LeJog, any advice?

When my wife did it years ago she said Cornwall and Devon almost made her quit but after that it got easier (and less brutally steep), and just had to manage the general wear and tear on her body rather than die on the uphill.

@ratherbeintobago Er, are you sure that you didn’t know? ?

@MrSparkle Ah yes, obviously slipped my mind. Knew about the crash, most days don’t remember what I had for breakfast…

Good news that she was able to get out and see the tandem pair though.

Ha ha! I’m much the same. And, yes, it is.

Don’t do it North to South “because it’s downhill”.

Don’t do it solo.

Don’t do it with a rucksack without checking you can ride with a helmet on, or you’ll end up carrying your helmet for 2 weeks completely pointlessly.

I second that comment about the industrial NW…my BiL, route organiser, happened to be working in that area at the time and he has a photographic memory for routes, so he spent a weekend recceying a route that avoided A roads and towns where possible.

I did RAB 7 years ago in absolutely awful weather. It was a great experience and really stress free with everything organised (like bike transport to and from start). I’ve done loads of cycling trips over the years and it was one of the best

I did RAB 7 years ago in absolutely awful weather. It was a great experience and really stress free with everything organised (like bike transport to and from start). I’ve done loads of cycling trips over the years and it was one of the best

2017? Yes, that was pretty biblical wasn’t it?! Cav rode a stage of it that – in the pissing rain out of Bath I seem to remember.

Hi

I did this 10 years ago. LEJOG direction, supposedly better for wind assistance!

Honestly, I couldn’t wait to get it over with. I’m delighted that I’ve done it and I still feel that people think that it is an achievement as such, but it is only really other cyclists that will understand what it feels like to get up and do 10 hours on a bike on that 9th/10th day.

My advice would be to give some serious consideration as to what your reasons for doing it are. If it’s a charity or a box-tick thing then your aims and methods are going to be very different to if you want any form of enjoyment from it.

Firstly for most people both Land’s End and John O’Groats are a hell of a long way from home. Factor in a day getting to the start, and back to the finish on top of the cycling days and decide if the total number of days is a worthwhile use of your annual leave.

In either direction the first and the last day are going to be the worst in terms of hills. If you haven’t been before both are an anti climax. Obviously at this point there is only one road out/in.

My advice would be to design a cycling touring type route which just happens to begin and end at Land’s End/John O’Groats and makes the most of the best cycling and the things to see along the route. I grew up in Cheshire so the route we took went past the end of my road, but by the end of the first day I’d ticked off Cornwall and didn’t go back for another 7 years. That seemed to set the tone for the rest of the trip, in that, you end up cycling past dozens of brown signs indicating fascinating things but don’t see anything other than the hedge next to you for most of the trip.

If you decide to ‘fix’ your stopping points along the route, do it for places you want to spend a couple of hours or see something, this will give you more pleasure and something to look forward to during the ride than dividing the total miles by the days and finding the closest accommodation. We stayed in some shitholes. Establishments and towns.

Choose your companions with care. Train. Don’t be the slowest. Have a practice run out a few months before. We did coast to coast in 3 days over the Easter and then the LEJOG at the end of May. Eat constantly, even when you don’t feel like it. Eat every 20 mins even after you’ve gorged yourself on the breakfast buffet. Eat something of a decent quality for lunch. Something that isn’t a carvery. Drink beer in the evening. 3/4 pints is the sweet spot between free calories and dehydration. Take ibuprofen with every meal and paracetamol every 4 hours whether you think you need it or not. Wear a mountain bike liner short under your padded bib shorts. Have a garmin, if only to count down the miles each day. Take photos even when you think you can’t be bothered

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the actual route you take with regard to the traffic. It’ll be a nightmare most of the way whichever way you go. In Cornwall and Devon you may as well stick to the dual carriageways, there is better visibility and the minor roads are steeper. Shap fell is a bitch. For me once you get over the Clyde it gets much better. Alongside Loch Lomond for a while it’s almost enjoyable. The road through Glen Coe is at least pretty. Once you get to Wick John O’Groats never seems to arrive.

Practically you can save a bit of time by staying in Penzance and doing the first bit as an out and back on day-1, and the neareast station at the other end is Georgemas rather than Wick or Thurso. If you don’t have a support crew sleeper trains are probably the way to cut out a lot of the travel hassle.

Otherwise it is surprisingly easy. It’s mainly a trudge rather than an adventure and the riding is not especially spectacular. But you should end up with a few stories.

http://pinkpinarello.blogspot.com/2015/08/

Our trip in 2015 as recorded by my SiL.  Some family references in there but a good sense of our experience.

@onetimeews – that’s a great summary – especially the ibuprofen and paracetamol advice! – my buddy described me as “rattling” by the time we finished the RAB, but at least I didn’t have any aches and pains!

Long time ago I was paid off and flew to Bilbao , this change my view of cycling in the UK.  Cycled back to Swindon, thats why i will never do LeJog . Done quite a few Spain and France end to ends. In Europe it’s a different culture and cyclists are treated as human beings.

Long time ago I was paid off and flew to Bilbao , this change my view of cycling in the UK. Cycled back to Swindon, thats why i will never do LeJog . Done quite a few Spain and France end to ends. In Europe it’s a different culture

I can see attraction of that, to be fair.

A friend has just retired and decided Lejog wasn’t as attractive as she thought. Last year she did France from the Channel to the Med, and she’s just finished Munich to Rome, which looks pretty amazing on her photos.

There seems to be a quite good route (that’s part of Eurovelo1) along the French Atlantic coast

onetimeews – that’s a great summary – especially the ibuprofen and paracetamol advice!

Where as for me,that is the polar opposite of my experience and sounds horrendous.

It reads like one those people that take up running ,find they hate it,but persist ,while at the same time banging on about how much they loathe it,then question why anybody would ever take up running.

Luckily we are all different.

My top tips would be.

Start early,finish early.

Eliminate as much faffing as possible.

Get comfortable with the distances.

Enjoy.

Don’t spend too much time on cafe stops.

Have your accomodation and food on the stops sorted out.

Make sure the bike and all your kit is prepped each night.

Enjoy

Cycling Uk forum linky https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=4562de98c831d2f62733e1c360a3b30a

I wanted to do something a bit diifferent so did the opposite diagonal, Dover to Durness (OK the pedants will say Cape Wrath is the top left, but that involves a ferry that only operates in good weather) which was good fun. It didn’t have the hilly start that you have with LeJoG.  We booked up travel lodges, premier inns etc well in adavnce so the rates were fairly reasonable.  Midges were a bit of an issue in Scotland, so take some repellant if you’re going in the midge season.

Are you doing it as a challenge or as enjoyment?  One of our group was a German colleague who abandoned (we had a support car) on the last day with only about 40 miles to go. I tried to persuade him to finish, but with teutonic logic he said that he was doing the ride for enjoyment and as it was raining he was no longer enjoying it…………….

Top tip – wash your shorts in the shower at the end of the day. Lay the wet shorts on a hotel towel, roll up the towel and shorts (a bit like a swiss roll) and wring it, this will get the shorts fairly dry, they’ll finish drying overnight on the radiator, ready for the morning.

Where as for me,that is the polar opposite of my experience and sounds horrendous

Yeah, me too. And judging from chatting to a lot of LEJOGers when I collected them in JoG, most seemed to really enjoy the experience, whether they’d taken 4 days or 14, camped or hotelled, ridden solo or as a group.

For those advocating French or Spanish end to ends or EV1, I’ve done EV1, Route Via de la Plata and a French Manche to Med. I found, these are not mutually exclusive with doing a LeJog… Riding on the Continent is fantastic. My chums and I did the Route des Grande Alpes a few weeks ago and it was both tough and brilliant. So much so, I’d happily do it again and it’s got me thinking of the 100 Cols… Different from the other routes mentioned but not betterer or worser.

LeJog is a particularly Brit cyclist thing to do and is bit of a milestone in any keen Brit cyclists career. Yes there’s other stuff out there but they’re not LeJog.

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the actual route you take with regard to the traffic. It’ll be a nightmare most of the way whichever way you go.

This just isn’t true. As many previous posters have pointed out, taking the fastest, most direct route won’t be a very enjoyable cycling experience, but if you have the time to take a slightly more roundabout path, you can do some really nice cycling between Lands End and John o’ Groats. Loch Lomond and Glencoe is one of the worst options for cycling north; great scenery, but the motor traffic on those roads will overshadow any enjoyment from the cycling. I’d even suggest that the coast road up through Wick is not the best way to get to the north coast. There are also some lovely roads up along the Welsh/English border.

The problem with LeJog will always be that you are constraining the start and end of your route with a couple of arbitrary geographical points, and for many people that will means some compromises for the cycling. I have never ridden LeJog as one event, but I have ridden all the way between the south coast and the north coast in various forms over the years, and there are a number of nice ways of doing that which avoid busy roads and major conurbations.

Drink beer in the evening. 3/4 pints is the sweet spot between free calories and dehydration. Take ibuprofen with every meal and paracetamol every 4 hours whether you think you need it or not.

No

My wife did the RAZ, she said the access to decent sleeping and food was great.  Also the daily access to physios and masseuses was great as well.  She worked for Deloitte at the time who were the title sponsor so only had to raise money rather than pay the full cost.
She said that doing it in a big organised way like this was much nicer than any so,owing missions she’d done in the past as everyone was friendly and like minded.

Said she’d not ride LEJOG again though!

Our (organised/sponsored) ride broke each day into 5 chunks of around 20km. We’d set off after breakfast (slower riders first), ride 20km to some layby or car park, snack, another 20km, snack, another 20km got us to lunch – usually a pub/cafe but one day it was a Buddhist monastery. After lunch, the slower riders would set off first again, another 20km for a snack stop and another 20km got us to.our overnight stop. None of it felt particularly pushed or pacy and it would often be different folk you’d be riding with as everyone went through their highs and lows.

The route was signposted for us, removing one potential delay reason.

^^^^ what about the other 38 miles though ? …

We were a mixed-ability group and completed it in 10 days at around 100 miles per day.

I wouldn’t do it as an organised event but then again, I wouldn’t do a Sportive etc. The only organised stuff I’ve done in the past few years are the Dunwich Dynamo in 2022 when there were very few entrants (wonder why…?) and Chase the Sun. Other than that, not interested as I prefer to paddle my own canoe. I did do the Fred but by pinching the GPX and otherwise going DIY.

We did it over 21 days. Minor roads in England, the Scottish roads were quiet.

No pressure and lots of stops.

I was worried it may put my wife off cycling but we were lucky with the weather so it did not.

The main hassle is start and finish logistics.

We hired a one way van to Lands End to start.

As many previous posters have pointed out, taking the fastest, most direct route won’t be a very enjoyable cycling experience, but if you have the time to take a slightly more roundabout path, you can do some really nice cycling between Lands End and John o’ Groats. Loch Lomond and Glencoe is one of the worst options for cycling north; great scenery, but the motor traffic on those roads will overshadow any enjoyment from the cycling. I’d even suggest that the coast road up through Wick is not the best way to get to the north coast. There are also some lovely roads up along the Welsh/English border.

100% this.

If you actually take some time and effort to plot the route carefully, you can get a surprising amount on quiet lanes and terrain such as old railway paths and similar traffic-free trails which are normally do-able on most road bikes. A few sections where you really do have to weave around a lot or accept that you’ll be on some busy roads. Notably crossing the Liverpool / Manchester / Leeds corridor, pretty much wherever you do it is going to involve some urban jungle or a LOT of wandering around on towpaths and highly variable Sustrans routes but otherwise it’s possible to do large swathes of it on really quite scenic roads.

@iainc – doh!

Of course I meant miles 🙂

n Cornwall and Devon you may as well stick to the dual carriageways, there is better visibility and the minor roads are steeper.

I disagreed with much of this post but this bit stood out. The minor roads through Cornwall and Devon were a delight on my tour. I followed the CTC route using the King Harry ferry, stayed at Golant then over Dartmoor to Exeter. You couldn’t pay me enough to ride on the A30.

You couldn’t pay me enough to ride on the A30.

The old A30 isn’t too bad and is a decent enough way of covering some mileage. Hardly any proper traffic uses it cos it’s all on the new A30 (the one that you really wouldn’t go anywhere near on a bike!)

But yes, I agree with you – Cornwall and Devon are stuffed with super quiet tiny little lanes which are wonderful to ride, if a tad steep in places!