Day 5 of our Land’s End to John o’ Groats (LEJOG) UK End to End Cycle. Passing through three counties, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and our home county of Leicestershire. Covering over 87 miles of saddle sores and then…
my bike broke.
Come and join the journey, like and subscribe for daily updates on our LEJOG progress!: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnyE1CB1xCWr6XxRD1HJ9PA
LEJOG Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD-cKkU0eHLaXBHsPYNWq0-Drd68rES0o&si=xnNBX9NTnFEqLcEV
Videos In the Series:
Day 0 – https://youtu.be/4dHUztVhIbk
Day 1 – https://youtu.be/C0JIW0QtitI
Day 2 – https://youtu.be/NauoaOiWAWU
Day 3 – https://youtu.be/UHbL5xe7ypE
Day 4 – https://youtu.be/XNzKemcJhfA
Day 5 – https://youtu.be/885bxTJa5EQ
Day 6 – https://youtu.be/WRia2p_rz7k
Day 7 – https://youtu.be/ChQRaPi1Rbk
Day 8 – https://youtu.be/zwUJ63ClEDYDay
Day 9 – https://youtu.be/j2amRmDOx8g
Day 10 – https://youtu.be/04omxn8pTsE
Day 11 – https://youtu.be/Pbii7UVVshw
Day 12 – https://youtu.be/9WK5bcglSJQ
Day 13 – https://youtu.be/wUtM_4tmjAE
Day 14 – https://youtu.be/Sf7dpKvH3s0
#lejog #cycletour #cycling #midlands
Morning. This is day five and we are heading home which is going to be another 88 milesi. It doesn’t look as though it’s going to be quite as sunny today which is probably a good thing. Not exactly quite what I had in mind when I thought about doing lanzone and the john walking due to closed roads. The ride this morning was actually okay. It was quite nice. I I enjoyed Chelnham surprisingly cuz it’s nice town and it was really quiet roads. Um yeah, they got lots of um cycle paths as well when you get through it. So it is actually very well set up for cycling. So it wasn’t you didn’t feel as though you’re going to die cycling through there. Um then we hit another road closed thing. We may not be able to get through it yet like every day is which road is going to be closed. Um, this one was only closed to cars, not to cyclists or pedestrians, but it was cyclist dismounting war. Cyclist dismount because they’ve only got like a really narrow thing, so it makes it even harder to get through. Uh, and it went on forever. So, I’ll throw a clip up, but it this thing went on forever and we lost about 20 minutes there, didn’t it? Easy. Looking at the sign over there, I shouldn’t complain as it says, uh, thanks for your patience while we work on the next section of the GlTS cycle spine. So this is all for cyclists. Then other than that it was fine until where was the or what was the first or lemington spar was pretty pretty pretty rough. War war and lington spar that was a little bit less fun and then we’re kind of in the midlands which was even but before that of course you had the cotsworlds which really pretty of course. Yeah the cot villages and yeah you can’t go wrong with the cotsworlds. Um, as far as cycling, nice and easy, nor quite rolling, not nothing too traumatic. Um, that was really nice. Yeah. Um, but yeah, then into the Midlands into Warick and that was is is what it is, but the wind picked up um quite heavily to was it 30 of 38 38 gusts, 20 standard. 20. Yeah. And mostly headwinds and we didn’t need that. And um yeah, so I should say so distance wise today was around about 88. I haven’t actually checked my phone yet. It’s been too chaotic since we got back. Um 88 mi and yeah, I’ll throw up the rest of the stats cuz don’t know what they are. Um but um it wasn’t too much elevation. It’s 2,000. No. No. So I mean other than legs feeling really painful this morning. Um once you get cycling that kind of disappears. Bum is sore but that’s bum is sore from just being sat down for the amount of time that you’re doing it. It’s it’s with soreness of the butt. I would say liken it to exactly the same as hiking. So if you go like multi-day hikes and your feet start aching. That ache doesn’t stop the next day. You just carry on. And that’s the same with the butt. It’s not a showstopper. It’s just not the most pleasant thing in the world. Um and I don’t think you harden up to it. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s like it’s like you when you’re walking and you got walking boots, your feet don’t harden up. They just hurt. They just hurt. Yeah. I mean, I’m finding it’s more the skin issues with Well, in the saddle region, it’s just skin being chafed over and over and you use the cream of course, but it’s can only go so far. Yeah. Well, obviously. Yeah. Cuz if you end up putting on too much cream, then you end up with um kind of nappy rash really. That’s the problem. She’s sweating a lot as well. Sweating as well. But yeah, all that aside, um we then got back into local area through market Bosworth. Started raining um but only like general general splitting so it wasn’t too much of a drama. And then we got literally right up to the house and I bought some new fenders, mud guards for the bikes. Obviously yesterday they went sideways. So I thought I’d just change down the gears. forgot that my bike likes to throw down. Back wheel locked up entirely, snapped out two spokes, uh, damaged the chain and locked the wheel so bad that I’ve literally taken off short marathon plus tire all the way down to the blue layer underneath that you see in the photographs, but you never expect to see in real life. So, bike is now unusable. Um, so I’ve just spent this afternoon or we got back at 7:30. We’re now 10:30. We’re coming up to 11:00. And I’ve been trying to work out what to do. Can I buy another bike? Can I buy a secondhand bike? It’s impossible. Everywhere seems to be sold out of bikes. Nobody seems to stock wheels. Um, I mean, they do, but not not where we live. We live in middle of nowhere in Leicester. So regardless of what I do, I’m going to have to drive away. So what I’m using is I’m I’ve taken the wheel that I retired off your old bike, the 25y old wheel, tred it to a little bit better than it was. So it’s it’s not perfect. It’s still going to be millimeter here and there. Gone online and ordered another Marathon Plus tire and a new chain to be collected tomorrow morning at 9:00. We see what tomorrow brings. I’ll throw you a few more clips of the day and then I’m going to take you down to the uh shed for one of a better term to uh show you the state of the bike and uh give you a bit of a visual of what’s what and where’s where. Right. So this is the chaos that is my shed gym come whatever. That’s the mud guards that I’m trying to put together. Hopefully they’ll come together at some point in time. This is the rear rebuilt old 22,000 uh wheel um which will hopefully do the job. Time will tell. And this is the state of the one from earlier when I did and break safe. We got two spokes gone completely. It will be resalvageable. I’m going to just going to have to put in a brand new load. I mean, the ones that are actually in here are so battered. I don’t know if you can see it. The writing in here isn’t particularly good. It’s just too risky to actually use. What’s that? I don’t have enough spokes to replace what’s there. Anyway, in other news, one thing I didn’t mention, um, my bike fell over while I was taking a leak earlier, and the premium lens guards that I have on my X4 also got scratched. So, that’s another addition to stuff going on today. So, let me see if I can get these mud guards on. They look really comp complicated, so I’m not actually going to bore you with it. And let’s hope tomorrow is a better