Preparations Well Under Way!

At last Great Western have released the advanced tickets for the end of May so I have been able to book tickets for myself and William from St Albans to Penzance. Two standard singles and bike reservations for the princely sum of £73. As they only allow 6 bicycles on an intercity train, you have to get in early to ensure you can get your bikes to go with you. We’ll be taking the 7:30am train from Paddington but because of restrictions on taking bikes into London on First Capital Connect, we’ll have to leave soon after 6am. We then get off at St Pancras International and cycle to Paddington as we’re not allowed to take bikes on the tube. It’s like planning a military campaign trying to work around all the obstacles put in your way when you take a bike! The good thing is the train should reach Penzance by 1:30pm so we intend to cycle the 10 miles out to Land’s End that afternoon and then cycle back about 30 miles to stay with some relatives of William’s in St Agnes. That’ll be our one and only easy day! Beyond that all our accommodation is now booked so the route is fixed, but I cannot yet get train tickets back from Thurso as the advanced tickets have still not been released for 7^th June. That’ll be the last major item to organise apart from the training, speaking of which…

 

This morning my son Phil and I cycled 25 miles in just under 2 hours before breakfast. That means I’ve now cycled 200 miles on training rides so far this year. The legs are gradually getting used to the idea of pushing pedals round for hours on end without stopping. Next Friday I’m taking the day off work and William and I are off on a three day weekend with a group of friends from St Lukes Church staying up near Huntingdon. By cycling there on an indirect route on Friday, pootling around on bikes on Saturday with some of the others, and then cycling back home again on the Sunday we hope to add a further 150+ miles to our training tally. We’ll be carrying full luggage next weekend as well so it will give us the feel for what it will really be like.  Graham.