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Sunday 5 August 2012

Accommodation

The night before the ride we stayed in Wheal Rodney Holiday Lodges which are near Marazion, just along the coast from Penzance and about 20 miles from Land’s End. Although not much to look at, indeed a bit drab from the outside, once inside we found the lodge comfortable and pretty spacious. Although we were only there for one night it’s the kind of place you could stay for a few days without going stir crazy as it has a separate living room/kitchen and bedroom. The lodge was self catering with a fairly well equipped kitchen and although there was a small shop on site we nipped 5 minutes down the road to the supermarket to stock up for the following day too.

The first night of the ride was spent in The Coach House in Hele, a few miles north of Exeter. This kind of bridges the gap between self catering and a B&B with a fridge and microwave in the room and comes stocked with various goods to make your own breakfast in the morning. At first I thought the buzzing of the fridge might be a bit intrusive but we both managed to get to sleep no problem. It’s the kind of place you need to speak to the owner to find but once we did we had no problem locating it - the owner was also very nice and let me bring the bike into the room.

For Monday night my accommodation was the Rose & Crown in Playley Green, Redmarley D’Abitot – about 10 miles north of Gloucester. The is a pub with a few rooms and the room I stayed in appeared to have been done up nicely quite recently. I was able to leave my bike in the bar and although I was slightly concerned about the local youths playing pool next to it the bike survived the night unscathed. The pub had a good selection of food and I enjoyed a good evening meal and a full cooked breakfast in the morning with the exception of beans which I am told someone had eaten the last of the day before! The only issue I had was the room heating being supplied by an electric heater as the central heating wasn’t on which would have made drying my clothes off a bit easier.

Tuesday I was back at home and although the accommodation was unfinished in places and generally untidy the food was first rate!

By Wednesday night I was in Gretna Green and stayed at the Kirkcroft Guest House with their secure bike storage. Despite the shower being a bit low powered – I was told that the water had gone off earlier in the day and there were problems with the water pressure – I had a very comfortable stay. Breakfast was lovely and there were a few options nearby for evening meals depending on what you fancied, I chose the Gretna Hall Hotel which had a decent choice of meals.

Thursday night I was in Callander and met Kerri at the Crags Hotel which seemed more like a pub with rooms upstairs. The hotel had a somewhat quirky interior and although the bed was very creaky it was pretty comfortable. Again the heating in the room wasn’t on so as I had arrived sodden after a day of constant rain I had a bath to warm up and we resorted to use of the hair dryer to dry the gear I needed for the next day. I was able to leave my bike in the garage out back which although wasn’t locked itself I managed to secure my bike inside. Although the hotel does food we ventured out for our evening meal since there is plenty of choice in Callander and the breakfast in the morning was good.

Friday night was spent in Clunebeg Lodge near Drumnadrochit. Arriving quite late Kerri had been to the local shop for supplies and we enjoyed an evening meal of pot noodles and pies! With electric heaters drying my clothes wasn’t easy although the owner kindly offered use of his tumble dryer and also locked up my bike for me. Breakfast again was very good as I enjoyed another 3 course meal of cereal, cooked breakfast and toast although I had to politely turn down the offer of another rack of toast as I was pretty stuffed by that point!

Saturday night we stayed in the gorgeous Caithness History B&B for a bit of luxury at the end of the ride. The B&B itself is a bit out on its own although there are takeaways in the relatively nearby Castletown, we headed to Thurso straight from the end of the ride in John O’Groats for fish and chips and to draw out some money as the B&B didn’t have card facilities. Both the building and the room itself were stunning and although I didn’t have any more cycling ahead of me I used the long drive home as a good excuse for another good three course breakfast.

Accessories & Nutrition

The most important accessory I used on the ride was my Garmin 500 GPS cycle computer. This enabled me to plot my route and follow the directions that the computer gave me whilst also recording the usual stats such as distance, speed, heart rate etc. It has been great for both getting out on routes I wouldn’t normally use and also logging all my rides by uploading them to sites on the internet. It’s also been frustrating though when the thing goes wrong like it did on the second day of my LEJoG meaning I could only see the next course point and was unable to see how far I’d been or how long I’d got left. It’s also crashed at other times and I’ve ended up losing stats on parts of my ride which, while not particularly important, is still quite annoying. I think it struggles when you are following a long route with lots of directions in it. I’m told that upgrading the firmware should sort this problem although I have heard that this can actually make matters worse!

The ride was the first time I properly used energy and recovery drinks, normally I would just add some sugar to cordial and use that as an energy drink but this would have been impractical to carry in my luggage. I chose to use SIS Go (mainly as it worked out the cheapest of the brands!) during the ride which seemed to keep me going ok although it’s hard to say how much of a difference it would have made. After the ride I uses SIS Rego Night which, whilst tasting pretty disgusting, seemed to work well and leave my legs feeling much fresher in the morning than when I had been doing long back to back training rides without them. Learning to down the drink in one is advisable!

In terms of food I ate whatever was going. On the move I ate Soreen (comes in nice pocket shaped loaves!), home made flapjack, cereal bars and caramel shortcake. It’s hard to eat as much as you need to so I supplemented these with High 5 Energy Gels which are great when you need an instant energy hit but are relatively expensive for what they are. Off the bike on most days I had a three course breakfast of cereal, full English breakfast followed by toast and jam which set me up for the day nicely. During the day I would stop once or twice and take on either some sandwiches on wholemeal bread (I learned to avoid white bread pretty quickly) and/or pasta and at night I would have a large meal followed by desert if I had any room left in my stomach. According to my Garmin I was burning between 3,000 and 5,000 calories a day (although I’m not sure how accurate that is?) so I made every effort to eat as much as possible!

Clothing

Apologies to those who were on tenterhooks awaiting the reviews I had promised (I'm sure there are many of you!), I had written the drafts but forgot about them and never got around to posting them up. So here they are at long last:

Shorts are a personal choice and I found the DHB Aeron Race quite comfortable which I purchased a few months back when I needed some new shorts. Therefore I didn’t have any hesitation in going for a top of the range pair of DHB Aeron Pro’s to use on the majority of the ride with the Race’s acting as a backup. The Pro’s have a thicker pad than the Race’s and are also made of a better quality of lycra and they were pretty comfortable for the duration of the ride. The only thing I would say is that I think I come between two sizes with the mediums being too big and the smalls being ever so slightly too small.

I combined the shorts with B’Twin thermal leg warmers on the colder days and Craft lycra leg warmers on the slightly warmer days, both did their job fine although the B’Twin’s have now seen better days! I also purchased some neoprene B’Twin overshoes which kept the worst of the weather out but couldn’t keep heavy rain for more than a couple of hours even when combined with some Polaris Neolite overshoes underneath! I think all overshoes struggle in heavy rain though. The gloves I used for wet weather were Altura Cresta which again struggled in heavy rain – if anyone knows any truly waterproof gloves and overshoes let me know!

When it wasn’t raining I wore Madison windproof gloves which I found probably the most comfortable of the lot and on the third day it was warm enough to bring out the Polaris mitts which are old faithful I’ve had for years and were comfortable but are now falling to bits!

In terms of tops I had various long sleeve base layers including a Crane one from Aldi which is surprisingly good being made from a  light material but still being fairly warm, a DHB one which is warm but lets some of the wind through and one from Prostar which is lightweight and good for when it’s just a bit too cold for short sleeves. I also used a Gore Windstopper short sleeve base layer which does exactly what it says on the tin.

I also ended up taking my B’Twin Membrane Jacket which I didn’t think I’d be needing in May but was a godsend on colder days. It’s an incredibly warm jacket – really anything approaching double digits in Celsius it’s too warm for –  great at stopping wind and fairly water resistant too. It’s also one of the few long sleeve garments that I’ve found long enough in the sleeve in a size small. The only criticism I have of it is that the 3 rear pockets are so tight as to be practically unusable so I have been combining it with a short sleeve jersey for rear pocket storage. For times when it was really wet I donned my Polaris Neutron PBK Waterproof Jacket which is both packable and waterproof but the (cheap) PBK version I have comes in black which isn’t the most visible colour, although having said that it does have reflective elements. When it wasn’t wet I used an Altura gilet which was good for taking the edge off in the cold mornings and evenings and also good for chilly descents without getting you too warm.

My eyewear is a pair of Optilabs prescription sports glasses. These were fairly expensive but are a great alternative to using regular cycling glasses with inserts as you only have one pair of lenses to worry about. They are also reactions so are fine in pretty much all light conditions although I find they make overcast conditions a little gloomy – fine for seeing but not always great for your mood! The helmet I use is a Bell Ghisallo which is now an obsolete model but I found it suited my odd shaped head – big and long – well and has good adjustability.