didn't do every leg so Gerry wins a Gordon and MacPhail poloshirt! The other winners are Jean Page (+15 mins) £20 Tesco Voucher, Rachael at SS (-1:14) Walkers Hamper, Sally Ross Mowat (+1:20) Hair Cut with Jean Page (!) and Kev Hastie (-1:24) Swimming entrance credits!

Yesterday for me was Mission Get Dave Home! I was very relieved to see him up and dressed for riding first thing and he managed to get a decent breakfast inside him before we set off at 7 am. I was fully prepared to take 12 hours if necessary to nurse him home but fortunately (for both of us!) that wasn't necessary. We bowled along quite well until the first pitstop at around 25 miles but by 40 miles he was out of gas (hardly surprising since he'd been so ill during Friday's ride and had slept for most of Saturday). So for the next 55 miles it was a case of helping him along on my wheel and keeping the pace sensible so he could keep up without being too stressed or feeling he'd never get there.

For the most part the route was good, rolling hills without too many horrid climbs. However, the route master had his final twist of Sadism 15 miles out ... Dave and I stopped at a cafe in Penzance just to savour the moment quietly and refuel a bit with some coffee. And what a good job we did, Dave certainly needed the caffeine hit just a mile up the road ... we came to a T junction which indicated Lands End 12 miles to the right, however, our RAB sign took us left. By now we knew that could only mean one thing - to make the route as hard as possible by taking us up another vertical climb - and low and behold just around the corner was a massive, long climb. We both made it to the top but it really did use up just about all Dave had left. From there we followed the 'scenic' route into Lands End and by far the most difficult approach with lots more sharp inclines.

Finally we could see the Finish and with great relief and much emotion we crossed the line. Both my brother and his wife and Adrian were there to meet us.

A truly epic journey for both of us on many levels. We have met many amazing people, seen the very best and the worst of human nature, observed some truly appalling driving, atrocious road surfaces, some of the best scenery you will encounter anywhere in the world and have a memories which each of us will cherish and never forget.

We rode as one for much of the time and garnered many positive comments from fellow riders and I hope did justice to our Forres CC kit (we wore some part of the kit every day)!

Grok on and over and out from Kelda and Dave :-)

For the Surrey sweepstake my third fastest leg was leg one!