Land's End to John o' Groats the easy way - follow the purple line

For the moment the reason escapes me why I thought it would be a good idea to cycle from Land's End to John o' Groats.  Possibly it was so that watching weather forecasts would be more interesting as I could look at the map of Britain knowing I'd cycled from one end of the weather map to the other.

Quick take my picture before the official photographer sees me and tries to run me out of town

I've been dithering over the whole Lejog thing now for at least a couple of years, but the idea has never got off the ground, and the reason being, it wasn't really the cycling I was afraid of, because that's just cycling, but for longer.  The thing that really scared me was organising the bloody thing.  It's like sitting down at a table with a knife and fork and preparing to eat an elephant, where do you start?

My first pudding of the trip - At the most southerly cafe in Britain, it's almost in the sea

I know people who've done Lejog in around 10 days, alone and unsupported, doing their own map reading, booking their own accommodation etc, Graeme for example, but that all just sounds too much like hard work.  And there's just way too much thinking involved.  I'm supposed to be a lazy cyclist, remember, as in lazy, apathetic etc?

A sign I saw in Stirling - ironic since I saw it on my one non-cycling day

I've been on cycle tours before, and I've found that when I get tired physically, my brain gets replaced by a big bowl of scrambled eggs, and all decision making thereafter becomes a game of stupidity roulette.  Map reading, deciding where, when and what to eat, ordering food etc, even remembering my own name or where I come from, it all goes to mush.  If choice is hell, then decision making under conditions of fatigue is a disaster for me.

Pretending to race Erwan up the cobbles in Haworth - it was all staged for the cameras

So, because organising the whole thing myself would clearly involve hundreds of small decisions which would totally overwhelm me and make me want to forget the whole thing, I decided to just make one big decision and get it out of the way.  I decided the only way for me to do this thing at all was to hand everything over to someone else to deal with, everything except for the pedalling, which I gamely decided to do myself.

Where am I going again?

In my case the person I handed my life over to was Chris Ellison of CTC tours.  I basically just bank transferred him some money, and in return he planned the route, booked all the accommodation, and every meal, and every cafe stop, and almost everything else you can think of.  All I had to do was turn up in Penzance on the 6th September.

Chris and Erwan - I couldn't have done it without them, well maybe I could but a lot more badly

I'd been doing really well in June and early July, cycling loads of miles, including 100 mile days, and I'd really enjoyed doing the Marie Curie Coast to Coast in June, so I'm not too sure why it was that as soon as I'd paid Chris the money for the trip at the start of July and almost immediately after I'd booked my rail tickets to Penzance and back from Inverness, I just stopped riding my bike altogether.  I couldn't even be bothered to go to the corner shop on it.

Riding a bike is a lot like riding a bike - you never forget

Certainly not doing any cycling at all for the 7 weeks prior to departure didn't put me in top form.  I did spend a lot of these non-cycling weeks cross-training (sort of) by running, doing watersports, dressing as a woman and climbing a lot of steps at summer camp, but I'm not sure how much help all this was.  Probably the most helpful thing I had done towards the ride was to lose two stone in weight since the end of 2013.  Trying and failing to drag my fat ass up hills for the full length of Britain with the same lack of style which had seen me fail to complete some organised rides with friends during 2013 would have been no fun whatsoever.

On reflection I should have done a bit more training

I did ride around for 8 miles on the morning of Thursday 4th to check the saddle height, and to check the bike was in full working order after its service, but you can't really call that training.

Also, I did think briefly about not going to Penzance to start the ride, but I hate not getting value for money out of stuff, so off I went on Thursday 4th on a never-ending train journey from Leeds to Penzance, which seemed fine until it got to Exeter, but then seemed to last about another 5 days before getting to Cornwall.

It maybe wasn't exactly an inspired decision on my part to elongate the trip by a day and 56 miles to cycle down to Lizard Point on Friday 5th, so that I could claim some extra brownie points for going to the UK mainland's most southerly point, but I did that too.

I thought I looked a bit sheepish at Lizard Point - probably a bit of apprehension for what lie ahead

Even being a day early, I nearly missed the start of the actual ride by mis-reading the instructions and sitting around in front of Penzance Youth Hostel on Saturday afternoon, instead of meeting everyone at the train station, but in the end I found everyone.  I met Chris, got a Garmin device from him with a purple line on it, strapped it to my bike and proceeded to follow it for around 1000 miles, only stopping when he was parked up at the roadside waving.

Hey look the van is parked up - we better stop and mill around!

Some people who I met on the trip wrote daily blog posts about each day's events as they happened, but as I mostly spent my evenings eating 3 course dinners and / or hanging around in the room I shared with my room-mate Erwan, updating Facebook and Strava and eating as many biscuits as I could find.  As a result my blog is more an overview of the trip as a whole.  Or to put it another way, this is pretty much all the stuff I can remember...I thought I might do it in sort of bullet form, hopefully this might make me look more competent.  Also, because I'm such a fan of numberology (or whatever it's called), I like the symmetry of 18 days, 18 riders and now 18 bullet points.

You think you're almost there when you reach Scotland - but you're not!

1) The riders - who the hell were they?

There weren't any official groups.  Technically, it was every man or woman for themselves!  But sometimes it's good to ride in a group.  It can stop you going nuts.  Or it can cause you to go nuts, it probably depends how tired you are.

A team talk from Chris in Haworth - basically he was telling us to get a move on!

a) The club riders - There were 5 of them.  4 of them were from Lancashire, there were two couples Phil and Emily (technically Scottish), and Mike and Lucy.  And then there was Peter, a printer of labels and former bank manager from Nottingham.  This group set off early every day, rode in a proper bunch on the road like they knew what they were doing, they took turns on the front, stopped at all the tea shops, went off the route on occasions to visit new babies or meet relatives for lunch, but still arrived early every day.  I've no idea how old the 4 lancashires were, but Peter was 72, even though he looked much younger.  They all did.

Phil, Lucy, Mike, Emily, Ray and Peter - I rarely saw them.  They were too fast

b) The sightseers - Lindsay and Cathy, a couple from Vancouver in Canada.  Again these guys were super fast, they stopped to take millions of pictures every day, they stopped at all the tea stops, they sometimes went off route to find viewpoints and stone circles, and yet they still arrived hours before me every day.

Canada on the left there - Barney, Lindsay and Cathy - Very, very fast, lucky to see them stationary

c) The late, late breakfast show - There were 3 of these.  They got up late, or at least packed their bags late, ate huge breakfasts, went the long way round to places, but then sometime during the day they would come screaming past you like a trio of hotel seeking missiles.

PJ heading at some velocity to the Velocity Cafe in Inverness

The group consisted of a Frenchman (PJ, 50 years old), Erwan, a Malaysian 5th year medical student at Aberdeen University (and also my room-mate), aged 23, who sounded Welsh but wasn't, at least his name did, and who was on the trip to do some medical research into the flab content and eating habits of long distance cyclists, sometimes he would come at you without warning with a pair of calipers trying to grab spare bits of flab, and one of my favourite bits of the whole trip was when he fell out of bed into his own suitcase, something which I am so glad I saw.

Barney 5 breakfasts, Erwan, Jackie and Jack

Then there was Barney, another Canadian (aged 69 and a cycling buddy of Cathy and Lindsay's).  I first met Barney on the first Friday night in the youth hostel in Penzance, and it was one of those awkward scenarios where lots of strange men were sharing a bedroom together and sort of averting their eyes and grunting at each other, and he really broke the ice by getting everyone talking, and I thought that was great.  Later in the trip I inwardly started referring to him as Barney 5 breakfasts, because he would demolish anything in his path at breakfast, but he was just loading up for the day with the requisite calories to get him through to the first cake stop 2 hours later.

The slow group entering Scotland (very slowly)

d) - The slow group.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, I was in this group.  The 4 resident slowies were Bob, a retired hotelier from Southport (65), Me (currently a mere 46), Linda, a librarian from Loughborough (never asked her age, not polite)  and Ray (67), a retired middle school maths and IT teacher from Connecticut, USA.  We set off as soon and as fast as we could every day, didn't stop anywhere for long, completely missed some stops to get the miles in, plodded along steadily, rarely took photographs, ate on the bike, literally ran in and out of the bushes if we needed to pee, and we still arrived later than anyone else.

Almost a peloton - Me, Jack, Ray, Bob, PJ and Linda

I was sort of the leader of this group, but it was all a big accident.  Trying to get out of Exeter at the start of Day 4 I was the most confident at reading the satnav, and so I went in front just to get us out of the city.  I stayed there for around 14 days, until we left Lairg in Scotland, after that there was only one road to go on, and I didn't figure they needed a leader anymore, so I just rode off as fast as I could, not even stopping pedalling for long enough to eat a cheese sandwich, which I ate one handed whilst riding.  Also, I wanted to be the first to the hotel for once that day (I failed, but only just, I came second after Bob).

Outside the Crask Inn - just about to make a break for it

e) - The expendables, also known as Terminator 1 and Terminator 2, because they could not be stopped, ever.
There were two of them.  Smiling Jack Glaze, 78 from Las Vegas, a former commercial pilot and racing motorcyclist.  A lone wolf, he'd have a protein shake for breakfast, he had to be persuaded to take meal breaks, he'd ride A roads if he could get away with it, he sometimes crashed, occasionally got hit by trucks (glancing blows only), he would fall into nettles, and if he cut himself, he would bleed a lot because of the blood thinning medication he was on.  I hardly spoke to him until Derbyshire, taking him for a man of few words, but once he started speaking, he was a great storyteller.  This was his second attempt at Lejog, he'd abandoned his last one on the first full day after crashing into a wall.

Jack, having got much further north than on his first attempt

My dad, who I barely knew and who died in 1974 aged 40 was also called Jack, and Day 14 of this trip would have been his 80th birthday, if he'd lived.  I don't often think about my dad these days, and it's hard to explain why, but there was something about riding around spending time with Jack Glaze, and him telling me about going riding with his son, made me wonder what I'd been missing all these years.

Me and Bob - a nice way to spend my dad's 80th birthday

This particular Jack left his hearing aids at one of the hotels on around Day 5, and he had about 10 days without them.  Sometimes he'd ask me to keep an eye on him, because he'd been up all night short of magnesium, and then while I watched him, he'd go off against the flow of the traffic through some temporary lights and try and get wiped out by a mobile home and that sort of thing, but mostly we got on well.  Also, I did try very hard to persuade him not to commit suicide by riding down the A9 dual carriageway over the Drumochter Pass, but I think he just thought I was being soft, even though he did relent and go on the cycle path instead.

Jack wondering what he's doing on a cycle path, when there's a perfectly good motorway next door

The other Terminator was Jackie, from Maryland (somewhere near Baltimore I think, again I never asked her age) She would mostly set off last, ride slowly and alone the whole day, hardly ever stopping.  She would generally arrive last at all the hotels, and she sometimes would fall off, due to not being able to unclip from the pedals, but again, like Jack, she absolutely refused to give in.  She once said to me that her family thought she was nuts for doing the ride, and that she was starting to agree with them.
When I first saw Jack and Jackie, after they'd only done the few miles to Land's End, I thought they looked worn out then, and that they'd never make it to John o' Groats.  But they really showed me!

Me, PJ, Jack and Jackie - Just been for a curry in Stirling on our day off

f) - The went home earlys.  Sadly, there were a couple of withdrawals from the tour in the first few days.  Mike and Dave, aged 64 and 70 respectively.  Dave had sustained an arm injury the week before the tour and his arm really swelled up on Day 4, and Mike decided on Day 3, that he didn't feel able to continue.  I was sad to see both of them go, because in the first few days of the tour, they'd both been great company, and I would have liked to get to know them better.

Mike (second left) and Dave (right) - shame they went home early

Don't imagine that these groups were completely rigid.  We didn't stay within them the whole time, but it's just to give you an idea.  There was a certain fluidity.  Sometimes Bob would go blazing off the front of the slow group, sometimes Erwan or PJ would ride with the slow group, sometimes Jack would get sick of all the minor roads and head down a trunk road like a Premier Inn-seeking missile, like at Sidcot on Day 4, when he was there about 2 hours before everyone.

Am I lost?

2) Route finding / mapping.
At Penzance Chris gave each of us a Garmin devices with all the routes programmed in.  The routes were tried and tested and all we had to do was follow a purple line for about 1000 or so miles, making sure not to go under the wheels of any lorries while we were watching these little TVs.  Apart from changing the batteries, and almost going under a couple of buses in Exeter and up a one way street in Inverness, I never had a problem for the whole trip, and I would definitely recommend this way of navigating.  The routes had been honed by Chris over many previous trips and amazing how we managed to circumnavigate big towns and cities without going into them.  ie Bristol, Carlisle, Huddersfield etc.  Also, watching the line allowed you to anticipate turns ahead of time, instead of having to wait to read the signs at the junction.

If I thought Devon would be easier than Cornwall, I was sorely mistaken

3) Meals
Almost all the breakfasts and evening meals were included in the price of the trip.  The meals in the hotels were on the whole excellent.  We got a 3 course dinner every evening.  Again to cut down on choice and thinking time, I got used to ordering the same thing pretty much every day.
This is basically what I ate for the whole trip.  I generally averaged around 5 meals a day.

Lunch at the Polka Dot cafe in Langsett

a) Breakfast.  Muesli or weetabix with orange juice and coffee followed by eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms.  No toast.  Never toast.  Mostly I didn't really want a cooked breakfast, but I did a lot of 'just in case' eating on the trip, where I ate just in case I might run out of energy later in the day.  Breakfasts went pretty smoothly, except for in Boat of Garten where they refused to give us any eggs and in Tain where they had run out of gas to cook things on.  Also, the motorway services at Abington wasn't the greatest start to a day, but hey ho!

Hey Linda, someone has accidentally given me some fruit, do you want it?

b) Mid morning coffee stop.  Coffee and a cake or a scone, and a can of Sprite for the sugar.  Apple pie if available, and if not victoria sponge

A perfectly balanced diet of sugar and caffeine, with a token strawberry for good measure

c) Lunch.  Cheese and pickle or Prawn Marie Rose sandwich.  Occasionally a cheese and ham toastie.

Dining alfresco on the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire

d) Afternoon coffee stop.  Coffee and apple pie, with cream if available.

In Crieff I got a pancake so big I didn't know whether to eat it or use it as a spare wheel...

e) Evening meal.
Starter - Breaded mushrooms or prawn cocktail,
Main - Roast Lamb or meat pie or some sort of stew with veg.
Dessert - Apple pie or bread and butter pudding with custard.

Apple Pie at the Apple Pie Bakery in Carnwath - for some reason they gave me the cream in a teapot

Best meals.  Wetheral (really good lamb, and packed lunch for the next day), Pitlochry (really good meat pie), Tain, really good lamb.  Youlgreave.  Sausage and mash excellent.
The excellent food in the youth hostel at Youlgreave made up somewhat for the Liliputian beds, as did the young man Ash on reception who did my laundry for free!  The stairs in Youlgreave on the other hand were very steep, and made you realise how destroyed your legs were.
Worst meal.  Abington (chewy shoe leathery meat pie and the world's worst ever custard)

Minions - those of you who were at Edale with me will get the reference to Candy Wars, this time I wasn't dressed as a woman

4) A word about BARS!  And by this I mean cycling specific energy bars.  I sometimes think these things are a giant con by their creators.  Our grandparents used to cycle to Blackpool and back in a day on a glass of lemonade and a jam sandwich, and now we don't think we can get to the end of the road without ingesting a sugar factory.  These new bars are so dense they need capital letters, and they take so much effort to chew you need to eat one, just to be able to eat one.  Some of them are so sticky you could break your thumbs and teeth just getting them out of the packets.  One of them was so stretchy I nearly strangled myself with it trying to break a bit off.  When Mike left on Day 3, he left a big red bag full of dried fruit and energy bars.  But it was like eating the stuff that you hang out for the birds.  Not sure anyone was eating them, just passing them round trying to get rid of them.  I kept buying Boost and Wispa bars instead, and carrying the same bird food BARS round but not eating them.  Then about 10 days in Peter gave me 4 with extra magnesium.  Not sure what that was for.  Someone said to cure cramps.  But I don't get cramps on a bike!

Going up Fleet Moss near Hawes the easy way (allegedly) - No cramps but definitely some thigh pain

5) Ways in which we were very, very lucky on the trip.
a) The weather.  We were incredibly lucky with this.  We had 20 minutes of rain in 17 days.  I got my raincoat out 3 times and 2 of those were an over-reaction.  The third one I dried out in 10 minutes sat in my room in Bettyhill.  I never got properly wet once.  We had more rain on the 2 hour bus ride back to Inverness after the ride had finished than we did on the entire ride.

Here's me being very, very lucky, but possibly not realising it at the time

b) The bike.  Not a thing went wrong with it.  Not even a dodgy gear change.  Apart from blowing up the tyres and lubing the chain once in a while I didn't need to touch it.  I never got an Allen key out once.

c) I didn't fall down any holes, or run into any walls, or fall off my bike at all, or skid off on any bad descents, or fall down any cattle grids, or get hit by any trucks, buses or cars.  Considering the thousands of junctions we had to negotiate on the route, the whole thing was amazingly incident free (except for Jack).

The Road to Drumochter - I told them it was easy, but it really wasn't

6) Things which I hadn't expected.
The 3 americans had rearview mirrors sticking off the front of their helmets that made them look like they'd been assimilated by the Borg.

I didn't bother with a rear view mirror - I just kept looking behind me.  It seemed to work okay.

Almost everyone on the trip was much older than they looked.
I didn't expect to see the lost pyramid of Crask, looming out of the skyline in front of me as I descended from the Crask Inn.  Properly looming it was.  

The lost pyramid of Crask - I just came round the corner and there it was

I expected much more in the way of empty roads in Scotland, but even after Lairg there was still a lot of traffic, mostly Germans in motorhomes, but continually having to pull over on the single track road got on my nerves a bit, as I expected complete wilderness.
I didn't expect to hear such a vast difference in regional accents, within such a small distance.  Like one side of the Severn Bridge they were proper West Country, and then on the other side, they had fully Welsh accents.
I didn't expect to feel as if my thigh muscles had been shot by tranquiliser darts pretty much every day after Day 2.  Going up the steep youth hostel steps at Youlgreave repeatedly was especially painful.  I expected to ride myself fitter by around Day 5, but I imagine that will kick in in about a week's time, when the soreness has worn off.

Hey Bob, how do we get out of Lairg without being run over by German camper vans?

7) The necessity for equilibrium.  Fighting to keep things in balance.
I found it hard every day to get the balance right between keeping moving and stopping.  At first I picked this up from Chris.  Near the Severn Bridge he was giving us the hurry up and it seemed like we were naughty schoolchildren just for trying to take a quick photo and have a pee, but we had a bloody long way to go that day, and keeping moving was important.  I started getting called Mini Chris because I also was saying 'Never mind looking at stuff, we need to keep moving', but there was a constant and ongoing trade off between looking at stuff, stopping to eat, and getting the miles in.  Especially after we were christened the slow group at Chepstow, this played on my mind all the more.
I found it psychologically a lot more difficult on the days which were closer to 70 miles.  50 mile days with 25 miles before lunch and 25 after seemed okay but days with 30 before and 40 miles after lunch were mentally tough.

Here's me and my most excellent room-mate Erwan - possibly the easiest person in the world to share a room with

8) The importance of downtime.  It was a great trip but not always because of the cycling.  Sometimes the cycling felt like something to be got out of the way, so I could have a sit down.  I loved spending time with the group at the evening meals, and I also liked sitting around in mine and Erwan's room, drinking coffee and eating biscuits upon arrival.  But it made such a difference getting to the hotels early.  The days we got there closer to 4 or 5 pm were so much more relaxing than those where we got there nearer to 6 or 7.  In some ways, the actual cycling became incidental.  A lot of the best times I've had on bike rides I've done in the past were the not moving parts.  I found the same thing with learning to run again.  The best part of the running is the part after you stop, but you need to run first to get that feeling.

That was another factor which added pressure to the feeling of wanting to keep moving, because I knew I could get more free time if I spent less time on the road.  I guess I was just trying to retain my equilibrium.  A lot of the time I would drink coffee and eat biscuits instead of doing my laundry, or getting an early shower, but the sitting around was incredibly valuable to me.

Here's me at Monsal Head near Sheffield, trying to retain my sense of balance

Maybe I didn't want to spend much time sightseeing because I've been to a lot of places on the route before.  I particularly felt like this in the South West, which is a very touristy place, with lots of cars.  On occasions when I've been there before it was much more relaxing, ie Charlestown sitting having coffee.  This time I was impatient to get through it.  I certainly didn't want to go to Symonds Yat, whatever the hell that is.  I saw loads of those little semi circular signs indicating viewpoints, but if I couldn't see the view from the road, I just kept riding.

I only photographed this signpost because Bob had stopped to repair a puncture

9) Memories.  For the last couple of days of the trip and especially in the area before and after the Crask Inn, I thought often about my friend Alan who died earlier this year.  He always spoke with great enthusiasm about cycling in Scotland and I remember chatting to him about his own Jogle trip of a few years ago.  It made me sad to think he's no longer with us, but also it was nice to finally reach some of the places I'd talked about with him.  As I mentioned before, sometimes my thoughts also drifted back to my dad, especially on Day 14, which would have been his 80th birthday.  Because my mum's been ill too recently, I often thought about her, and how she's doing, and sometimes I got annoyed with myself for not appreciating more the good health I'm currently enjoying which has enabled me to go on the trip in the first place.  But like I said, sometimes it became more of a hard slog than a holiday, and it's sometimes hard to appreciate things at a time when they're stretching you physically.

Shotts - home of the world's worst toilet, and coincidentally home of the 8 item £2.99 breakfast

10) Lowlights.  Shotts, the home of the 8 item £2.99 breakfast was also the home of the world's worst toilet.  Going into that cubicle was the worst 30 seconds of the whole trip.  Route 74 was pretty bad too, for the 50 or so bone shaking miles before and after Lockerbie, where I felt that all my bones had been hit with a hammer.  Revisiting the Lockerbie memorial again made me a little annoyed for taking the whole trip so seriously, reminding me as it did, in the words of my friend Graeme, that it's only a bike ride, and therefore not very important at all.

The Lockerbie Memorial - reminded me it was only a bike ride

11) Extras, bonus features.  I never really understood the concept of Land's End to John o' Groats.  I guess it's because they're the two most distant inhabited places on the British mainland, rather than the places furthest north or south.  So just to make doubly sure I also went to Lizard Point and Dunnet Head too.  It did sort of annoy me at time that all the signs say Land's End and John o' Groats are 874 miles apart, because we did over 1000 miles to get there.

Lizard Point - Just to make sure

12) Best bits.  The best bits of the trip all revolved around the people I was on the trip with, the laughing together, the being in it together.  Mutual support counts for a lot when you're knackering yourself day after day.  I enjoyed messing around near the Welcome to Scotland sign with everyone, and I also enjoyed sitting up till 11 pm every night with Erwan, laughing and talking and refusing to go to sleep even though more rest would have been useful as we recalled all the funny things that had happened each day.

Here's me having fun - notice I'm not on a bike!

13) Absurdity, bizarre things you couldn't make up.
One day as I was riding through a part of Scotland that time seemed to have forgotten, where the price structure of cafes and shops were still at 1970s levels and just after visiting the world's worst toilet in Shotts, I found myself riding along with two deaf Americans with a combined age of 145, one from Las Vegas and one from Connecticut, one whose hearing aids were stuck somewhere in the Derbyshire postal system, the other with an artificial heart valve which meant that his heartbeat could keep you awake at night, both on blood thinning meds, and just as I was mentally going through the scenario of calling an ambulance if anything happened to one of them, one of them indeed did bounce off the side of a passing bin lorry.  And I remember thinking, this sort of thing doesn't happen to me every day.

Lunch in Ludlow - a very nice place which I saw only very briefly

14) Places we passed through all too briefly and which looked great, and which I wish we'd had longer there.  Tavistock, Chepstow, Hereford, Ludlow, Ironbridge, Ross-on-Wye, Much Wenlock, Youlgreave, Haworth.

Pretending to race Erwan up the cobbles in Haworth

In fact, Shropshire was one of the few places I got excited about on the trip and maybe I'll go back there when I'm not in such a rush.  Although I enjoyed the later parts of Scotland, there wasn't anywhere I enjoyed as much as the West Coast islands I've been to, ie Jura, Islay and Mull, and I enjoyed the cycling more there too, so if anything it inspired me to go back there instead.

Ironbridge, with its Iron Bridge - who knew?

15) Best bits - Part Two (I seem to be repeating myself here, probably just to use up another bullet point).  Hereford by the river bank, all of Shropshire.  Messing around by the Scotland sign at Gretna, and then again at Dunnet Head.  The gravestone like sign is not roped off like at John o' Groats, and if anything it was a nicer experience.  The long coffee stop in Haworth, and pretending to race Erwan up the street.  Generally having Erwan as a room-mate.

Hereford - a rare bit of tranquility by the river bank

16) Things I did stop for.  Carrbridge, Drumochter Summit, Big pyramid near Crask, Ironbridge.

Carrbridge - if you want to know where the name comes from, there's a clue behind me

I got a bit of stick off the group, and got called Mini Chris on occasions for giving the slow group the hurry up, but sometimes there were things I just had to stop for.

Looking a bit wind burned at the Drumochter Summit - and where I argued with Jack about going on the A9

17) Value for money.  Was it?  Yes, completely.  Including rail travel to Penzance and back from Inverness, 21 nights accommodation, almost every breakfast and a 3 course evening meal most days, a couple of Premier Inns and hostels but mostly very nice hotels, the whole trip cost less than £2000.  It sounds a lot of money if you say it in one lump, but if you consider what you got for it it was absolutely well worth it.  I probably spent around another £250-£300 on lunches and drinks and bars of chocolate on the trip but I would have spent a good proportion of that at home.

Kingussie - pronounced Kinnoosie - I learned that from watching Slumdog Millionaire

18) Data
Including the extra day going to Lizard Point I cycled 1094.1 miles in total, and the time I spent cycling (while the bike was actually moving) was 102 hours 33 minutes 21 seconds, which gave me an average speed of 10.7 mph.  It's a good thing my luggage was in a van, if I'd been carrying it myself, I'd still be out there now, somewhere in Scotland.

Somewhere in Scotland - actually it's in Pitlochry

Recording the data on Strava as I went along became a matter of urgent importance, and I was very lucky that after trying and failing to get the hotel computer at Lostwithiel to work on Day 2, for every night after that (when wi-fi allowed it) Erwan let me use his laptop to upload and log my miles.  Most days, even as I was riding along, in my mind, the whole purpose of each day was to get to the hotel and log the miles.  Because if they weren't logged, then they didn't happen!

The slow group doing some climbing - very slowly

There was also a huge fascination with the amount of climbing we did on the trip, and there was some debate about the actual figures.  According to my Garmin the total climbing for the trip was 59,959 feet (shame I didn't find another 41 feet somewhere to round it up to 60,000), but the Canadians for example recorded over 72,000 feet of climbing on largely the same route, so I don't know which figure is most accurate.  Maybe they were just taller and riding out of the saddle on the climbs, therefore reaching higher up into space than me, and closer to the satellites.  Who knows?

I've always wanted to go to Ecclefechan - just for the name alone

Conclusion:
Since I got home, I've only seen one weather forecast on the TV, and that was by accident, but I did look at the map of Britain somewhat differently than I have before.  I wouldn't say I feel a huge sense of accomplishment yet about doing the trip, because in some ways it all seems a bit unreal, almost like I was having an out of body experience for 3 weeks.  Maybe that's why I wanted to have so many pictures of myself to remember it by, just to prove that I was actually there, and that I went through all those places.

Chepstow - see I did go to Wales, even if it was only for a bit

I didn't just ride from one end of Britain to the other, through England and Scotland and through a little bit of Wales, I also rode across the seasons.  I rode out of the back of the summer and into the beginnings of autumn.  I went from temperatures at the start where I could have fried an egg on my own head, to temperatures near the end where I needed something to keep my neck warm.

John o' Groats - trying to keep my neck warm

I often used to say on the trip, and I wasn't entirely joking, that doing Land's End to John o' Groats is a way of travelling the whole length of Britain without actually seeing any of it, and at times that's what it felt like.  Mostly I was looking at the satnav, to see where the next junction was.

In some ways, with these kind of challenges, they seem not so much like things you want to do but rather things that you want to have done so that you can look back on them from the comfort of a future armchair and say that you once did them.

I didn't go to Hope, but seeing the sign reminded me of the time I did go to Hope in Derbyshire with Emily Lee where I tried on Robocop's legs in the park and came back to life at Summer Camp

But choose your audience wisely, and be prepared for those occasions, when some people, particularly non-cyclists, greet your story with complete apathy, because they have no frame of reference for what you've done, no idea what it's like out there, and to even take a bike 3 miles to the shops is as foreign a concept as cycling the length of Britain.

The End - catching the bus back to Inverness from John o' Groats

When my friend Graeme rode his 10 day Lejog in 2009, solo and unsupported, and doing his own map reading, mostly sleeping in hostels, and having to find his own food etc, I remember being amazed at what he'd achieved, as I was when I was talking to Sarah Herbert in June about her 9 day Jogle.  Although she did it in a group, it all sounded gruelling and mad and almost impossible.  And now I've done it myself, in almost double the time, I'm even more impressed by both of them than I was before.  And by anyone else who's done it.

Slochd Summit - so low it's hardly worth a sign

Because even though I chose to ride Land's End to John o' Groats in the easiest possible way I could think of, with everything except the pedalling taken care of, I still had to do the pedalling part.

And as I found out on when I was crossing Dartmoor on Day 3 (which was the hardest day of the whole ride) and I was overtaken by a load of people who looked like they were on Raleigh Shoppers, but who turned out to be on electric bikes, for me, even though it was the only part I did, the pedalling part was hard enough.

Dumb and Dumber meets Robocop - Further tales from Summer Camp

If tension headaches are caused by unresolved tensions on the inside, I think the headache I had between Saturday and Tuesday of last week was evidence of tension on a cosmic scale about going back for a third week of summer camp.  On reflection it would appear that my body and mind had ganged up on me and decided that I wasn't supposed to be there.  I'd already done a really intense but largely successful 12 days at 2 different camps, and unlike when I went the first time and it was all new, this time I felt I had nothing left to prove.  Even after a week of resting and doing very little at home, I wasn't feeling at all rested.  Certainly neither body or mind seemed to have recovered...

Is this the way to Summer Camp?

After last Saturday's parkrun, when I ran round in 26 minutes, I could hardly see or stand because of the tension build-up but yet this wasn't warning sign enough to stop me getting on the train to Edale on Saturday afternoon.  It must have been the desire to see my friends amongst the other team leaders again which got me on the train because every logical thing in me both physically and mentally was asking me to stay home.

Then I spent most of Saturday evening after arriving back in Edale hiding under a tent during a game of sardines with the other team leaders, and despite the headache I got quite comfortable there, and at that point I might have settled for staying there for the entire week.

Sunday morning I spent about two hours in a room with the other team leaders thinking up a song to introduce the camp rules.  The song was good but I felt like a fruit loop just being there.

Sunday afternoon I found out I was doing the Future Leaders group again.  Because I'm old, it's a logical thing to ask me to look after 17-19 year olds, rather than asking a 20 year old to do it.  I was still feeling pretty crappy so finding out this group was going to be potentially the most challenging of the week didn't go much to banish the tension I was feeling.

Sometimes after 2 weeks at camp what you really need is a full rebuild....

Future Leaders is to some extent a misnomer.  Despite the fact that some very able and intelligent young people go on this camp, people with aspirations to be doctors and airline pilots, there are also quite a few people who go on it either because their parents have fired them out of the house for a week to get some peace or because they've always come to camp when they were younger and now this is the only camp they're still allowed to come on.  Some of this latter group have some serious issues.  Either because of learning difficulties or because of medical conditions.  Conditions which I don't understand.

It's a challenge as a leader to make a unified group out of people so diverse in abilities that at the one end they can learn the complexities of the human body well enough to become doctors but at the other end they can't understand that if you don't eat you will fall over, or if you go out in the rain with no coat on you will turn blue, or even how to understand the correct way to put on wellies and trousers.

My first attempt at future leaders two weeks ago I bonded with most of the group very quickly, on the Sunday night, when they dressed me up as a woman, a woman named Queen Candy, I felt we were already most of the way there to understanding one another.  Although one member of that group was hard going at first, I always felt that he understood what I was saying, even if chose to do the opposite most of the time.  But we had an uneasy truce which passed for understanding.  And despite the difficulties I always felt there was respect on both sides.

Do you want a balloon?  Go on I dare you to try and take one....

With my new group it wasn't so easy.  Although I managed to get them to dress me as a scary looking clown for the Candy Wars of the first night, it didn't run as naturally as on my first week.  In fact, things that I was saying and doing naturally and un-self-consciously the first time around, it was like pulling teeth on Week Two.  The group were naturally more reticent, and although the group as a whole were lovely, one or two were taking me into territory I've never visited before.  At the very least they were taking me into some strange border country between sanity and la-la land.

10 minutes of ADHD training on the training weekend doesn't really equip you for dealing with a full-on case of ADHD.  One guy wasn't so much hyperactive as HYPERACTIVE!!!!  And I wasn't sure if the deficit in attention was in his own inability to pay attention or a deficit in how much attention was being paid to him.

Here's an idea.  Why don't you eat something, then get into bed and close your eyes.  It calms me down  every time....

After the game of Candy Wars, during which I must have looked so scary small children wouldn't approach me, me and the 3 other leaders and the 22 future leaders went up the 94 steps to Kinder Cottage and for reasons I still don't understand, entered into what turned into a 5 hour long game of catch with a juggling ball.  The 11 pm noise curfew came and went and despite my best efforts to keep the group quiet, the ADHDers in particular weren't showing any signs of running out of hyperactivity juice.  Two in particular pretty much hijacked the game and it became more of a juggling ball duelling missile-a-thon between them to see who could throw the ball the hardest.  I spent quite a bit of time during this game pondering a future scenario in which I was going to have to explain to the camp manager Rachel why one of my juggling balls had gone through one of the cottage windows.  Thankfully hyperactive kids seem to be quite good at catching missiles so that never happened, although some of the non hyperactive ones seemed to want to jam the ball into the most hyperactive guy's throat.  On reflection, me going to bed at midnight and leaving them to it, might have been a mistake, as the game continued on till about 3 am.  Full violence never broke out, but as I discovered later there was a definite undercurrent.

Unsurprisingly on Monday morning I still had the headache, and if there's any combination of activities which are guaranteed not to improve a headache, it's first of all climbing up a wet wooden pole and jumping off, then getting stranded up the high ropes for the second time in two attempts and having to be rescued by an instructor and then crawling through some holes on top of a windswept moor weaseling-style.  By Monday evening I was a wreck.  The only guy worse off than me was the ADHD guy who wouldn't eat or wear a waterproof, who was by this time blue and in a silent coma.  Despite several attempts to explain the laws of cause and effect to him, he hadn't grasped that no food and not wearing a coat in the pissing down rain can have these consequences.

I can hear myself talking, but I'm not sure the message is getting through......

At the staff meeting on Monday night I was ordered to take some time off on Tuesday, and try and get myself well.  Otherwise I may as well go home.  You would think this knowledge of not having to go canoeing would have helped me relax but when I woke up on Tuesday morning my head felt like it had been in a vice all night.  Never one to miss free food though, I managed to drag myself down the 94 steps to breakfast.  I went back to bed after that.  It wasn't the most relaxing morning though, as I lay in bed groaning.  12 people coming in and out getting ready for an expedition, and 20 excited kids outside doing archery, and the cleaners trying to clean the building.  Something had to change.

I decided sleeping wasn't working, so the thing to do was to go for a walk.  And this was when my week started to turn around.  I was too unwell on Tuesday afternoon to go abseiling with my group.  I still was feeling like something the cat dragged in, but if there are any advantages to feeling like a weak and wobbly mess when you're supposed to be looking after a group of teenagers, it's in knowing that the people around you are fully supporting you.  Despite feeling like a giant useless jelly of never-should-have-come-back-to-campness, no-one treated me like this at any point.  The other 3 Future Leaders Scott, Vicky and Toni picked up the slack in the group without complaint and I also found I suddenly had a group of people hugging me and encouraging me every time I saw them (the Hugging Group was mostly Rachel A, Toni, Emily and Ursula, but others such as Chris gave me high-fives).  If ever you feel like a waste of space mess who shouldn't be somewhere, being around people who love you is definitely the antidote.

For Tuesday afternoon's walk with Emily I decided to walk to the village of Hope, and I hoped it was a metaphor for my week.  I wanted to go there in order to nurture the hope that there was hope, the hope that all my good work in my first 12 days of camp wasn't being undone, by the physical and mental blancmange I'd turned into.  And that was when the sun came out, and Emily was so lovely to be around, and I started to feel like I was on holiday and not in summer camp anymore, and I went to the shop in Hope and stocked up on chocolate and energy drinks, and then we found the most amazing play park, with climbing frames and swings in the shape of exercise equipment and one of them which was my favourite was like having Robocop's legs, and as I stayed swinging there for about 15 minutes, I started to feel like someone had pressed the reset button, and I laughed and I relaxed, and I started to feel well again, and to know that I was still me, and even if I needed people to remind me to be myself, it wasn't going to be a disaster after all.

Sometimes when things aren't working too well, you need a little extra help...

And we got a lift back to camp, and everything started to look different.  My group seemed happy to see me, and in the evening we went bracken bashing, which was mostly sitting around laughing and using bracken bashing as a euphemism for some awkward night-time activities which had been going on in the boys' dorm on night one.  And I almost felt like myself again.

And Wednesday all day was my team's expedition, and I realised I would be able to go on it after all, and the sun stayed out, and we walked all day, and it wasn't like the first expedition I'd been on two weeks before where my feet got shredded in borrowed boots because this time I'd brought my own, and where I thought the instructor was trying to kill us by taking us down a waterfall.  The views this day were beautiful, and the conversation was easy, and I realised that because I'd been ill and focused on the negatives for the early part of the week, I'd failed to notice what a great group of young people I was with, and for the second day in a row I felt like I was on holiday.  And when we got to the campsite, the cooking by Trangia was well organised, and after having a day off, I had energy spare to help clear up the dirty dishes, and then the ADHD kid who didn't understand cause and effect had to be sent back to camp HQ because he wouldn't eat or wear warm clothes, and so he was in a silent coma again, and despite the many attempts to advise him throughout the day that this is exactly what happens when you go walking without food or warm clothes, he still seemed surprised.  And in the early headachey days of Sunday and Monday when I might have thought that this was my fault for not being able to explain things to him, I realised that sometimes you may as well just stick your head in bucket of cold porridge as talk to some people, because they simply refuse to listen.

And even the ones that listen, and I mean listen in the sense of hearing the words you are saying, can't understand what the words you are saying actually mean.  And this is not your fault.  If you try to talk to people with respect and compassion and gentleness, but when you look deep into their eyes and realise that there is no-one at the driver's seat, it's not your fault.

Hey Jim...if you're back here, who's driving the car?

If you have someone for example, who cannot understand simple instructions or how to do simple things in the right order, it may not be your fault.  If someone is given a bin bag for his clothes, and a sleeping bag liner for his body, but chooses to sleep in the bin liner, or if he's given a bag to put his tent in and a bag to put his sleeping bag in, but he chooses to put the sleeping bag back in the tent bag, or if he's told to put wellies on before he puts his giant overtrousers on, but does this in the wrong order, maybe there is something slightly wrong with his comprehension skills, rather than your explanation skills.  Not definitely, but maybe.

The evening of Wednesday, after the blue silent guy was taken back to camp, we played Head-Torch Frisbee.  Just to be clear, this is not played by throwing a head torch to each other as if it were a frisbee, this is a game of frisbee played in the dark, whilst all wearing head torches.  One of the advantages of bringing a medical student with you, as we did, is that she hit upon the innovation to the game of pointing the head torches downwards to illuminate your own face rather than pointing them outwards so as to blind both the throwers and the catchers.  Largely due to this in-game improvement we advanced our sequence of consecutive catches from a dismal 1 in a row for the first 10 minutes to an epic sequence of 28 catches in a row, before we had to go to bed at 10 pm.  For reasons I don't fully understand, this was one of the proudest moments of my week.  In fact, for someone who is often bewildered by the complexity of some games played at camp, the fact that we derived so much enjoyment throughout the week from simple in the moment catching games was yet another reminder to me this summer of how the best things in life remind me of the simplicity of being a child, when just having a bike or a ball is enough, and nothing further is required.

Thursday morning we headed back to camp, and in the afternoon we went caving.  I enjoyed it a lot more this time than when I'd been on it two weeks before, and one of my favourite parts was the part where we sat quietly in the dark, in complete pitch darkness, with no light whatsoever.  As someone who used to be scared of the dark, it's nice to sit in the blackness and not be afraid.  By this point, I was feeling completely comfortable with everyone who I was sat in the dark there with, and glad to have had the chance to get to know them all.  Once again, the blue guy was still back at camp.

On Friday I went home, and I guess what I was left to reflect on from my 3 weeks of camp is whether this is the right kind of work for me.  And I still don't know.  I'm no more comfortable being a children's TV presenter / Butlins redcoat type than I was a month ago.  I still don't like singing and dancing all that much, although I'm a lot more comfortable than I was in women's clothing and make-up.  But I do love being with young people, at least I loved being with the young people I met this month.  I loved talking to them and getting to know them, and trying to find out what makes them tick.  And I'm not just talking about the campers.  I also loved the other leaders.

Here are some of the people I loved spending my summer with.....who carried me through when things were going wrong

Possibly I grew to love them even more in Week 3 because when I needed them the most, they carried me through.  When I felt useless and out of sorts and not myself and incapable of giving much to them, they took over and they loved me instead.  At least it felt like love.  And maybe that's why I needed to come back again for another week.

I don't believe that success and failure, victory and defeat, or strength and weakness exist in isolation from one another.  All of them are mixed up together.  And sometimes when we get too much of one we don't realise how close we are to the other.  Because it was a week of extremes I was reminded of the phrase from the Bible 'When I am weak then I am strong'.  And the mental and physical collapse of Sunday and Monday made the comeback of Tuesday to Thursday all the more meaningful to me.  I suppose I should be grateful the good parts came last, rather than the other way round.

Maybe I had too much success, too much strength in my first two weeks, and I had an inflated sense of myself as a result.  Because in the first two weeks, despite my initial reticence, I felt pretty strong and self-confident.  There might have even been moments when I was too full of myself.  Too ready to talk and to tell my stories and to try and be funny all the time.  If this last week taught me anything, it's to tread carefully.  To pay more attention.

Week 3 was certainly the most humbling of the three.  The challenging behaviours I encountered at time left me completely non-plussed and clueless.  Not being listened to or if I was listened to, not being understood, reminded me that I'll never get through to everyone, that not everyone will respond to me in the way I intend, that despite the gifts I think I have, I may never find common ground with some people.

But the ones I did get through to, the ones I did make a difference with, the ones I really got to know, who made me laugh or who I made laugh, who I spent time in a cave with, or up a rope, who I played endless games of catch with, who I played Grab a Granny, or Princes and Princesses with, who I walked 40 minutes each way to the watersports centre with, or who I just spent endless hours talking crap with, they're the ones I remember and they're the ones who made my life better than it was before.

And even though I didn't know it before I went, they were the reasons I went to camp.

   

Things I learned at summer camp - further tales from outside the comfort zone

For the last two weeks I've been away at summer camp, being a Volunteer Team Leader on two separate YHA camps.  The first was a watersports week at Lee Valley near London, and the second was an outward bound action adventure type thing at Edale in the Peak District.  I did loads of different stuff over the two weeks, windsurfing, sailing, kayaking, canoeing, paddle boarding, raft building, abseiling, high rope walking, caving etc.  I even did something called weaseling, and I also went on an expedition where I virtually had to climb down the slippery sides of a waterfall.  This was pretty much the only activity I did where I didn't have to wear a helmet, although it seemed like the one where it was most needed.  By the time I finished the two weeks I had no more space for bruises, so I was starting to get bruises on bruises, and my feet were uniquely blistered on all four sides, which is something I've never achieved before.  It didn't help that I left my walking boots in my mum's car before I left, and also that I didn't have wet shoes for the water activities.

Lodge 3 at Lee Valley - My home between 3 - 9 August 2014

Pretty much all these activities required balance, and the careful shifting of my body weight, and I didn't find that easy.  I've never been any good at skateboarding or riding non-hander on a bike, so just the actual art of not falling over was hard work.  But it wasn't just physical balance I was striving for, I was also looking to gain some balance in my mind and in my heart.  To become more resilient and less likely to be tipped over by the unexpected.

Dancing - an activity requiring skills I don't have

I spent the entire fortnight wearing a green T-shirt with the title 'Volunteer Team Leader' on the front and over the course of the two weeks I had lots of cause to reflect on what those 3 words meant.  The first two were easy.  I was doing it for free (3 meals a day and a bed were provided so it wasn't without its perks), and I was part of a team.  I love being in teams, particularly ones that work.  From football and rugby when I was younger to teams of cyclists or teams at work, I love working together with others to achieve a common goal.  So the first two parts were easy.  The bit I really struggled with was the Leader part, and it was the third side of the triangle that I spent the last two weeks trying to figure out.  When I think of what it is to be a leader, I often think of somebody standing at the front of a room talking, or else somebody being at the front of a group with other people following behind.  At the very least I think of it as being a good role model, or setting a good example.

Anyway, here are some things I found out during the two weeks, which may shed some light on what it means to be a leader:

1) Leadership isn't just about wearing a green T-shirt with leader on.  Leaders can be anywhere, and any age.  Sometimes the leaders need to be led too.  If you're trying to do activities with people who are younger, fitter, more flexible and more capable than yourself, it's probably best to follow them instead of expecting them to follow you.

2) There's no lower age limit to leadership.  A 10 year old French girl who spoke very little English was my inspiration on week one, and she taught me more about courage and leadership than anyone else I met on the trip.  I started off week one insecure and full of doubts about my own abilities, but when I met her, tiny and young and alone in a foreign country, trying to get by using her limited knowledge of a foreign language, I knew I could do it too.  In this way, she was the best role model I found.

When I was blinded with lake water from trying to fill a cup stuck to the top of my head, she was the one who came to take my hand and help me out of the water, and she was always asking me if I was okay.  Sometimes when she was tired, I carried her, but mostly it was her that carried me.  On the last day she sang me the Aristocats song 'Everybody wants to be a cat' in French, and even though I could barely converse with her in either English or French, having to say goodbye to her was the worst part of the whole two weeks.

3) Sometimes it's just as important to lead from the back, as it is from the front.  We had a 40 minute walk each way to the watersports centre each day on week one, and on the walk I tended to hang around near the back with the 10 year old girls, helping them carry their bags and encouraging them, and making sure they were okay.  The faster, stronger, older kids don't need this help, because they can take care of themselves.

4) If you're scared of something, do it with someone who's even more scared than you are, and spend the whole experience trying to keep them calm and relaxed.  It will rub off on you.  This happened to me during the caving, when I spent the whole trip trying to keep another team member calm.  Despite being in an environment that was very scary for me, I felt moments of real peace and calm while I was down there under the ground.

5) If you're scared of heights, distract yourself.  Look into the face of the instructor who's talking to you, or look at the abseiling rope, look at anything but the thing you're scared of.

6) Just because it's dark, it doesn't mean you can't play frisbee.  It's good to sharpen your reflexes sometimes by playing it on a campsite in the dark, where you only have a split second to avoid getting hit in the face.

7) Just because you're on an activity holiday, it doesn't mean every second needs to be packed with activity.  Sometimes everyone needs downtime.  If people are happy sitting and chatting, no real need to go all children's TV presenter / Butlins redcoat on them, and get them to play games.

8) If you do play games, sometimes it's best to keep them simple, with minimal explanation, rules etc, but with the maximum level of participation, running around, everyone involved.  My favourites were 'Grab a granny' 'princes and princesses', 'the numbers game', or just simply kicking a football or chucking a frisbee.  I'm sure some people are very good at complex games involving lots of props and equipment and rules and explanations, but I'm not.

9) Sometimes bad news can be good news.  Having to drive someone to A&E on the last night of camp when you're very tired and not getting back till 2.30 am may seem like a bad thing, but it was very quiet in A&E and I got to have some peace and quiet whereas the noise levels in the cottage would have been a lot more, and so it was probably a blessing in disguise to drive to Stockport and have a sit down in the quiet.

10) It's never too late to get a second chance.  Listening to AC/DC in a minibus full of 17 year olds transported me back in time to 1983 when I was also listening to AC/DC in a minibus on a rugby tour to London.  Like the Coast to Coast bike ride in June where I managed to exist outside of space and time, it was the sort of out of body experience that reminded me that age is just a number and at times it's a complete irrelevance.

11)  It's a lot easier to make a fool of yourself, if it's all someone else's idea.  For example, dressing up as a woman in full make-up and trying to do a catwalk style walk is a lot easier if you abandon all notions of free will.  I would never choose to walk into a room full of 140 people and draw attention to myself in this way, but there's something liberating about doing it when it's all someone else's idea.  My team dressed me up like this on the first and last nights at Edale, and because it was all their idea, I felt pretty relaxed about the whole thing.

12) Never be afraid to join in.  It's a lot easier to get to know a group by doing things alongside them, than it is from watching from the side.  There are things that happen in canoes, and in caves, and up ropes, and in fields and up mountains that you can't spot from a distance.  But if you're there with them, sharing the same space, everything is apparent.  

13) Try to turn negatives into positives.  Being given random inanimate objects by colleagues became an inspiration rather than a burden.  The tray I was forced to carry for a lot of the week became an umbrella, a seat, a dance partner, as well as a symbol of unity for my group.

14) If it's possible to become attached to inanimate objects just by association, how much more attached can we become to the people they remind us of?  Maybe it was because I knew I wasn't allowed to form any permanent attachments to any of my team that I found it hard to let go of the plastic lunch tray I'd carried for 46 hours, including up a mountain.    

15) Sometimes it's okay to go through the bins.  If you're living in a cottage with no drinking receptacles whatsoever that's up 94 steep steps away from the main youth hostel, and you've got a dry mouth syndrome, and you've just had a pee which suggests that you're dehydrated, and the kitchen's locked and the tuck shop isn't open, and you really need something to drink out of, it's okay to raid the bins for an empty water bottle.  Also, it's okay to salvage the occasional bag of crisps out of the bin too.

16) Just because you don't initially appear to have anything in common with some people, doesn't mean that you can't become close to them, and grow to love them.  Some 17 year old girls from the Wirral and Warrington who wanted to dress me up as a woman, a 10 year old girl from France with very little shared language, a 21 year old biker / battlefield re-enacter from Kent.  Despite having completely different lifestyles and experiences, we could still become very important to each other very quickly.

17) Just because you can't keep something permanently, and you have to let go of it one day, doesn't mean you shouldn't give it everything while it lasts.  I take it as a sign of me getting better as a person, that even knowing as I did that I will most likely never see any of my two groups again didn't stop me giving them everything I could while I was with them.  At one time, in fact probably a year ago, when I was being dominated by feelings of loss and sadness, I would have doubted the point of putting so much effort into something that was only going to last a week, but these two weeks helped me to rediscover the power of the present.

The past and the future are always beyond reach, and we can never really hold onto anything for long, but we can have fun along the way.  The past is gone and the future will take care of itself, but putting effort into relationships in the here and now, having shared experiences, and moments of togetherness and shared laughter is never a waste, even if it's temporary.

I guess these two weeks reminded me that things don't need to last in order to be worthwhile.  The present is its own reward, even if it is constantly disappearing.  That's probably why it's called the present.

18) When things are going well, we should be sure to notice it.  The day before I left for this two weeks of learning to be a leader, I received the news that a friend of mine called Alan had died on a bike ride.  I didn't know him well, but he was someone who, every time I met him, made my life better just by being in it.  He was always full of fun and laughter, and full of good advice and support.  I thought of him often during this past crazy two weeks, and although at times I felt sad, his passing was also a reminder to me that life is short and fragile and we should remember to treasure the happy moments we are lucky enough to find along the various paths we take.  And also that as long as we're alive, whatever regrets we may have, and whatever dead ends we have inadvertedly taken, it's never too late to start again.

I've been alive a really long time, and too many times in life, I've become bogged down in sadness, loss and negativity.  I haven't always made the most of the time I've been given.  In these recent months, with all these trips I've been taking out of my comfort zone, I've been trying to find the best of myself again, the essence of what makes me a worthwhile human being.

The process is ongoing, and it never ends, and after two weeks of random craziness, I'm not sure I'm any nearer to the answers than I was at the beginning.  But I met so many people along the way who made me want to be a better person, a better leader, a better friend, a better son.  Just better all round.

So I guess it was worth going for that reason alone.

Tales from outside the comfort zone - The Trilogy

Recently, I've been trying to re-invent myself, or at least recycle myself.  I've been trying to become Me +, Me 2.0.  A different way of saying that, is that I've been trying to avoid being a cynical, miserable, middle-aged pain in the ass.  At the very least, I've been trying to find my smile (see City Slickers, Billy Crystal, mid-life crisis, cattle drive etc).  I thought a good way to achieve this might be to practise leaving my comfort zone.

Sometimes it's good to break out of your comfort zone

A drawback of being in my comfort zone is that I can lapse into lazy ways of thinking, navel gazing, and generally moany and whiney behaviour.  I can get bogged down in negativity, mired in cynicism, stuck in a rut etc.  It's much easier to do this when things become routine, and trying new things isn't part of your regular pattern.  Historically, I've often been too afraid to try new stuff, and even when I have on occasion stretched myself by doing new things, like youth work, or going to India, or learning German, I've sometimes lacked the confidence to build on my new found experiences, so recently I thought it might be good to get myself out there and join in a bit more, and also it might help me make up for lost time.

As a result, amongst new things I've taken up lately are mountain biking, eating satsumas and pretending to be a penguin.  The eating satsumas thing isn't really a big deal, but I first took up eating them on the Coast to Coast to combat a dry throat from all the dust, and it has continued into the weekend just gone.  When I was a child I mostly only used fruit as something to throw at my brother, so it's good to use it for its proper intended use finally.

I suppose I could have taken up doing these new things with friends, but a lot of them are busy doing adult things, like working, bringing up children, mowing their lawns, getting their soffit boards painted (whatever the hell they are), generally caring about the fabric of their homes etc, all things I'm very bad at, and they're not always free to play out.  Also, I moved to Leeds recently, so as well as being busy, a lot of my friends are now also far away.  Not in the global sense, but a bit too far to pop round for coffee etc.

It's been a lot easier to commit to doing new stuff recently, because a lot of the old things I used to rely on to fill my time, like having a job, a wife, a home etc have fallen by the wayside, partly due to circumstance, and partly due to me managing to turn my life into a giant dog's breakfast.

Excuse me, is this the future?

So, anyway, to keep myself busy, and to get me out of the aforementioned comfort zone, I signed up to do 3 main activities this summer:

1) a Coast to Coast off-road bike ride with 56 strangers in June.
2) becoming a volunteer YHA summer camp leader (the camps are in August, and this weekend just gone was the training course, this time with around 74 strangers).
3) a Land's End to John o'Groats bike ride in September with 18 strangers.

As you can see, a common theme with all these activities is that they all involve boatloads of people I've never met before.  One of the good things about people I don't know, is that there are a lot of them around.  In fact, they're everywhere, whereas the circle of people I know is quite small.  One big advantage I've found that strangers have over the people I know is that they are: a) available.  Also, it's meant to be statistically safer to hang out with strangers, as most people who get done in, get done in by someone who knows them.  So, for me, it's strangers all the way!

The pattern on that carpet is literally mesmerising - It's like a kaleidoscope of Doom!

I wasn't always this willing to hang out with strangers.  I grew up in a time of hideous carpets and mustard coloured knitted cardigans and bad hair, otherwise known as the 1970s.  It was a time when the home phone was a giant beige thing with a dial on which you weren't allowed to use, because why didn't you just go down the road and call for people?  A time when televisions were made of wood, and couldn't be stolen because they weighed as much as a house, when a stereo was a sideboard and music was on massive vinyl discs that were so big they were almost too big to bring home on the bus after you'd bought them, a time when the internet was going to the library to read the Encyclopedia Britannica on an evening, a time when there was no point having plugs in your bedroom, because what would you ever need to plug in?

One of the ironies about the 70s, looking back now, is that there were lots of public information films on TV, advising us not to go off with people we didn't know (mostly we were told there would be clues to them being dodgy in that they would want to show us puppies, or buy us sweets).  In those days, although strangers weren't to be trusted, TV presenters were.  How times have changed!  In those days a lot of my good male role models were TV presenters.  What we never told at the time was how it was probably safer to hang out with strangers than it was to hang around with 70s TV presenters and DJs.  That wasn't in any of the public service broadcasts.

So it's taken some time for me to feel safe around strangers, but as long as you're careful, there's no reason why meeting people you don't know should be any more dangerous than meeting people you do, except for if you meet them in a disco when they're drunk (are they still called discos, probably not?).

Strangers - Like Friends, except you don't have to remember their birthdays...

Anyway, I've already done Part One of my Stranger Trilogy - the Coast to Coast, which I wrote about here.  In terms of encouraging me to be positive, and aspiring to be better, it couldn't have gone much better.  It was full of positive people, good role models etc, and was genuinely inspiring.  I even got to meet the famous popstar / singer Alistair Griffin who put me in one of his music videos and in time I will become an international superstar on Youtube, just by association (this has not happened yet).

The good news about Parts Two and Three of my master-plan is that they are going to take up most of August and September, which means I don't have to sort my life out until at least October....

Part Two is the youth worker thing, and I went on the training camp for that this weekend.  Unlike the Coast to Coast, there wasn't much of a variety of ages, in that they were all the same age (except me).  And the age they all were was about half my age, or less.  It turns out a lot of people with time on their hands this summer are young people, and although I have some stuff in common with them, like having two arms and two legs, it takes a bit of adapting to.  Luckily, I made an early start, like about 2 years ago.

My tendency to start hanging out with young people started at SLC, almost 2 years ago exactly, when I was inducted into Batching and Scanning Team, with a gang of people half my age, ie Joss, Lucy, Gibbo, Rob, Vicky, Pete etc.  They may have wanted to spend a lot of time getting wasted on coloured drinks, but at least they had some energy about them.  I found that as long as I didn't have to go to Avalon with them, I was fine.

I've just remembered... I need to go home and wash my socks

I've found, after having lots of different jobs, some where I was the oldest person around, and some where I was nearly the youngest, that the latter is so much worse.  If there's a group that's worse to work with than people who go out till 4 in the morning, and then come into work at 8 looking like the Incredible Hulk (Joss), it's people who've been doing the same job for about a hundred years, and who are now coasting into retirement, or perhaps even sliding into the grave.  Their children and their pension plans are a disappointment, the council want to put a bus stop next to their house, kids keep knocking footballs into their gardens, they've found a lump, they need a scan etc.

Joss - if you look in the mirror and you're this green, you should probably stay home...

I myself have had an alarming number of scans in recent years, along with internal examinations I'm not going to tell you about involving latex gloves going into places the sun doesn't shine, and cameras going into places you would think cameras really wouldn't fit into, but even if this is just inevitable side effect of being middle aged, like nose hair, I really don't want to hear about it at work over my morning coffee.

Retired people are even worse.  If you ever go out for a pub lunch, never go when the Pensioners' Special is on.  All you'll hear are disastrous anecdotes about angina, going down the big white tunnel towards the light before being called back, or at the very least a trip to A&E.  Or how they can't eat cheese anymore, even though they love it, and how they really shouldn't eat broccoli because it plays havoc with their irritable bowel.  Give me young people anytime!  Ones with bodies that just work!

What did I miss?

At times these days I already feel like I'm in a Time Travel movie.  Moving back to Leeds after 20 years away, I already feel like I'm in Back to the Future Part Two.  There's so many big new buildings, the former Odeon is now a Primark, my old school has now moved, the old school buildings are part of Leeds Uni, the rugby pitch I used to play on now has a cycle path through the middle of it.

Then this weekend, spending time with all those young people, training to be a youth worker, I felt like Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man, like I was a fossil they'd defrosted to help with some unruly kids from the future.  Sitting around listening to people talk about taking their driving tests, knowing that they were all born after I passed mine, I felt like I'd just fallen out of cryogenic storage.

Although, to be fair to them, they must have felt like they'd been simultaneously projected into the past.  Because we were right in the middle of the Peak District, there was no mobile signal, which made it a lot easier to actually have a conversation.  Something I find difficult with young people these days, in fact people in general, is getting their undivided attention, what with them scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and online betting websites, or looking at videos of cats doing funny things.  There was none of that last weekend.  We were back in the stone age, in a geographical basin.

When you actually get to talk to most young people, without the distraction of technology, they're actually quite nice.  And they're a lot like me.  We've all got our hopes and dreams for the future, it's just that they have more energy to pursue them, and less aches and pains.  I thought I might get some opportunity to talk to them about my life experience, but in then end, it was me who ended up trying to learn from them.  To rediscover something I thought I'd lost.  Possibly my youth.  I didn't expect to find good new role models amongst the young, but I did anyway.

In that mobile signal desert last weekend, with no internet, running around, playing games, it was like being a child again.  And in many ways that was how I felt on the Coast to Coast.  I felt timeless and ageless, outside the confines and the circumstances of my normal life.  Spending time blindfold pretending to be a sheep, standing around being a statue, literally jumping through hoops, trying to put on clothes that don't fit, playing Monkey football, doing the Penguin dance, trying to put a magic stick on the ground, turning cone shaped things over and over without running directly into people, trying to walk across an imaginary ravine on milk crates that are supposed to be turtles, playing charades.

Here's me and my new volunteer friends - doing what Penguins do...

At one point, and for just a brief moment, when someone got a bottle out I thought.  'Holy shit, we're not playing spin the bottle, are we?  If we are I'm off!'  Thankfully it was a lot simpler game than that, involving blindfolded hand squeezing.

The people I played these games with last weekend, are the same age now as I was in the period 1986 to 1990.  After decades of living out different roles, and following various paths, here I am again, back at the same crossroads as I was then, with no job, no house, no wife, still wondering which way to go.

I suppose the difference is, I've been here before.  The good news is, I suppose, whatever has gone before, it's never too late to start again, to press the reset button, to restore the factory settings.  At least that's what I'm hoping for....