The Pedalling Started Here
It all started around 2010, prompted by Pippa Jones who had a lot of experience of getting people to do things outside their comfort zone. She got me into pedalling by making me go on tour with her lady friends, with whom I could sometimes keep up.
Our first rides were from:
- Shrewsbury to Barmouth
where I set off at 6:00pm, 8 hours behind the others, getting to Bala just before closing time on my ancient road bike which was soon deemed not fit for touring. - Shrewsbury to Cheltenham
so that Pippa could go to the opera on my old mountain bike, which was so uncomfortable on the rear end that it nearly got binned as soon as we arrived. - Walney to Wearside
My first coast-to-coast, by which time I’d bought a half-decent road bike and had my first experience with cleats that caused plenty of chaos and amusement.
We had some adventures on these trips, during which Den (Pippa’s partner) and I developed plans for a trip on Hadrian’s Way, from Ravenglass to Newcastle. That was in 2016 and it was such a lot of fun that we decided to do something in Cornwall, starting in Land’s End. Jokingly I said that this would be the first in a series, thinking that one day we might make it to John O’Groats. Only later did we decide we wanted to do it round the coast, and later still we decided we wanted to go all the way round.