I'm not even the best writer in my own family - and this is why

It was my mum's funeral yesterday.  I read out a eulogy during the service which took me about 97 hours to write and which took around 7 minutes to read out.  On the whole I thought it was pretty good, but my brother had done his just before me, and I thought his was better.

I've always been proud of my brother, and in many ways I wish I was more like him, but I've never been more proud of him than I have in the last two weeks since mum died.  The way he's helped me to organise the funeral arrangements without any fuss, and always with a sense of perspective but also a sense of fun.

But if there's ever been a high point in terms of how proud I feel of him it was during that 7-10 minutes yesterday when he spoke about my mum at her funeral.  I don't think it's even possible to describe how proud I was seeing him do what he did.  And it wasn't just hearing him speak, it was the words too.

He's given me permission to guest publish his words on here, because I thought they were so good that other people should be able to read them.  Anyway, this is what he said.  It won't be as good written down, but it's good enough.

Early Memories of Mum

Being mum's shopping partner and helping her make decisions (something she was terrible at).

Sometimes on Garforth Main Street, sometimes Leeds.

I must of spent at least a complete month of my life in the two chemists on Main Street looking and helping to choose hair dyes - I could tell you the exact location and layout of these sections of both shops and the little loops of hair that I'd run my finger back and forth along for what seemed like an eternity.

'I liked this one but I thought it was Auburn but it says it's chestnut and I don't want chestnut'.

So I'd find one 'This one's Auburn'

'No I don't like that'

'Which of these two ash blondes is the most ash blonde?'

I should of said 'Mum, I'm 6 I have no idea what that even means' but I remained patient in the hope she'd take me to Sparks Hardware shop and buy me a screw driver.

Mum's bag was always full of bits of wallpaper, fabric, cushion covers, curtains, tiles, flooring, bits of wood...whatever she was trying to match at the time for the latest decorating project.

'Does this go with this, do these match, which of these nets do you like the best?'  I'd often pick wrong and she'd say 'I don't think I like that one' and we'd have to start over.

The reward would always be some low end cafe like the 4 Cousins or Athena, endlessly being told not to drink all my milkshake before my food arrived, which I invariably did.

I loved to hold her hand inside her jacket especially the fun furs she had.

We rarely disagreed on anything but by the time I'd reached Junior School the clothes I'd wear were certainly one thing - she eventually caught me hiding clothes in my bag so I could change into them when I got to school.  I know it upset her at the time and I felt terrible about hurting her feelings but it was hardly surprising that her son had become as impossible to buy clothes for as her.

We certainly never disagreed about her clothes or how she looked - she had such style always on a very low budget but never cheap she always looked great especially in her 50s and 60s and dare I say 70s.  In the last photos she was in at the recent family reunion she looked absolutely amazing.

Teenage Years and Terry

Everyone thinks it was so tragic that period of her life because it ended quite unpleasantly.

The stories we'd tell each other from that period were always filled with laughter.

The way he would sound like he was dying when asked what he wanted from the fish shop - 'I'll just have half a fish'.

His food never being hot enough and him microwaving it to death - her shouting 'Terry, you're going to crucify it!'.

Him calling her petal even when she was super mad with him.

When he was clearly starting to lose it and he put a block of frozen peas in the deep fat fryer and he couldn't work out how they had disappeared from the basket.

Towards the end of those days when she took him out for his birthday and he tripped and ended up rolling down a hill near the Old George - mum saying one minute he was there the next gone, I just heard him say 'Petal, me legs av gone'.  

Later life

After me and Jonathan had left home and moved away we sometimes didn't see each other for months at a time and rarely until more recent times were the three of us together - we all had busy lives - but it didn't alter how close we were, she would always be my first call with any news, good or bad.

When we did catch up often it would be after a holiday.  I loved to look at her photos, photos that have given us such tremendous comfort these last few weeks - I loved them because they were so often so bad, out of focus, people photographed when they weren't expecting it, heads chopped off, people not exactly looking at their best sometimes, but always loads with people laughing - she always made new friends on holiday and she was always blessed to have good friends to go away with over the years.

I know coming to Greece where me and Liz got married was huge for her, being included and getting to know our friends made it extra special, especially Brucie who was like a third son fussing around her and making her laugh so much.

I guess the next big event is the hardest for me to share with you - just saying the word Grandma - take a breath.

Before she became too ill she used to look after him once a week - Jack could get her to do anything, he'd get her to look for things under the sofa even though she knew she'd struggle to get back up, he even got her to open the ultra messy moon clay that we'd banned him from opening - they both ended up completely covered.

I honestly believe that without him she couldn't of come through some of her illnesses - she lit up as soon as he walked in the room.

Not being able to watch him grow up and talk to her about him will be the hardest part for me but I cherish the memories of them together and their last phone call could not of been more perfect.  Jack said 'I love you' and she said 'I love you back' and Jack ended it by saying 'You're my sweetheart'.  I'd like to think those words and his little smiling face were what she thought of as she departed.

Illness

No doubt she was hounded with illness in her final years but we were still able to find laughter no matter how dark the subject.

We all three of us made fun of the cancer / stroke / knees etc.

Death

What today would be like

Who would come and what would they wear

What possessions we would be having off her.

She even told a great story about how she had slipped over outside when we had the last really heavy snow and how because she couldn't bend her knees she was like a big tortoise on its back trapped in the snow and how she'd laid there for a bit imagining the news headline of being found dead outside just feet from home - but having not done her hair and make up found the strength to drag herself back indoors.

She went as she would of wanted - on great form, in high spirits, looking good, enjoying life and able to spend time with friends and family - if living longer would of meant going back to those darker times none of us would of wanted that.

Finally throughout my life the overwhelming feeling of being loved and cared for and her caring about anything and anyone that was important to me.  We always hugged and we were never embarrassed to say I love you.  I still feel her love every bit as much even though she has passed and I know I always will.  Love you Mum.


There's really nothing I need to add.  I was really pleased yesterday that I got the chance to share my own memories of mum, but a concern during this week was that we might be squashed for time as the crematorium services are by nature quite short, and between us we knew we could only speak for a maximum of around 15 minutes.  At one point during the week, when Phil read me a draft of what he was going to say, I told him he could have the whole 15 minutes if he wanted.  I was so impressed with what he said, that if only he had spoken on behalf of the two of us, it would have been enough.  But in the event we shared the time out 50 / 50 and I think that's right.  Above all, we wanted to do justice to our mum through our words and I think we did.  Funerals are strange because you can't rehearse them, and you can't go back and do them again if you foul them up.  You get one chance and one chance only, and so you have to feel at the end of them that you've done your very best for the person who you're saying goodbye to.  And knowing that we managed to do that between us is a huge weight off our shoulders.  Anything less really wouldn't have been good enough.

Another quick point is that we had to sack the guy who we'd initially asked to conduct the service for us with less than 48 hours to go before the funeral because separately Phil and I were absolutely appalled at what he'd written about mum.  He'd shown absolutely no understanding of the message we were trying to get across, and it would have been a travesty to let him anywhere near the service after that.  By some fluke or miracle or act of grace we managed to get Rev. Joanna Seabourne to do the service for us at the last minute, and she did it exactly as we wanted, and much more in keeping with the spirit of mum.  And we're incredibly grateful to her for stepping in, and dragging us back from the brink of disaster at the 11th hour.  Thank you Joanna.

Look at what you could have won - Memories of Bullseye and of my mum whose funeral it was today

Considering that my mum only died 2 weeks ago, it might sound wrong that I've spent so much of the last two weeks with my brother Phil laughing and telling each other funny stories, but hopefully somewhere in there is a clue to what it was like to be part of our family.

You've probably seen the gameshow Bullseye. People used to win some Tungsten darts and 30 quid if they were lucky, and then they'd also win some other stuff like a food mixer and an iron, and they could gamble them at the end to win a speedboat that they couldn't tow because they didn't have a car, but Jim Bowen would always say, about the darts and the 30 quid. That's safe.

And 'that's safe' was mine and mum's favourite catchphrase.

If I was passing her her disabled badge to put away, she'd say that's safe, or if she was passing me some tomatoes to put in the fridge, I'd say, they're safe. To us it was funny every time.

I've been using her car for the last year. Last time I borrowed it, she said to me. Jonathan, you know how I always come to the window to wave to you when you leave, and you know how you always wave back. Yes, I said. Well, I'm not waving to you, I'm waving to my car.

I've always hated decorating, and I think it's because I saw so much of it as a child. I'd get home from school on the 19th December and I'd think 'Great 2 weeks off school', and I'd walk in the house, and she'd be up some ladders wallpapering. And I'd say Mum what the hell are you doing, it's 6 days before Christmas? And she'd say are you blind? What does it look like I'm doing. And I'd say, but mum why? And she'd say she wanted it to be nice for Christmas, and I'd say why no-ones coming, it's just the 3 of us, and she'd say, well it'll be nice for us.

Mum was always very particular about her appearance, and she seemed to be fascinated by shoes. When Phil was still in a pushchair, she used to call him the Road Runner, because whenever she'd stop to look at shoes, he'd get out of the pushchair and run off. I only wish I'd thought of it.

Mum could spend days trying to make her mind up, even about the most trivial of choices. She'd generally like the first pair of shoes that she saw when she was out shopping but then she'd go to 20 other shops to see what else was available and then go back at the end of the day for the ones she'd liked first, which of course had sold out by then.

Trying to order a meal in a restaurant with her was torture. She could never decide what to have. Even when recently I was only taking her out for fish and chips, and pretty much all they sell are fish and chips, she'd say, oh I don't know Jonathan, mushy peas or no mushy peas, it's such a big decision. Whatever she did end up ordering, she wished she'd ordered something else, or she'd think what you were having looked nicer.

Ever since I can remember mum lied about her age. I once pointed out to her, when I was 7, with nothing but primary school maths to go on, that she was lying about her age by at least 6 years.

Shut up Jonathan, she said. In our family Shut up Jonathan was actually a term of affection.

She was always sensitive about getting old though. A few years ago, I once suggested to her that she start going down to the day care centre to get a hot meal once a day.

The day care centre, have you lost your mind? It's full of old people. I'm not ready to join the blue rinse brigade yet Jonathan, most of the people who go there look like upturned bogbrushes, with their little white perms. No thanks.

I don't think I ever saw her with a grey hair her whole life. When she had a stroke a few years, what upset her the most aside from not being able to drive, was not being able to see properly to do her own hair and make up. She wouldn't even go to the hospital without putting her face on.

Mum loved a bargain. She loved finding stuff in the sale or from charity shops. Anything she bought for herself, she'd say 'I thought I'd treat myself'.

The last thing she bought me was a Jasper Conran shirt from a charity shop, I thought about wearing it today, but I think she'd be annoyed if I didn't wear a suit.

The first time she used her blue badge, it saved us £3.50 on parking, and as we pulled into the disabled space, she actually shouted 'Back of the net!'.

I know she'd be appalled that we've spent some of her money on a perfectly good coffin that's just going to be incinerated in about half an hour. What a waste of money, she'd say.

It sometimes occurred to me that she never listened to a word I said. I could spend 40 minutes talking to her, and I'd think 'she hasn't heard a bloody word I've said there', and then two weeks later I'd speak to Phil, only to find out that she'd repeated the story to him word for word.

It's not that she didn't listen, it's just that we couldn't always tell she was listening.

As she might say, she didn't like to make a song and dance about things. I remember telling her I'd passed my exams at school, and she'd say something like that's nice. And so I told her again, just to make sure, and she'd say I heard you the first time, no need to go on about it. No-one likes a show off.

Sometimes when she was talking, her stories could be hard to follow, a bit like mine, she could ramble on a bit and listening to her stories could be quite frustrating.

The day she got her cancer diagnosis I took her to the hospital and that evening she had to ring Phil. The conversation went a little like this. Hi Phil, well my appointment was at Ten , we got there 10 minutes early, but we couldn't get a parking space, all disabled bays were full, eventually we got parked just after 10, the young nurse who checked us in, she's from Barnsley you know, she drives to Leeds every day, it's costing her a fortune in petrol....and I was thinking. For God's sake Mum, just tell him you've got cancer.

A couple of weeks ago I had to ring Phil myself from A&E to tell him mum had died suddenly. It was really playing on my mind, that I didn't want to drag it out in the way that she might have. I didn't quite say. 'Hi Phil, it's Jonathan, mum's dead' but it wasn't far off. I actually felt absurdly pleased for saying it without much of a build up.

Although there's never a good time for your mum to die, the last 7 months I've spent with her since I moved back to Leeds has been one of the best times I've ever had with her.

In the last few weeks before she died, I used to go round for tea a lot, and our current gameshow of choice was Pointless.

It's quite appropriate that we used to watch Pointless, because most of our conversations were pretty pointless. But they were that lovely playful pointlessness that happen between people who love each other, where the content doesn't really matter, all that matters is that you're talking and laughing and spending time together.

We'd talk rubbish to each other about people we saw on TV, like what the hell is he wearing? Why would you wear an orange T-shirt on a gameshow, he's going to be seen by millions, why didn't he wear a shirt? Even if he turned up wearing that, surely they've got a wardrobe department that would have made him wear a shirt. Oh my God, he's got no teeth either, he's only 36, surely he could get himself some teeth on the NHS?

There was very little that happened to us in our lives, that we couldn't laugh about. In fact, some of the grimmest episodes of our lives gave us some of our favourite stories. I think the way the three of us told each other stories was the very best thing about being in our family.

So I hope you'll continue to remember mum, like I will, in the stories that you tell. I'm sure you'll have plenty of your own. And if you can't think of anything funny to put in them, try harder. Because with my mum there was a funny side to almost everything. Just being alive is so absurd at times, that if you can't think of anything else to laugh at, just laugh at that.

We always did.

Land's End to John o' Groats the easy way - follow the purple line

For the moment the reason escapes me why I thought it would be a good idea to cycle from Land's End to John o' Groats.  Possibly it was so that watching weather forecasts would be more interesting as I could look at the map of Britain knowing I'd cycled from one end of the weather map to the other.

Quick take my picture before the official photographer sees me and tries to run me out of town

I've been dithering over the whole Lejog thing now for at least a couple of years, but the idea has never got off the ground, and the reason being, it wasn't really the cycling I was afraid of, because that's just cycling, but for longer.  The thing that really scared me was organising the bloody thing.  It's like sitting down at a table with a knife and fork and preparing to eat an elephant, where do you start?

My first pudding of the trip - At the most southerly cafe in Britain, it's almost in the sea

I know people who've done Lejog in around 10 days, alone and unsupported, doing their own map reading, booking their own accommodation etc, Graeme for example, but that all just sounds too much like hard work.  And there's just way too much thinking involved.  I'm supposed to be a lazy cyclist, remember, as in lazy, apathetic etc?

A sign I saw in Stirling - ironic since I saw it on my one non-cycling day

I've been on cycle tours before, and I've found that when I get tired physically, my brain gets replaced by a big bowl of scrambled eggs, and all decision making thereafter becomes a game of stupidity roulette.  Map reading, deciding where, when and what to eat, ordering food etc, even remembering my own name or where I come from, it all goes to mush.  If choice is hell, then decision making under conditions of fatigue is a disaster for me.

Pretending to race Erwan up the cobbles in Haworth - it was all staged for the cameras

So, because organising the whole thing myself would clearly involve hundreds of small decisions which would totally overwhelm me and make me want to forget the whole thing, I decided to just make one big decision and get it out of the way.  I decided the only way for me to do this thing at all was to hand everything over to someone else to deal with, everything except for the pedalling, which I gamely decided to do myself.

Where am I going again?

In my case the person I handed my life over to was Chris Ellison of CTC tours.  I basically just bank transferred him some money, and in return he planned the route, booked all the accommodation, and every meal, and every cafe stop, and almost everything else you can think of.  All I had to do was turn up in Penzance on the 6th September.

Chris and Erwan - I couldn't have done it without them, well maybe I could but a lot more badly

I'd been doing really well in June and early July, cycling loads of miles, including 100 mile days, and I'd really enjoyed doing the Marie Curie Coast to Coast in June, so I'm not too sure why it was that as soon as I'd paid Chris the money for the trip at the start of July and almost immediately after I'd booked my rail tickets to Penzance and back from Inverness, I just stopped riding my bike altogether.  I couldn't even be bothered to go to the corner shop on it.

Riding a bike is a lot like riding a bike - you never forget

Certainly not doing any cycling at all for the 7 weeks prior to departure didn't put me in top form.  I did spend a lot of these non-cycling weeks cross-training (sort of) by running, doing watersports, dressing as a woman and climbing a lot of steps at summer camp, but I'm not sure how much help all this was.  Probably the most helpful thing I had done towards the ride was to lose two stone in weight since the end of 2013.  Trying and failing to drag my fat ass up hills for the full length of Britain with the same lack of style which had seen me fail to complete some organised rides with friends during 2013 would have been no fun whatsoever.

On reflection I should have done a bit more training

I did ride around for 8 miles on the morning of Thursday 4th to check the saddle height, and to check the bike was in full working order after its service, but you can't really call that training.

Also, I did think briefly about not going to Penzance to start the ride, but I hate not getting value for money out of stuff, so off I went on Thursday 4th on a never-ending train journey from Leeds to Penzance, which seemed fine until it got to Exeter, but then seemed to last about another 5 days before getting to Cornwall.

It maybe wasn't exactly an inspired decision on my part to elongate the trip by a day and 56 miles to cycle down to Lizard Point on Friday 5th, so that I could claim some extra brownie points for going to the UK mainland's most southerly point, but I did that too.

I thought I looked a bit sheepish at Lizard Point - probably a bit of apprehension for what lie ahead

Even being a day early, I nearly missed the start of the actual ride by mis-reading the instructions and sitting around in front of Penzance Youth Hostel on Saturday afternoon, instead of meeting everyone at the train station, but in the end I found everyone.  I met Chris, got a Garmin device from him with a purple line on it, strapped it to my bike and proceeded to follow it for around 1000 miles, only stopping when he was parked up at the roadside waving.

Hey look the van is parked up - we better stop and mill around!

Some people who I met on the trip wrote daily blog posts about each day's events as they happened, but as I mostly spent my evenings eating 3 course dinners and / or hanging around in the room I shared with my room-mate Erwan, updating Facebook and Strava and eating as many biscuits as I could find.  As a result my blog is more an overview of the trip as a whole.  Or to put it another way, this is pretty much all the stuff I can remember...I thought I might do it in sort of bullet form, hopefully this might make me look more competent.  Also, because I'm such a fan of numberology (or whatever it's called), I like the symmetry of 18 days, 18 riders and now 18 bullet points.

You think you're almost there when you reach Scotland - but you're not!

1) The riders - who the hell were they?

There weren't any official groups.  Technically, it was every man or woman for themselves!  But sometimes it's good to ride in a group.  It can stop you going nuts.  Or it can cause you to go nuts, it probably depends how tired you are.

A team talk from Chris in Haworth - basically he was telling us to get a move on!

a) The club riders - There were 5 of them.  4 of them were from Lancashire, there were two couples Phil and Emily (technically Scottish), and Mike and Lucy.  And then there was Peter, a printer of labels and former bank manager from Nottingham.  This group set off early every day, rode in a proper bunch on the road like they knew what they were doing, they took turns on the front, stopped at all the tea shops, went off the route on occasions to visit new babies or meet relatives for lunch, but still arrived early every day.  I've no idea how old the 4 lancashires were, but Peter was 72, even though he looked much younger.  They all did.

Phil, Lucy, Mike, Emily, Ray and Peter - I rarely saw them.  They were too fast

b) The sightseers - Lindsay and Cathy, a couple from Vancouver in Canada.  Again these guys were super fast, they stopped to take millions of pictures every day, they stopped at all the tea stops, they sometimes went off route to find viewpoints and stone circles, and yet they still arrived hours before me every day.

Canada on the left there - Barney, Lindsay and Cathy - Very, very fast, lucky to see them stationary

c) The late, late breakfast show - There were 3 of these.  They got up late, or at least packed their bags late, ate huge breakfasts, went the long way round to places, but then sometime during the day they would come screaming past you like a trio of hotel seeking missiles.

PJ heading at some velocity to the Velocity Cafe in Inverness

The group consisted of a Frenchman (PJ, 50 years old), Erwan, a Malaysian 5th year medical student at Aberdeen University (and also my room-mate), aged 23, who sounded Welsh but wasn't, at least his name did, and who was on the trip to do some medical research into the flab content and eating habits of long distance cyclists, sometimes he would come at you without warning with a pair of calipers trying to grab spare bits of flab, and one of my favourite bits of the whole trip was when he fell out of bed into his own suitcase, something which I am so glad I saw.

Barney 5 breakfasts, Erwan, Jackie and Jack

Then there was Barney, another Canadian (aged 69 and a cycling buddy of Cathy and Lindsay's).  I first met Barney on the first Friday night in the youth hostel in Penzance, and it was one of those awkward scenarios where lots of strange men were sharing a bedroom together and sort of averting their eyes and grunting at each other, and he really broke the ice by getting everyone talking, and I thought that was great.  Later in the trip I inwardly started referring to him as Barney 5 breakfasts, because he would demolish anything in his path at breakfast, but he was just loading up for the day with the requisite calories to get him through to the first cake stop 2 hours later.

The slow group entering Scotland (very slowly)

d) - The slow group.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, I was in this group.  The 4 resident slowies were Bob, a retired hotelier from Southport (65), Me (currently a mere 46), Linda, a librarian from Loughborough (never asked her age, not polite)  and Ray (67), a retired middle school maths and IT teacher from Connecticut, USA.  We set off as soon and as fast as we could every day, didn't stop anywhere for long, completely missed some stops to get the miles in, plodded along steadily, rarely took photographs, ate on the bike, literally ran in and out of the bushes if we needed to pee, and we still arrived later than anyone else.

Almost a peloton - Me, Jack, Ray, Bob, PJ and Linda

I was sort of the leader of this group, but it was all a big accident.  Trying to get out of Exeter at the start of Day 4 I was the most confident at reading the satnav, and so I went in front just to get us out of the city.  I stayed there for around 14 days, until we left Lairg in Scotland, after that there was only one road to go on, and I didn't figure they needed a leader anymore, so I just rode off as fast as I could, not even stopping pedalling for long enough to eat a cheese sandwich, which I ate one handed whilst riding.  Also, I wanted to be the first to the hotel for once that day (I failed, but only just, I came second after Bob).

Outside the Crask Inn - just about to make a break for it

e) - The expendables, also known as Terminator 1 and Terminator 2, because they could not be stopped, ever.
There were two of them.  Smiling Jack Glaze, 78 from Las Vegas, a former commercial pilot and racing motorcyclist.  A lone wolf, he'd have a protein shake for breakfast, he had to be persuaded to take meal breaks, he'd ride A roads if he could get away with it, he sometimes crashed, occasionally got hit by trucks (glancing blows only), he would fall into nettles, and if he cut himself, he would bleed a lot because of the blood thinning medication he was on.  I hardly spoke to him until Derbyshire, taking him for a man of few words, but once he started speaking, he was a great storyteller.  This was his second attempt at Lejog, he'd abandoned his last one on the first full day after crashing into a wall.

Jack, having got much further north than on his first attempt

My dad, who I barely knew and who died in 1974 aged 40 was also called Jack, and Day 14 of this trip would have been his 80th birthday, if he'd lived.  I don't often think about my dad these days, and it's hard to explain why, but there was something about riding around spending time with Jack Glaze, and him telling me about going riding with his son, made me wonder what I'd been missing all these years.

Me and Bob - a nice way to spend my dad's 80th birthday

This particular Jack left his hearing aids at one of the hotels on around Day 5, and he had about 10 days without them.  Sometimes he'd ask me to keep an eye on him, because he'd been up all night short of magnesium, and then while I watched him, he'd go off against the flow of the traffic through some temporary lights and try and get wiped out by a mobile home and that sort of thing, but mostly we got on well.  Also, I did try very hard to persuade him not to commit suicide by riding down the A9 dual carriageway over the Drumochter Pass, but I think he just thought I was being soft, even though he did relent and go on the cycle path instead.

Jack wondering what he's doing on a cycle path, when there's a perfectly good motorway next door

The other Terminator was Jackie, from Maryland (somewhere near Baltimore I think, again I never asked her age) She would mostly set off last, ride slowly and alone the whole day, hardly ever stopping.  She would generally arrive last at all the hotels, and she sometimes would fall off, due to not being able to unclip from the pedals, but again, like Jack, she absolutely refused to give in.  She once said to me that her family thought she was nuts for doing the ride, and that she was starting to agree with them.
When I first saw Jack and Jackie, after they'd only done the few miles to Land's End, I thought they looked worn out then, and that they'd never make it to John o' Groats.  But they really showed me!

Me, PJ, Jack and Jackie - Just been for a curry in Stirling on our day off

f) - The went home earlys.  Sadly, there were a couple of withdrawals from the tour in the first few days.  Mike and Dave, aged 64 and 70 respectively.  Dave had sustained an arm injury the week before the tour and his arm really swelled up on Day 4, and Mike decided on Day 3, that he didn't feel able to continue.  I was sad to see both of them go, because in the first few days of the tour, they'd both been great company, and I would have liked to get to know them better.

Mike (second left) and Dave (right) - shame they went home early

Don't imagine that these groups were completely rigid.  We didn't stay within them the whole time, but it's just to give you an idea.  There was a certain fluidity.  Sometimes Bob would go blazing off the front of the slow group, sometimes Erwan or PJ would ride with the slow group, sometimes Jack would get sick of all the minor roads and head down a trunk road like a Premier Inn-seeking missile, like at Sidcot on Day 4, when he was there about 2 hours before everyone.

Am I lost?

2) Route finding / mapping.
At Penzance Chris gave each of us a Garmin devices with all the routes programmed in.  The routes were tried and tested and all we had to do was follow a purple line for about 1000 or so miles, making sure not to go under the wheels of any lorries while we were watching these little TVs.  Apart from changing the batteries, and almost going under a couple of buses in Exeter and up a one way street in Inverness, I never had a problem for the whole trip, and I would definitely recommend this way of navigating.  The routes had been honed by Chris over many previous trips and amazing how we managed to circumnavigate big towns and cities without going into them.  ie Bristol, Carlisle, Huddersfield etc.  Also, watching the line allowed you to anticipate turns ahead of time, instead of having to wait to read the signs at the junction.

If I thought Devon would be easier than Cornwall, I was sorely mistaken

3) Meals
Almost all the breakfasts and evening meals were included in the price of the trip.  The meals in the hotels were on the whole excellent.  We got a 3 course dinner every evening.  Again to cut down on choice and thinking time, I got used to ordering the same thing pretty much every day.
This is basically what I ate for the whole trip.  I generally averaged around 5 meals a day.

Lunch at the Polka Dot cafe in Langsett

a) Breakfast.  Muesli or weetabix with orange juice and coffee followed by eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms.  No toast.  Never toast.  Mostly I didn't really want a cooked breakfast, but I did a lot of 'just in case' eating on the trip, where I ate just in case I might run out of energy later in the day.  Breakfasts went pretty smoothly, except for in Boat of Garten where they refused to give us any eggs and in Tain where they had run out of gas to cook things on.  Also, the motorway services at Abington wasn't the greatest start to a day, but hey ho!

Hey Linda, someone has accidentally given me some fruit, do you want it?

b) Mid morning coffee stop.  Coffee and a cake or a scone, and a can of Sprite for the sugar.  Apple pie if available, and if not victoria sponge

A perfectly balanced diet of sugar and caffeine, with a token strawberry for good measure

c) Lunch.  Cheese and pickle or Prawn Marie Rose sandwich.  Occasionally a cheese and ham toastie.

Dining alfresco on the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire

d) Afternoon coffee stop.  Coffee and apple pie, with cream if available.

In Crieff I got a pancake so big I didn't know whether to eat it or use it as a spare wheel...

e) Evening meal.
Starter - Breaded mushrooms or prawn cocktail,
Main - Roast Lamb or meat pie or some sort of stew with veg.
Dessert - Apple pie or bread and butter pudding with custard.

Apple Pie at the Apple Pie Bakery in Carnwath - for some reason they gave me the cream in a teapot

Best meals.  Wetheral (really good lamb, and packed lunch for the next day), Pitlochry (really good meat pie), Tain, really good lamb.  Youlgreave.  Sausage and mash excellent.
The excellent food in the youth hostel at Youlgreave made up somewhat for the Liliputian beds, as did the young man Ash on reception who did my laundry for free!  The stairs in Youlgreave on the other hand were very steep, and made you realise how destroyed your legs were.
Worst meal.  Abington (chewy shoe leathery meat pie and the world's worst ever custard)

Minions - those of you who were at Edale with me will get the reference to Candy Wars, this time I wasn't dressed as a woman

4) A word about BARS!  And by this I mean cycling specific energy bars.  I sometimes think these things are a giant con by their creators.  Our grandparents used to cycle to Blackpool and back in a day on a glass of lemonade and a jam sandwich, and now we don't think we can get to the end of the road without ingesting a sugar factory.  These new bars are so dense they need capital letters, and they take so much effort to chew you need to eat one, just to be able to eat one.  Some of them are so sticky you could break your thumbs and teeth just getting them out of the packets.  One of them was so stretchy I nearly strangled myself with it trying to break a bit off.  When Mike left on Day 3, he left a big red bag full of dried fruit and energy bars.  But it was like eating the stuff that you hang out for the birds.  Not sure anyone was eating them, just passing them round trying to get rid of them.  I kept buying Boost and Wispa bars instead, and carrying the same bird food BARS round but not eating them.  Then about 10 days in Peter gave me 4 with extra magnesium.  Not sure what that was for.  Someone said to cure cramps.  But I don't get cramps on a bike!

Going up Fleet Moss near Hawes the easy way (allegedly) - No cramps but definitely some thigh pain

5) Ways in which we were very, very lucky on the trip.
a) The weather.  We were incredibly lucky with this.  We had 20 minutes of rain in 17 days.  I got my raincoat out 3 times and 2 of those were an over-reaction.  The third one I dried out in 10 minutes sat in my room in Bettyhill.  I never got properly wet once.  We had more rain on the 2 hour bus ride back to Inverness after the ride had finished than we did on the entire ride.

Here's me being very, very lucky, but possibly not realising it at the time

b) The bike.  Not a thing went wrong with it.  Not even a dodgy gear change.  Apart from blowing up the tyres and lubing the chain once in a while I didn't need to touch it.  I never got an Allen key out once.

c) I didn't fall down any holes, or run into any walls, or fall off my bike at all, or skid off on any bad descents, or fall down any cattle grids, or get hit by any trucks, buses or cars.  Considering the thousands of junctions we had to negotiate on the route, the whole thing was amazingly incident free (except for Jack).

The Road to Drumochter - I told them it was easy, but it really wasn't

6) Things which I hadn't expected.
The 3 americans had rearview mirrors sticking off the front of their helmets that made them look like they'd been assimilated by the Borg.

I didn't bother with a rear view mirror - I just kept looking behind me.  It seemed to work okay.

Almost everyone on the trip was much older than they looked.
I didn't expect to see the lost pyramid of Crask, looming out of the skyline in front of me as I descended from the Crask Inn.  Properly looming it was.  

The lost pyramid of Crask - I just came round the corner and there it was

I expected much more in the way of empty roads in Scotland, but even after Lairg there was still a lot of traffic, mostly Germans in motorhomes, but continually having to pull over on the single track road got on my nerves a bit, as I expected complete wilderness.
I didn't expect to hear such a vast difference in regional accents, within such a small distance.  Like one side of the Severn Bridge they were proper West Country, and then on the other side, they had fully Welsh accents.
I didn't expect to feel as if my thigh muscles had been shot by tranquiliser darts pretty much every day after Day 2.  Going up the steep youth hostel steps at Youlgreave repeatedly was especially painful.  I expected to ride myself fitter by around Day 5, but I imagine that will kick in in about a week's time, when the soreness has worn off.

Hey Bob, how do we get out of Lairg without being run over by German camper vans?

7) The necessity for equilibrium.  Fighting to keep things in balance.
I found it hard every day to get the balance right between keeping moving and stopping.  At first I picked this up from Chris.  Near the Severn Bridge he was giving us the hurry up and it seemed like we were naughty schoolchildren just for trying to take a quick photo and have a pee, but we had a bloody long way to go that day, and keeping moving was important.  I started getting called Mini Chris because I also was saying 'Never mind looking at stuff, we need to keep moving', but there was a constant and ongoing trade off between looking at stuff, stopping to eat, and getting the miles in.  Especially after we were christened the slow group at Chepstow, this played on my mind all the more.
I found it psychologically a lot more difficult on the days which were closer to 70 miles.  50 mile days with 25 miles before lunch and 25 after seemed okay but days with 30 before and 40 miles after lunch were mentally tough.

Here's me and my most excellent room-mate Erwan - possibly the easiest person in the world to share a room with

8) The importance of downtime.  It was a great trip but not always because of the cycling.  Sometimes the cycling felt like something to be got out of the way, so I could have a sit down.  I loved spending time with the group at the evening meals, and I also liked sitting around in mine and Erwan's room, drinking coffee and eating biscuits upon arrival.  But it made such a difference getting to the hotels early.  The days we got there closer to 4 or 5 pm were so much more relaxing than those where we got there nearer to 6 or 7.  In some ways, the actual cycling became incidental.  A lot of the best times I've had on bike rides I've done in the past were the not moving parts.  I found the same thing with learning to run again.  The best part of the running is the part after you stop, but you need to run first to get that feeling.

That was another factor which added pressure to the feeling of wanting to keep moving, because I knew I could get more free time if I spent less time on the road.  I guess I was just trying to retain my equilibrium.  A lot of the time I would drink coffee and eat biscuits instead of doing my laundry, or getting an early shower, but the sitting around was incredibly valuable to me.

Here's me at Monsal Head near Sheffield, trying to retain my sense of balance

Maybe I didn't want to spend much time sightseeing because I've been to a lot of places on the route before.  I particularly felt like this in the South West, which is a very touristy place, with lots of cars.  On occasions when I've been there before it was much more relaxing, ie Charlestown sitting having coffee.  This time I was impatient to get through it.  I certainly didn't want to go to Symonds Yat, whatever the hell that is.  I saw loads of those little semi circular signs indicating viewpoints, but if I couldn't see the view from the road, I just kept riding.

I only photographed this signpost because Bob had stopped to repair a puncture

9) Memories.  For the last couple of days of the trip and especially in the area before and after the Crask Inn, I thought often about my friend Alan who died earlier this year.  He always spoke with great enthusiasm about cycling in Scotland and I remember chatting to him about his own Jogle trip of a few years ago.  It made me sad to think he's no longer with us, but also it was nice to finally reach some of the places I'd talked about with him.  As I mentioned before, sometimes my thoughts also drifted back to my dad, especially on Day 14, which would have been his 80th birthday.  Because my mum's been ill too recently, I often thought about her, and how she's doing, and sometimes I got annoyed with myself for not appreciating more the good health I'm currently enjoying which has enabled me to go on the trip in the first place.  But like I said, sometimes it became more of a hard slog than a holiday, and it's sometimes hard to appreciate things at a time when they're stretching you physically.

Shotts - home of the world's worst toilet, and coincidentally home of the 8 item £2.99 breakfast

10) Lowlights.  Shotts, the home of the 8 item £2.99 breakfast was also the home of the world's worst toilet.  Going into that cubicle was the worst 30 seconds of the whole trip.  Route 74 was pretty bad too, for the 50 or so bone shaking miles before and after Lockerbie, where I felt that all my bones had been hit with a hammer.  Revisiting the Lockerbie memorial again made me a little annoyed for taking the whole trip so seriously, reminding me as it did, in the words of my friend Graeme, that it's only a bike ride, and therefore not very important at all.

The Lockerbie Memorial - reminded me it was only a bike ride

11) Extras, bonus features.  I never really understood the concept of Land's End to John o' Groats.  I guess it's because they're the two most distant inhabited places on the British mainland, rather than the places furthest north or south.  So just to make doubly sure I also went to Lizard Point and Dunnet Head too.  It did sort of annoy me at time that all the signs say Land's End and John o' Groats are 874 miles apart, because we did over 1000 miles to get there.

Lizard Point - Just to make sure

12) Best bits.  The best bits of the trip all revolved around the people I was on the trip with, the laughing together, the being in it together.  Mutual support counts for a lot when you're knackering yourself day after day.  I enjoyed messing around near the Welcome to Scotland sign with everyone, and I also enjoyed sitting up till 11 pm every night with Erwan, laughing and talking and refusing to go to sleep even though more rest would have been useful as we recalled all the funny things that had happened each day.

Here's me having fun - notice I'm not on a bike!

13) Absurdity, bizarre things you couldn't make up.
One day as I was riding through a part of Scotland that time seemed to have forgotten, where the price structure of cafes and shops were still at 1970s levels and just after visiting the world's worst toilet in Shotts, I found myself riding along with two deaf Americans with a combined age of 145, one from Las Vegas and one from Connecticut, one whose hearing aids were stuck somewhere in the Derbyshire postal system, the other with an artificial heart valve which meant that his heartbeat could keep you awake at night, both on blood thinning meds, and just as I was mentally going through the scenario of calling an ambulance if anything happened to one of them, one of them indeed did bounce off the side of a passing bin lorry.  And I remember thinking, this sort of thing doesn't happen to me every day.

Lunch in Ludlow - a very nice place which I saw only very briefly

14) Places we passed through all too briefly and which looked great, and which I wish we'd had longer there.  Tavistock, Chepstow, Hereford, Ludlow, Ironbridge, Ross-on-Wye, Much Wenlock, Youlgreave, Haworth.

Pretending to race Erwan up the cobbles in Haworth

In fact, Shropshire was one of the few places I got excited about on the trip and maybe I'll go back there when I'm not in such a rush.  Although I enjoyed the later parts of Scotland, there wasn't anywhere I enjoyed as much as the West Coast islands I've been to, ie Jura, Islay and Mull, and I enjoyed the cycling more there too, so if anything it inspired me to go back there instead.

Ironbridge, with its Iron Bridge - who knew?

15) Best bits - Part Two (I seem to be repeating myself here, probably just to use up another bullet point).  Hereford by the river bank, all of Shropshire.  Messing around by the Scotland sign at Gretna, and then again at Dunnet Head.  The gravestone like sign is not roped off like at John o' Groats, and if anything it was a nicer experience.  The long coffee stop in Haworth, and pretending to race Erwan up the street.  Generally having Erwan as a room-mate.

Hereford - a rare bit of tranquility by the river bank

16) Things I did stop for.  Carrbridge, Drumochter Summit, Big pyramid near Crask, Ironbridge.

Carrbridge - if you want to know where the name comes from, there's a clue behind me

I got a bit of stick off the group, and got called Mini Chris on occasions for giving the slow group the hurry up, but sometimes there were things I just had to stop for.

Looking a bit wind burned at the Drumochter Summit - and where I argued with Jack about going on the A9

17) Value for money.  Was it?  Yes, completely.  Including rail travel to Penzance and back from Inverness, 21 nights accommodation, almost every breakfast and a 3 course evening meal most days, a couple of Premier Inns and hostels but mostly very nice hotels, the whole trip cost less than £2000.  It sounds a lot of money if you say it in one lump, but if you consider what you got for it it was absolutely well worth it.  I probably spent around another £250-£300 on lunches and drinks and bars of chocolate on the trip but I would have spent a good proportion of that at home.

Kingussie - pronounced Kinnoosie - I learned that from watching Slumdog Millionaire

18) Data
Including the extra day going to Lizard Point I cycled 1094.1 miles in total, and the time I spent cycling (while the bike was actually moving) was 102 hours 33 minutes 21 seconds, which gave me an average speed of 10.7 mph.  It's a good thing my luggage was in a van, if I'd been carrying it myself, I'd still be out there now, somewhere in Scotland.

Somewhere in Scotland - actually it's in Pitlochry

Recording the data on Strava as I went along became a matter of urgent importance, and I was very lucky that after trying and failing to get the hotel computer at Lostwithiel to work on Day 2, for every night after that (when wi-fi allowed it) Erwan let me use his laptop to upload and log my miles.  Most days, even as I was riding along, in my mind, the whole purpose of each day was to get to the hotel and log the miles.  Because if they weren't logged, then they didn't happen!

The slow group doing some climbing - very slowly

There was also a huge fascination with the amount of climbing we did on the trip, and there was some debate about the actual figures.  According to my Garmin the total climbing for the trip was 59,959 feet (shame I didn't find another 41 feet somewhere to round it up to 60,000), but the Canadians for example recorded over 72,000 feet of climbing on largely the same route, so I don't know which figure is most accurate.  Maybe they were just taller and riding out of the saddle on the climbs, therefore reaching higher up into space than me, and closer to the satellites.  Who knows?

I've always wanted to go to Ecclefechan - just for the name alone

Conclusion:
Since I got home, I've only seen one weather forecast on the TV, and that was by accident, but I did look at the map of Britain somewhat differently than I have before.  I wouldn't say I feel a huge sense of accomplishment yet about doing the trip, because in some ways it all seems a bit unreal, almost like I was having an out of body experience for 3 weeks.  Maybe that's why I wanted to have so many pictures of myself to remember it by, just to prove that I was actually there, and that I went through all those places.

Chepstow - see I did go to Wales, even if it was only for a bit

I didn't just ride from one end of Britain to the other, through England and Scotland and through a little bit of Wales, I also rode across the seasons.  I rode out of the back of the summer and into the beginnings of autumn.  I went from temperatures at the start where I could have fried an egg on my own head, to temperatures near the end where I needed something to keep my neck warm.

John o' Groats - trying to keep my neck warm

I often used to say on the trip, and I wasn't entirely joking, that doing Land's End to John o' Groats is a way of travelling the whole length of Britain without actually seeing any of it, and at times that's what it felt like.  Mostly I was looking at the satnav, to see where the next junction was.

In some ways, with these kind of challenges, they seem not so much like things you want to do but rather things that you want to have done so that you can look back on them from the comfort of a future armchair and say that you once did them.

I didn't go to Hope, but seeing the sign reminded me of the time I did go to Hope in Derbyshire with Emily Lee where I tried on Robocop's legs in the park and came back to life at Summer Camp

But choose your audience wisely, and be prepared for those occasions, when some people, particularly non-cyclists, greet your story with complete apathy, because they have no frame of reference for what you've done, no idea what it's like out there, and to even take a bike 3 miles to the shops is as foreign a concept as cycling the length of Britain.

The End - catching the bus back to Inverness from John o' Groats

When my friend Graeme rode his 10 day Lejog in 2009, solo and unsupported, and doing his own map reading, mostly sleeping in hostels, and having to find his own food etc, I remember being amazed at what he'd achieved, as I was when I was talking to Sarah Herbert in June about her 9 day Jogle.  Although she did it in a group, it all sounded gruelling and mad and almost impossible.  And now I've done it myself, in almost double the time, I'm even more impressed by both of them than I was before.  And by anyone else who's done it.

Slochd Summit - so low it's hardly worth a sign

Because even though I chose to ride Land's End to John o' Groats in the easiest possible way I could think of, with everything except the pedalling taken care of, I still had to do the pedalling part.

And as I found out on when I was crossing Dartmoor on Day 3 (which was the hardest day of the whole ride) and I was overtaken by a load of people who looked like they were on Raleigh Shoppers, but who turned out to be on electric bikes, for me, even though it was the only part I did, the pedalling part was hard enough.