Month: April 2017

Initially we were going to do the route south to north (LEJOG), but ended up choosing JOGLE because it’s easier to say and it’s downhill it was easier to organize.    (If anything JOGLE is supposedly a bit harder because the prevailing winds go south to north.   But, both of us being weedy, we think we’ll offer only a slim wind profile.)

We thought about renting bikes, buying bikes, 3D printing bikes, but in the end decided it best (and almost cheapest) to take our own bikes.

So, the game plan is as follows:

• We’ll box our bikes (a non-trivial task) for the flight to England
• They’ll be couriered from Chippenham up to Inverness, where they’ll be reassembled.    The move will take about 5 days, during which time we’ll be diligently carb-loading in The Quarrymans Arms.
• We’ll take Easyjet to Inverness and be reunited with our bikes.    We’ll then take a bike transport service up to JOG to start our trip.

At least, that’s the plan right now.

 

We’ve planned our nominal route using a combination of the National Cycle Network (NCN) routes, Royston Wood’s Safe Cycle Route (SCR) and cycle.travel – an excellent bike route planning web site.

I’ll use my phone as a Satnav, using the LocusMap Pro app.     This is a great app, with loads (too many?) features.    I have all the NCN and SCR routes stored in the app as GPX files, plus if we need, we can use cycle.travel while on the go to generate a good bike-friendly route.

We’re staying in B&Bs most of the time, and have booked the first and last few days of the trip, but left the route from west of Glasgow south open for now so that we can change routes easily if we want.

Tony

My bike is a Trek 520 (with a classic Brook’s B17 leather saddle added) and Margaret’s is a Specialized AWOL Elite. Both are designed for touring – stable with a long wheel base and built to take loads. The frames are steel, which is a bit heavier and not as stiff as aluminium, but doesn’t transmit road vibration as much.    Both have mechanical disk brakes and puncture resistant tyres.

Margaret had her bike modified to a 3-ring front chain set and a rear cassette with lower gearing.   We’re really happy with both bikes – very comfortable to ride.

Tony