it's adventure time again!

i've been quite on the blog with this years adventure, mainly due to laziness, but many of you will have heard plenty about it already.

the back story: 

october: i got myself a shiny new road bike on the cycle to work scheme, nothing too fancy, but much nicer than the hand me down i'd been riding. it occurred to me that it'd probably be good enough to do some serious riding on, lands end to john o'groats for instance. but that that would probably be a few years off.

april: talking to em about what we were gonna do this summer, she mentioned that her achillies tendons were still playing up. 

j: 'can you ride a bike though?'

e: 'the doctor says i can...'

j: 'get yourself a bike then, well do the end to end'

e: 'ok'

so em got a bike, and luckily loved it, and within a week we had a whole set of hostels and bnbs booked and i'd plotted a, it turned out, first draft of a route.

we've adjusted much of the initial plan as advice and research dictated, and maybe not done quite as much training as necessary. 

(well, em has done quite a bit, i on the other had got distracted by sailing, purchasing and learning to ride a motorcycle, weddings and dreams of one day starting some sort of floristry business)

so now we find ourself in a rented oversized fiat 500, with 2 bikes in the back, on a 700 odd mile road trip to john o'groats so that we can cycle just over 1000 miles down to the other end of the country.

the plan is to ride it over 10,and a long half, days. which should be a doddle, right?

as always if you fancy encouraging our impulsive and foolhardy natures, there's a justgiving page (http://www.justgiving.com/embatt) where you can show your support with many (or a few) pennies! alternatively support us with lots of words of encouragement/derision below...