John o’ Groats to Land’s End

290,427.5 pedal rotations calories burnt miles travelled hours in the saddle 78 932.7 49,589

A few years ago, Ian Palmer, Rohan Managing Director, and his great friend Jim Price, took two weeks out to ride from John o’ Groats to Land’s End. The plan was to stop at as many Rohan shops as possible – mainly for support and all-important homemade cake. Amazing sights across Britain, some tough Scottish hills, and even tougher Scottish headwinds, made for some hard riding. To be fair it just made the cake taste better.

From John o’ Groats, through Inverness, then Edinburgh and into the North East of England. From Darlington across the country again to Warwick, then through Bristol, Exeter, Bodmin and onto Land’s End.

We were supported all the way by a combination of people. My wife Andria supported us through Scotland and then again from Bristol to the finish. For the section between North East England and Bristol, three of the Rohan Area Managers gave their time. What this meant was that we only needed to carry a spare inner tube, some water and a coat, and that was it. We didn’t need panniers and we could use our road bikes without loading up with soft luggage and clutter.

We did this purely for the adventure. We love riding our bikes and this was a great way of linking far-flung stores with a pretty adventurous road ride.

Serious extra speed unlocked with matching Bianchi accessories.

Ian Palmer

Rohan Managing Director

Ian kept a blog along the way, with pics, observations, general chat and occasional expressions of exhaustion. Here’s a flavour of what went on that shows the highs and lows, the start and the finish.

Day 1:

If I wanted to pedal this hard downhill, I’d be mountain biking! Before you read today’s blog, let me set a few expectations. We did plan to do this in October. And we knew that on a ride from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, the weather could easily be against us. We know that the consequences of our actions are entirely down to the choices we make. We’re not writing this blog to get any sympathy, but let me tell you about today. It was awful. Really awful. It has got to be the worst day on a bike we’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, there were highlights, like seeing Andria parked on the roadside at Brora and again at Wick. And seeing Andria parked up at the roadside twice more. Other than that, we enjoyed the 13% climb out of Helmsdale and the five mile climb up to Dornoch.

What all these things have in common, apart from a hug and kiss from Andria, was that they were the only times we were out of the wind (the wind wasn’t blowing downhill so, whilst the hill was tough to climb, there was no wind). Imagine standing at the side of a busy, fast road, close to the edge where the pavement meets the road. Then as a lorry charges past, notice the pressure with which the wind hits you. That’s it. That’s what we’ve been riding into all day. On an earlier blog I proudly stated that I had a new cog on the back with 29 teeth on it. This, I said, would make it easier to go up the big hills. I never thought that I would ever need that big cog to get downhill, but today, without that big cog, there are three hills I would not have made it down.

In summary, an awful day. Terrible. One we don’t want to relive. We’re proud of it though; it may have taken nearly 8 hours at an average speed of just under 10mph, but we did it and we’re still keen to ride tomorrow.

Day 11:

15mph tailwinds, sun and blue skies. This can’t be the same bike ride. This can’t be the same ride we started eleven days ago. Tailwinds blew us all the way from Penzance to Land’s End; we had no extra layers stuffed in our back pockets in case of rain or wind, and I even changed the lenses on my glasses from clear to dark. The contrast from the rest of the trip was huge and most welcome.

Prince Charles waved at us today. Well, not actually at us, just in our general direction. But we like to think he picked us out of the crowd, knew we had cycled 47 miles to get to Newcastle for lunch today and waved at us.

After 1 0 days on the road, the pace of day 11 was fast. With no need to conserve energy, and fuelled by the excitement of a fast-approaching finish line, we kept up a good pace. We stopped at Rohan in Truro for our last shop pit stop. Jerry had put up a banner congratulating us, and they provided us with beer, fudge and pasties.

Rest and refreshment over, we had thirty miles left. We spent most of those discussing the highlights and lowlights of the trip and cheering loudly every time we saw a sign announcing a distance to Land’s End. We arrived together, cheering and waving into Land’s End at 4.30pm. Andria and Lloyd met us with medals, a trophy each, a bottle of champagne and lots of cheering. We had hugs and photos and then made our way to the official Land’s End photo point.

With the official photo taken, we then spent some time taking our own photos, including celebratory shots of us throwing champagne at each other.

After a quick shower, we put all our photos onto the laptop and sat, as the sun went down, watching a slide show of 800 shots while listening to the Chasing Legends soundtrack and drinking champagne. Over dinner we discussed our next adventure. We have no idea what it will be, but there will be one!

Looking back and reminiscing, as well as looking forward and dreaming, feels more important now than ever. If this virus has taught me anything, it is that life is precious and fleeting. I’m giving serious consideration to my bucket list for when all this passes. It might be an idea for us all to do the same.