We did 980 miles overall.  Irritatingly close to the magic 1000, but I don’t think I could have done another mile.

Those 980 miles were covered over 83 hours and 36 minutes of riding time.  This is considerably longer than the record, which is 44 hours, 4 minutes and 20 seconds, but he took a shorter route, and I suspect he didn’t stop at traffic lights or carry heavy panniers.

I calculate this to be a steady 11.72 miles per hour which sounds slow but the UK is far hillier than I ever imagined.  We climbed nearly 13,000 metres over the trip.

Looking back on it – prematurely nostalgically through my rose tinted glasses – conveniently forgetting the miserable slog in the Manchester suburbs, fighting into the wind at Glen Coe and the pains in my knees and ankle, I loved every minute of it.

After the king harry ferry, we had about 35 miles to go. They dragged badly. My sat nav and phone ran out of battery. The hills were quite relentless and we were getting really tired. Cat fell off at a junction, as her toe clips were on the verge of breaking and i had to manually unclip her.

With about 10 miles to go, around penzance (st michaels mount and the coast there are beautiful, incidentally- but we didn’t have the energy or time to admire them as it was getting dark) we saw our first land’s end sign posts and i saw that we were going to make it. It was quite depressing though as the miles to go on the sign stayed at 6 for at least 3 miles.

We arrived in the near dark- fortunately not much traffic there- and had a load of photos. Cat’s shoe broke as she took her foot out. We were too tired to make much sense, but today i’m feeling quite triumphant!

As we left my parents and cycled through awre, we were greeted at a group that the nolans had rallied to wave us on our way. It was brilliant and touching, especially as it was half past 7 on a bank holiday!

For this leg of th journey, we were 5. As pam and rich had joined up for a couple of days, along with stevie who joined us for a full three- resolutely taking all the head wind for the first 2.

We took morning tea at henbury church hall where we happened upon an art exhibition with delicious cakes!

Cat’s father and her brothers waved us on in the afternoon and treated us to lunch in mark.

We arrived in exeter at about 8, having cycled 108 miles into a head wind. A fish pie followed by cream tea and cake, prepared by cat’s mum, was literally on the table waiting for us.

For our final, epic cycle of 131 miles with just under 12000ft of climbing, we got up in the middle of the night, at 5am.

We took a ‘short cut’ out of exeter, which looked great on the map but i must have neglected to look at the contour lines. It was brutal on our ruined legs at such an early hour, and i was glad we had to get off to lift our bikes over the wall which strangely obstructed our route.

After that we tried the A30 for a terrifying 10 miles to okehampton. It was foggy, lorries were fast and came close to us, the surface was rubbish, it was hilly and there was a head wind. We were nervous wrecks and decided to go back onto the smaller roads.

We stopped for lunch at Lost Withiel- pretty sure i’ve misspelt that- and our support team for the day, cat’s mum Christine, and husband Jon had pre- ordered so we could be super quick.

Back on the road, the run came out, we saw the sea for the first time since Gretna Green, and we sort of felt great! It was beautiful, and we ‘only’ had 50 or 60 miles to go.

Another snack stop after the king harry ferry-
part 2 next

But over the 10 days i’ve developed a few odd pains- my knees, which started off as a wee twinge and ended up literally making me cry as we went along. Never have i appreciated a physio as much as appreciated anne-marie in shrewsbury although i have very strange van lines now thanks to the taping.

And then i have developed tendonitus in my achilles tendon, i think from pulling up to compensate for my knees.

I had blisters on the heels of my hands which seem to have gone down now, and worse blisters elsewhere.

An infected cut on my finger from fixing a chain and such sore shoulders from being hunched over all day . And i think that’s it.