Arrivée151Spring2021
For many folk, a summer holiday is the time to jet off to foreign parts and laze in the sun for a fortnight. But in summer 2020, veterinary surgeon and Audaxer Laura Pugh and her husband Stevie instead took to a tandem – for a midge-plagued slog from Land’s End to John O’Groats in the unseasonable damp and cold. Laura describes how they tried their hardest to get into the holiday mood…
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Laura began riding Audaxes in 2016. She completed an SR on tandem in that year, and an SR solo the following year. She’s also ridden the Mille Pennine on tandem and completed PBP in 2019, though finishing a couple of hours out of time. Derbybased Laura and Stevie have ridden an SR every year since 2016. Stevie has ridden Audaxes since the age of 13 when he rode a 200km organised by the legendary Jim Hopper. His record includes one LEL and two PBPs. Laura says: “He was notoriously fast in his day – once getting an organiser out of bed after finishing a 600km in 24 hours. He now enjoys a slower pace of riding with me on tandem and on solo bikes, and has lost count of the number of SR series he’s done.”
It,s a long way down the holiday road< on a tandem WE WERE EXTREMELY LUCKY to be able to take a cycling "holiday" while restrictions allowed over the summer months – but when you’re a seasoned Audaxer, what does rest and relaxation actually mean? We had two weeks and the length of the country to find out. It’s a dream many of us harbour – riding Land’s End to John O’Groats. Even before the first mutters of Coivd-19 my husband Stevie and I had pencilled in that this would be the year we undertook this epic journey. When it became apparent Covid restrictions would lift enough to allow us to travel the distance, and I had two weeks off work, the opportunity was too good to
Ready to roll… setting off in rainy Cornwall
pass up. The only way to travel for us was on tandem as it helped match our paces and made for a more sociable journey – joined at the frame. This did, however, create the first logistical issue: How on earth you get a bicycle made for two to from one end of the country and back to the other? Despite some useful suggestions we did not have the time to ride both ways! The easiest way was to rent vans to and from the start and finish – convenient for Land’s End, but less so for John O’Groats where the nearest van hire was Inverness. This rounded up the distance to closer to 1,150miles to be covered in 14 days,
