|
Lands End to John O'Groats Ride 31st May 2008 to 15th June 2008. Cycling unsupported from Lands End to John O'Groats. This will be my toughest challenge to date. Google maps calculates the distance to be 893 miles, however not all the roads it has chosen will be suitable for bicycles, so it will be longer than that, and hilly too. Update: 21st April 2008 I've finalised my schedule of overnight stops, but not the specific route between them yet. You can view my general route on Google Maps by clicking here, but by adding the specific stops the route distance has now increased to 958 miles or an average of 68 miles per day. Update: 10th May 2008 Train tickets from Wigan to Penzance, and from Thurso to Wigan have now been purchased, and a very big thank you must go to Phil at Burscough Bridge station for his patience, help and sheer tenacity in organising my tickets and cycle reservations. I have now finalised my route and plotted it on 1:250k maps for the whole journey, the final mileage is working out at 949.9 miles, so I think I can safely say it's going to be at least 950 miles by the time I have gone the wrong way a couple of times. By the time I finish I will have cycled up over 62,000 feet of hills, which is over twice the height of Everest. Because of the difficulty getting cycle reservations and the times trains run I've had to reduce the time taken by a day, which means a revised average distance of 73 miles per day. Update: 27th May 2008 My online sponsorship page is now active for this epic ride, please click here to go direct to my page on the Action Medical Research web site. Update: 28th May 2008 Kit List
Update: 6th June 2008 I'm 6 days in, and have now covered 426.1 miles. Human kindness has continued to amaze me, as it always does when I do these events. I was approaced by a deaf gentleman and his wife at Taunton station on the way down to Land's End who presented me with a postit note with the single word "Donation" written on it and £2 to add to my sponsorship fund, then at the Royal Oak pub in Perranwell a gentleman at the bar gave another £1, followed shortly by the Darnon party outside who had an in-promptu whip round and presented me with another £8. The laptop I took failed abysmally on day one, as the battery won't hold a charge any more, so I haven't been able to update this page as frequently as I would like. The friends I stayed with in Copplestone very kindly sent my surplus equipment (non-operational laptop et al) home so I didn't have to carry it any further. With these kinds of events you always end up taking stuff that isn't used so it was a big help to offload it. Today I cycled from Sutton Coldfield to my home in Lathom, which is my longest planned day at 102.8 miles. So at last I'm able to update the site, and check my emails. You can't imagine my amazement to find that I have been sponsored online anonymously for £300, fantastic and my heartfelt thanks go to whoever was so incredibly generous I just wish I knew who it was so I could thank them properly. |
Event Calendar 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Had a year off.
2010 Questars Series < Next Event
2011 Grant's Philosophy Life is for living, and when my time is up my body will be completely worn out. To me there is no point in doing nothing, saving yourself for your old age in the hope that you may prolong your life, what an incredibly dull life that would be. I have a need to experience as much as possible as soon as I can. What a waste it would be if I waited until I was 65 and retired to start living my life, only to get knocked down by a bus or hit by a meteorite. I push myself mentally and physically as hard as I can, sometimes at the same time. I consider it to be very selfish to do events like these, if you are only doing it for yourself. In an ideal world, every challenge I do would be raising money for some charity or other. I don't think it's fair to keep asking the same private individuals to sponsor me over and over again. Major sports equipment and clothing manufacturers would benefit from sponsoring someone like me, an ordinary (well relatively) member of the public, to do these extraordinary challenges and give that money to charity. |
All revenue generated from advertising in this space goes to Action Medical Research Linked button adverts (per event): These adverts are seen by around 1000 different visitors each month. 
Action Medical Research is the UK’s most forward thinking charity. We believe diseases and disabilities can be beaten, and through medical research we are creating a healthier future for everyone. Our work is driven by medical need, and not influenced by politics or swayed by the pressure to be profitable, which means we are free to fund only the best science. Since 1952, when our first research funding paved the way for the ‘sugar cube’ vaccine in the UK which crippled polio, we have been involved in a remarkable breadth of groundbreaking work. |
