A Cold one at the Cowpers

We rewarded ourselves for our technical achievements over a spot of lunch at the Cowpers Oak to be joined by a friend who lives nearby who was out walking her dog.  She was slightly less impressed with our choice of liquid refreshments.  "You should be on soda water and soya beans" she was no doubt thinking - but was too polite to say. We redeemed ourselves by once again studying the first dozen pages of the 47 maps of our challenging ride that now loomed closer....just over a month in fact.

We had better get serious....!

Running Repairs

Another training ride in Northants just north of Olney and we experience our first puncture! 

Fortunately we had remembered to pack a spare inner tube. After working out how to  remove the back wheel without disassmbling the entire gear exchange, we successfully had it sorted and inflated the new tube with  my snazzy new pump. This appeared to be not much bigger than a medium sized syringe and just about as difficult to handle.

Planning the Ride

After another 20 mile training session in the Windsor Great Park we started to plan the route we would take and decided on a start date of around May 9th.  Armed with about 47 pages of a suggested route by one of Simon's friends we calculated that we would shoot for doing around 60 miles a day.  We decided to do the ride in the more conventional south to north direction wit the prevailing wind, rain and (hopefully) sun to our backs.  Seemed to be a bit counter intuitive to me...surely it wouldbe all dowhill from Scotland? 

We were warned that the start of the ride in Cornwall & Devon is extremely challenging with lots of "undulations" to contend with at the outset.

Approximate route map