“We should bike across the UK. The full UK.”

“Just think of how many pints we could have with the locals.”

“Would the locals want to have a pint with... a cyclist?

“Do you even know how to ride a bicycle? ”

So the the plan was set: bike across the entire United Kingdom, from Land’s End to John O’Groats, by bicycle.  Bike nearly 1,000 miles in just about 9 days. Simple enough.

Only two problems:

1. None of us owned a bicycle.
2. None of us had biked ever more than 10 miles in a day.

Somehow, the trip proved to be a success. We biked through quiet countryside and raced through the busiest streets in London. We tackled unbelievably steep mountains and coasted down into wide gentle valleys. Stranded one night in the stormy dark, scientologists took us into their castle. We biked in the rain, in the sun, in the cold, in the wind, in the daytime, and in the dark. We met all manner of friendly and unfriendly and dubiously friendly locals (and Mark Kermode). We broke a toilet in Dulverton and narrowly escaped the Beast of Exmoor at a gas station. We found Birmingham and its surroundings so shite that we hopped on a train to skip all of it. We confirmed the global stereotype that most of British cuisine is not fit for human consumption. In Scotland, we braved the strongest windstorm of the past century (with gusts over 100 miles per hour). And, in the end, we made it to John O’Groats for one final boooooosh!

That is the best recap we are able to give in just a few words. We would recommend LEJOG to anyone who is interested. We would not recommend you research too much in advance, nor that you follow anybody’s specific route. Instead, you should simply get a bike and go.

If you would like to learn more about our trip in any way, you can watch a video of it here. You can read a more detailed day-by-day recap here. And you can see the route here.