The Prologue

Following a change in life circumstances we purchased some basic hybrid bicycles to remain mobile as well as get some gentle exercise.  Over a period of time, as well as reading numerous travelogues, we started to become more interested in the cycle touring side of life.

We set of on our first camping trip and toured around the Suffolk area for 2 weeks, based in Felixstowe, getting used to living a basic lifestyle with what you could carry on a bicycle.  This proved to be something of a catalyst in our plans and we started to consider what we could do for a more personal experience, one to remember.  One that could enhance Lorraine's confidence at cycling and try to find the current limits of my reduced faculties without overdoing it.

To this end we needed to find lots of quiet roads & lanes combined with an easy going pace, not so easy to find as I looked around at the frenetic pace of life.  Scouring the web pages of Cycle Touring Club (CTC), Sustrans, Cycle Chat Cycling forums we developed an idea.  We would start at the top of Scotland, Lorraine's country of birth, and work our way South.  There are no fixed dates apart from the first day.  As we progress South we would slowly be getting closer to home so if anything was to go wrong, or my brain tripped out, it shouldn't be to greater a problem.

At the same time we learned more about different types of bike design.  We found a local bike shop, Transition cycles, where the actually staff listened to what we wanted to do and sorted out the kind of bicycle that would fit within our budget.

Well that was the easy bit, now we had to find the quiet route we needed.  Looking through the forums gave us a wealth of information, and well as pointing out the pitfalls of certain roads and areas that may well be best avoided.  In fact so much of what we wanted as well as needed to know had already been asked before by others.  Using the recommended road atlas for the UK, Sustrans and Google mapping we identified the back roads, lanes and even canal tow-paths we could make use of to ease our way down the country.

It all sounds simple but has taken me almost a year to complete and put marks on our map.  Quite often other things would take priority but mainly it was me, I had to back out of it all to offload my brain and clear my head.  Finally we got the marks we wanted on the map.  So we will follow these marks, visit some places on the en-route, and take time out if we need to, we will just have to see how far we get. You never know, and we certainly don't, but we may just end up at the bottom end of the country.

The one thing I did forget in all of this was to set up a blog to record the trip.  So here it is, better late than never.  We will try to update daily but as we intend to cycle tour and camp along the way power will be at a premium. If we get caught out we will update as soon as we can.