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Cycle camping - John C. Kirk — LiveJournal

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Jul. 17th, 2010

11:31 pm - Cycle camping

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Last week I was off on holiday, cycle camping in Brittany (via Breton Bikes). I had a good time, got a tan, ate a lot of cheese, and covered quite a bit of ground (coast to coast). This trip also acted as a test ride for LEJOG (Land's End to John O'Groats), to see whether I'm ready to spend several hours in the saddle every day. Bizarrely, my SJA experience turned out to be more useful than my time in the Scouts: that's partly because tent designs have changed a lot, and partly because I'm used to riding a bike with heavy panniers.

I was originally going to do one big post, but it's turning out to be quite long, so I'm dividing it up into separate days instead and backdating them.

Day 0 (Sat 3rd)
Day 1 (Sun 4th)
Day 2 (Mon 5th)
Day 3 (Tue 6th)
Day 4 (Wed 7th)
Day 5 (Thu 8th)
Day 6 (Fri 9th)
Day 7 (Sat 10th)

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Comments:

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From:pozorvlak
Date:July 19th, 2010 01:13 pm (UTC)
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I too was just on a cycle-camping holiday, round Orkney. Fun stuff, and it's nice to have expanded my horizons a bit (though we didn't cycle far - less than 30 miles a day, on average).

BTW, I've often heard the Land's End to John O'Groats trip referred to as the End-to-End, but never as LEJOG before :-)
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From:johnckirk
Date:July 19th, 2010 02:52 pm (UTC)
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Nifty! I'll probably have similar issues at the end in terms of public transport, so I'm working backwards to plan it out. I'll cycle from John O'Groats to Wick, catch the 16:00 train to Inverness, then stay overnight and catch the train to London the following morning.

As for terminology, I came across "LEJOG" on a few cycling forums. I think the idea is to indicate direction, i.e. heading north, as opposed to JOGLE which is heading south.
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From:pozorvlak
Date:July 19th, 2010 03:02 pm (UTC)
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Oh, right, that makes sense. The cycle between Thurso and John O'Groats is very pretty, and takes in Dunnet Head with a slight detour - but if you've already come that way, then cycling South to Wick would probably be very nice too. When are you planning on doing this? I can offer you a bed in the Central Belt if needed, but which city depends on whether you go before or after my upcoming house-move.

BTW, a while back you mentioned a government-approved cycle safety guide - what was its name? My Google-fu is failing me.
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[User Picture]
From:johnckirk
Date:July 19th, 2010 03:17 pm (UTC)
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I'll be doing this in May/June next year (planning to reach JOG on Thu 9th June), but I haven't sorted out the exact schedule for the middle bits yet. Thanks for the kind offer, and hopefully I will have a chance to see you while I'm up there.

The book I mentioned before is CycleCraft: that's the "set text" for Bikeability (which has superceded the old Cycling Proficiency Test).
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From:pozorvlak
Date:July 19th, 2010 04:58 pm (UTC)
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*reserves at library*
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