Day 1 - Lands End to Redruth

Day 1- Lands End to Redruth.

We leave St Ives by the smaller local 10.15 train for Saint Erth - where we had come from 2 days previous..

Waiting for train from St. Ives

Our train connection to Penzance and our hire bike pickups is supposed to be at 11:00 AM. But the train is delayed by 30 minutes. The official reason it is delayed we are told is  - “it was late coming out of the station”. Really!!
 At 11:30 we board the train to Penzance.  Then to get to the cycle hire shop we're told it's a 20 minute walk. But it looks much longer with our heavy panniers etc. So we wait for the 12:05 bus to take us along in the right direction. Then we have another ½ mike walk. Peter Rivett, who we are hiring the bikes from, gives us a friendly welcome.

However he had forgotten that we would bring our special Jones handlebars from New Zealand so we proceed to work together on getting the old hand grips off the normal bars so we can take the brake and gear levers off and re-install them on our bars when we put those on the bikes . Zita's pedals need to be changed. Her gears are not changing well. Peter is stressed. We are pressured because we have 60km's to pedal today and it's getting late.  Zita is particularly annoyed about the poor service. It is all a bit slack and does not induce confidence in the bikes we have hired or the advice received.

Peter drops us off with the bikes at Lands End.  (costing another 25 pounds) It is busy with holiday makers. We get our photo taken with John O'Groats pointer and off we go.

At Lands End

To help us on our way we have a guide book, we have google maps, we have route markers attached to various objects beside the road. However we still miss our first turn and stay on the busy main road for a while instead of heading down a quieter back road.  Realising the mistake we take a small farm road to get back on route which is National Cycle Way 3. We are just discovering how useful (or not)  is the guide we have. How well marked (or not) are the route with markers. I find the written instructions in the guide  too sparse to be very useful for detailed following. The route markers are  generally OK until there is one missing at an important or vital intersection.  A little later we head off down a pretty road to a gorgeous seaside cove. Is this the right way?  Unfortunately it is  a dead end.  So we  turn around and cycle uphill again one mile and 200 feet of climb. (Yes lots of our instruction or advice are in miles and feet)

Dropping down to the Mouse Hole

Along the coast from Penzance with Mt. Saint Michael in distance.

Back on route we continue through Mousehole, Penzance then leave the coast and head up hill.  It is now late afternoon and we haven't had lunch. We start to experience what lots of this cycling tour is going to be like.  Lots of little roads and lanes and paths through forest and beside streams,  often passing such pretty houses - some exceptionally grand.  And at other times we are winding our way through the backstreets of towns where the houses are well cared for and attractive and soon after they are scruffy and in poor condition and depressed.


We finally arrived at our airbnb room in Redruth at dusk.  The room itself looks OK  and we get to take our bikes into our room but the house is a bit of a shambles. We walk 20 minutes to a cinema restaurant for our lunch/dinner meal.  The food was the worst we ever had in a restaurant and the meal cost £30 or 60 New Zealand dollars. Zita is not feeling too good ( a mix of the food and exhaustion) so we get a taxi home for 4 pounds. The included breakfast is cereal and milk and some white bread and old margarine. No spreads, no fruit. We find some honey in a cupboard. Not a great first stay on tour. Hoping things get better. (They do!)

Just a note that I feel I need to make. Lots of the photos in this blog are of me. Not because I particularly like my photo being taken. But Zita does. And also Zita was the trip photographer while I was more obsessed (and distressed) with navigation. I much prefer photos of Zita.