Welcome to March....here are some words I wrote a little while ago...lets travel back in time......

Christmas for me is usually some time off work to spend with family and friends, I'm a little too old to get too excited about receiving gifts (unless its lego of course...), and staying up late on New Years eve isn't really my bag either, but what I really love about that time of year is the ability to reset, recharge and start to plan for the year ahead.

With a few days off after Christmas this is exactly what I started to do, a family holiday and of course some thoughts on where I might want to cycle to next. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog I am really keen to stitch together a ride from Lands End to my home, and also a ride between Liverpool and John O' Groats to allow a sense of achievement that I will have ridden from one end of the UK to the other......and yes I fully appreciate it will be in three sections over the course of a few months. If I was a little more time rich this would be one adventure rather than three smaller adventures, but I don't have the luxury of time currently, but I'm more than happy with the opportunities I have.

So plan A is on the horizon; at the end of March 2023 I plan to get the train to Penzance (with the bike of course) and then cycle from Lands End back to my neck of the woods over 4 days. Having had a good few months to reflect on the earlier Liverpool adventure I am really keen to do a little less mileage each day to ensure I have the opportunity to enjoy the ride a little more, and of course this adventure will rely heavily on my old friends Satnav and Buble. Only for info this ride looks to be around 230 or so miles in length and encounter around 5700 metres of elevation!

Before we get to plan A I also intend to cycle around the Isle of Wight in a day, tagging on a cycle to and from Lymington to catch the ferry across the Solent. I'm currently trying to get as much cycling in as possible to get my fitness back up again for these rides. The Isle of Wight challenge I have set myself will be around 90 miles of cycling ...... and I'm not sure my body is quite ready for that , yet!

Plan B (maybe I should have numbered them?) will be to get a train up to Wick in the north east corner of Scotland, again with the bike, to then head a little further up to John O'Groats (the most north easterly point of mainland Great Britain) and Dunnets Head (the most northerly point of mainland Great Britain). John O'Groats is also the furthest point away from Lands End on mainland Great Britain. The plan will be to then cycle south to Liverpool over a 7 or 8 day period; approximately 550 miles of cycling and 9000 or so metres of elevation.

I don't want to scare myself, the elevation is a combination of uphill and free wheeling back down again and obviously not in one climb, but for reference Everest is around 8849 metres so its a fair bit of climbing!

This ride will end with some time back in Liverpool with my lovely wife Jan and the extended family, which will be a perfect recovery setting and a chance to spend time with really lovely family members.

But the planning hasn't ended there. Inspired by more time watching other peoples adventures on Youtube , a couple of cycling books I received at Christmas and a tiny idea whilst out on a post Christmas cycle ride I am at a very early stage of planning Plan C.

Striking the balance between a desire to push myself physically, see as much of planet earth as possible, coordinate this if possible with spending time with family and friends and lastly not having a huge amount of free time I have a cunning plan which might just work.

A ferry can take the bike and I across to Bilbao in northern Spain, from where I could cycle up the western, Atlantic coast of France to meet my lovely (and very understanding) wife Jan and catch up with friends of ours in north western France (in part to recover once again). Its a ride of around 550 miles and similar elevation to the Lands End plans.....and from what I have seen online its an incredibly beautiful route taking in the Eurovelo 1 cycle route.

Now its fair to say that these are, as I type, plans for what I intend to try and achieve this year. I'm sure that these plans are akin to some form of wanderlust, the desire to travel. What they aren't is a desire to avoid sending time with my wonderful wife (although I'm not sure Jan is likely to want to join me on these adventures on her own bike.....) but the physical and mental challenge, time to unwind from the stresses that work and life can throw at us all, and the ability to explore the world are really powerful draws to making more and more plans, but more importantly in actually making the plans happen.

For the Lands End route, Plan A, accommodation and train tickets have been booked (simple B & B will be the basis of a good nights sleep), but as I have vaguely alluded to in an earlier blog Plan B will involve somee wild camping, and maybe Plan C will do as well. I'm using the phrase wild camping with very little experience, but as with every other element of my cycling journey over the past 12 months or so, learning how to take on new challenges and then putting the learning into practise is absolutely core to why I have fallen into the cycling way of life.

It might not be the most glamorous of ways to enjoy the world, but it is likely to be an opportunity to travel further, explore more widely and remove some of the unnecessary elements of our modern day life, stripping things back to a more basic way of living, and I can't wait for my first night setting up camp, cooking some dinner in the wild and knowing I am influencing almost every decision I need to, and will be making!