Goring Gap Cycling

LeJog

This page describes a 21 day cycle camping trip that two of us made from Lands End to John O’Groats. Some of the campsites may have changed since then, but the scenery is still the same and the quiet lanes are still mainly quiet.

Not all LeJog journeys have to be record-breaking attempts. The great Norwegian explorer Roal Amundsen is renowned for saying “With sufficient planning, you can almost eliminate adventure from an expedition”. To help with your planning, maps of the route we took and freely-downloadable GPX files are available below.

The plan

Bikes were being fettled, carbo loaded. Saturday 4 July saw Le Grand Depart, when the intrepid cyclists set off on their gruelling three-week parcours. C’est Le Tour de France, ne c’est pas?

Mai non, c’est LeJog (Land’s End to John O’Groats).

While the Tour de France riders were preparing to pootle 13.8 km around the flat streets of Utrecht, intrepid father and daughter combo Steve and Dino headed to Cornwall ready to take on their first stage, 62 notoriously hilly miles from Land’s End to Padstow. The professionals’ route may have taken in higher mountains than Shap Summit (1393 ft), but they did so on bikes weighing only 6.8 kg, instead of solid British steel touring bikes with a loaded weight of 35 kg.

Our plan was for a scenic three-week camping trip, taking in some key features we wanted to visit or revisit:

• The Camel Trail
• Cheddar Gorge
• Severn Bridge
• Ferry across the Mersey
• Shap
• Island-hopping up the west coast of Scotland
• A rest day side trip to Cape Wrath

before finishing at John O’Groats on Sunday 26 July – the same day as the professionals were swigging their champagne en route to the Champs Élysées.

What worked well

• Starting slowly. Cornwall and Devon are notorious for being a rude awakening for the unsuspecting LeJog rider, with lots of ups and downs. We chose shorter stages for the first few days, then stretched our daily distances for the middle part of the trip. Over the first five days in the West Country averaged 55 miles per day. for the five days after the rest day near Leominster to Arran we averaged 78 miles per day.
  
• Taking the old road. We deliberately took the old A30 from Hayle through Camborne and Redruth, to give us fewer ups and downs. Where an old trunk road has been bypassed by a new alignment or a motorway, it typically has less traffic, but is still wide, with a good surface and fewer hills. The same was true for the A6 over Shap Summit, the highest part of the journey.
  
• Taking a rest (or two). We only took two rest days – one after six days, and one near the end. Ferry crossings (the Mersey and four in Scotland) gave us some enforced respite. We planned to take each of the Scottish ferries first thing in the morning to reduce the pressure of getting there on time.
  
• The wind. Conventional wisdom has it that there’s an advantage in going from Lands End to John O’Groats rather than the opposite, because of the UK’s prevailing south-westerly winds. This worked for us, as we had a gusty tailwind helping us through the West Country. The one time the wind was not in our favour was the last day, when we had to struggle against an easterly on the final exposed stretch from Thurso to John O’Groats.

Where journey turned into adventure

• The weather (1). Some bad weather is only to be expected during a three week period in the UK, whatever the time of year. It was Alfred Wainwright who said “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”, back in 1973. We had suitable clothing, so our spirits were not dampened too much. The weather also has other impacts. As we sat in sunshine enjoying our picnic lunch near Ayr, a check of the forecast showed a storm coming up from the southwest which could affect the next morning’s ferry to Arran. To reduce the risk of losing a day, we hurried on from Ayr to Adrossan to catch the evening ferry, then carried on across Arran to Lochranza in the gloaming. There was some doubt whether the little landing-craft ferry would run the next day and violent gusts of wind buffeted the tents all night. By morning the last of the night’s gale was blowing itself out and we enjoyed a sunlit ferry crossing, albeit with an arrival at Cloanaig akin to landing a sea kayak in surf.
  
• The weather (2). A few days of Scottish rainfall had turned the flat campsite at Lochgilphead into a soggy bog, making it difficult to find a firm spot to pitch the tents. This did dampen our spirits a bit. To cheer ourselves up we tried to book ahead for a B&B the next night, only to find no spare accommodation in Oban on a Saturday in July. To compensate, we did book a B&B in Mallaig, the only night on the trip we did not sleep under canvas.
  
• The LeJoggers’ Conundrum: The best way to navigate the urban bits of Lancashire? We chose to take the Ferry Across the Mersey for nostalgic reasons. Despite the grey, damp weather all went well until Preston. We were happily navigating the Preston Guild Wheel (a traffic-free ring road for cyclists), when we came to some road works that spat us off unceremoniously onto a dual carriageway urban freeway. My experience is that road works seldom make proper provision for cyclists with suitable diversions.
  
• Roads and bridges. Many cyclists are wary of high bridges. Personally I found the cycle track attached to the M5 Avonmouth bridge scarier than the old Severn Bridge, both both of these paled in comparison with the Syke Bridge. The “cycle path” across the Skye Bridge is also the pedestrian path and is on the right-hand side when crossing from Skye to the mainland. Oncoming traffic at 50 mph just feet away would have been scary enough. The addition of various foreign tourists blocking the path while they took photos made it feel dangerous. The road across the Skye Bridge was also the busiest we travelled on for the whole trip and the only one were we felt way of the traffic (apart from a few hundred unplanned yards in Preston.
  
• Cape Wrath. We had planned our second proper “rest day” to be a side trip to Cape Wrath, one of the iconic corners of the British mainland, 10 miles along a bumpy track. As it turned out we couldn’t take the ferry across the Kyle of Durness to reach the bumpy track. The ferryman had taken the day off to go to the Durness Highland Gathering. Our compensation was a beautiful walk around the Kyle in the morning and the fun of the Durness Highland games in the afternoon, a very serendipitous adventure.

 

The maps

Click on the down arrow at top right of each map to download that day’s GPX file.