clairedavieswriter

Today I finally bade farewell to the Devon hills and their Cornish cousins, but not before they’d had the last laugh, with a rookie error involving insufficient forward momentum and feet attached to pedals. Luckily, the high earth bank beside the road (see below, assuming the right photo appears) meant I didn’t topple too far,…

A massive thank you to everyone who has supported me on this adventure so far. If you haven’t yet and would like to, you can do so via JustGiving.com at clairedavieslejog.

Having made it through the first week, I’m now sitting in Miranda’s beautiful garden, nestled in Exmoor National Park, with warm sun on my back and birds twittering all around – the perfect way to spend a day off the bike. Inevitably though, I’m already thinking about tomorrow’s 98k ride, one that I clearly planned…

Today was all about getting up and over Exmoor. That meant climbing from 0 to 500m above sea level over a distance of 30k, before descending again. The first 10k gave me a fairly good sense of what the next few hours had in store. In a particularly cruel topographical twist, having reached 300m at…

Every picture tells a story. Today was wet. Like the Inuit and her snow, the cyclist has a number of terms for rain, starting with ‘not very nice’ and escalating through ‘a bit damp’ to ‘are we having fun yet?’. Today was definitely a ‘fun yet?’ kind of a day. In fact it was quite…

Today started as yesterday ended: following the Camel upstream. Despite the rain, I didn’t get the hump. The trail’s railway heritage showed us the way: I passed the usual joggers and dog walkers (no doggers, as far as I could tell – see earlier blog if that comment seems perplexing) but no cycle tourers, let…

An important omission from the day 3 blog: yesterday my sponsorship total passed £1,000, so I wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported me so far – with your help, I’m making fantastic progress towards my target, and it’s definitely helping to keep the pedals turning

There are some snacks that no true cyclist should ever be without. And if your banana is too big for your bar bag then you find another way. Webbo joined me for the first few miles – strangely the hills got steeper after that but I’m sure that’s not the reason she turned back. There…

Today was a glorious day of cycling. Starting before 8 to avoid the heat, I shared the South Coast path from Penzance to Marazion with joggers, dog walkers and wild swimmers returning home invigorated from their morning dip. Heading inland, I parted clouds of swallows gathered on the road, preparing to head south. At 10k…

I had thought that the famous Land’s End signpost was a public thing that anyone could bowl up to and have their picture taken in front of. How naive! Turns out it’s a commercial operation, run by the same family since 1957. For a fee, they take a photo and let you put your own…