Postlude

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Day 1 - Lands End to Redruth

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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...
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Day 15 - Penrith to Gretna Green

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Day 15 –  Penrith to Gretna Green We leave around 9:00 am. The hostel stay here has been great.   It is a quiet, sunny and cool Sunday morning. Churches have cars parked in front of them. They are busy enough. We are slightly confused for a few minutes on our route so things feel normal. Then we're off -  route found. Nice gentle riding with a few ups and downs.   We climb up a bit to 230 metres. Then it is generally downhill. We come across a completely delightful house beside our quiet path. We have a chat with couple who are working in their beautiful garden. They tell us about their house and show us more garden around the back.    They voted stay(no Brexit). As did everyone we talk to if the topic comes up. We find there are defibrillators everywhere. Even small towns have several on display. Including in old phone boxes. This is reassuring on some of the more taxing climbs. Below - This was probably the only phone box we saw...
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Day 17 - Abington to Glasgow

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Day 17 -  Abington to Glasgow  I often describe our route – both in these notes and other places as the “long, slow, hilly, scenic, interesting, safe” route from Lands End to John O’Groats. This is because I have some sensitivity about the route. Our distances are not huge each day. But our days are still demanding. People often do the distance from one end to the other of the UK in 10 days. BUT – not on the route we are on. On organised tours all accommodation is pre-organised. Gear is carried for you. Few if any route finding issues. Better roads, road surfaces, less up and down, mechanical support.and also the route is more direct and quite a bit shorter. But that is not our trip. It is really like we are in a different world. We also met people who are doing the trip unsupported – but still staying on busyier roads so travelling faster and more directly. We met hardly anyone on the whole trip who was doing our Sustrans scenic route.   I was occasionally irri...
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