Their story, in their words…..
Our challenge was cycling from John O’Groats to Land’s End fully self-supported. The route covers 1,740km with 16,730m of elevation gain- that’s almost twice of the height of Mt Everest! The long journey began on Friday 13th, and as the date suggests- it didn’t quite go to plan. We had a delayed start to our trip due to train cancellations, but we nonetheless made our way to into Scotland. We arrived at John O’Groats on the morning of Saturday 14th of August and set off on our journey. Little did we know how challenging it would be. On the first two days, we were greeted by extreme rain and winds making progress quite difficult. As a result, we were behind schedule 2 days in. Great. The third day took a turn for the better; the sun was shining, the music was blasting, mileage being covered and massive headwind to keep us humbled. We made huge progress cycling over 200km to make up the lost ground from the first two days. The next few days were nice in terms of weather but not in terms of our bikes. We suffered many punctures, brake issues, gearing issues and shifting issues just to name a few. This slowed our progress but with morale still running high we were able to keep on schedule. Nearly a week in and we ran into a bit of a problem- we were running out of fuel to cook our food. That day food was scarce as we introduced fuel rationing to ensure it could last us until the end. Again we made excellent progress cycling around 150km to keep us on schedule. As we continued our journey, we met many cyclists and after many conversations we were terrified to hear that Devon and Cornwall were the worst areas in terms of hills and cycling. And that’s where we were headed next. Day 13 and our biggest day lay ahead of us- 110km but over 2,000m of climbing. Its fair to say it was the hardest part of the entire cycle but with the end so close, we pushed through. Day 14, the last day, and we’re awake at the usual time of 5am to set off for the final time. 125km and nearly 8 hours later, we made it to Land’s End. We are greeted by the gorgeous sunset, serene cliffs and the most amazing view. Fair to say it was the perfect way to end off this trip.
