Which way round?
It's generally the question that I'm asked most; roughly two minutes after being told about the project. Once you've absorbed the 3,000 miles by someone who's not an especially good cyclist; for whatever reason it seems to be the next thought that enters the head.
The answer is clockwise. From Leicester, I head east to King’s Lynn (stopping off in Peterborough en route). I then continue to Norwich and Great Yarmouth and carry on round. Why clockwise? Well, I don’t really know. John S (see itinerary; Week 2) assigns it to a deep-rooted human need for order; and following the directions of the hands of a clock is apparently orderly. Hmmm maybe.
I did consider climate. The biggest enemy of cyclists (well maybe not the biggest but certainly a foe) is wind. Generally the prevailing wind across the UK is diagonally from the South West. Given that the southern coast of England is a heck of a lot wider than the northern coast of Scotland, that would suggest I’m choosing the option with less wind at my back. On the other hand, I’m banking on some strong tailwinds to whoosh me up from Truro to the Isle of Skye. To be honest, having considered climate I couldn’t work out what was for the best.
Obviously it makes sense to choose a direction and then to stick to it so, for no particular reason, it’s clockwise.
Why not Ireland?
Another good question. Samaritans operates, of sorts, throughout the world but Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are very much part of what I would call our national movement. I would have loved to have headed on from the Isle of Man to Dublin and then do a circuit of the Emerald Isle before returning to Liverpool.
The reason I’m not doing so is lack of time. It would add nearly another fortnight to the trip which would leave little time at the end of the journey for recuperation and spending some quality time with my family before the sabbatical ended. I already feel what I am doing is incredibly selfish; I simply can’t make it even more so.
So my apologies to the many good people of (in no particular order) Dublin, Bangor & North Down, Derry, Coleraine, Ballymena, Omagh, Craigavon, Belfast, Newry, Sligo, Drogheda, Galway, Athlone, Ennis, Newbridge, Limerick, Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork and Kerry (Tralee).
Also, it gives Shem and me something to plan for a summer holiday in a few year’s time!
The route
Selecting the exact route, though time-consuming, has hardly been scientific. Using the AA large scale road atlas of Britain I’ve tried to find the quietest-looking roads from one branch to the next, without incurring massive detours. So I’ve successfully avoided most dual carriageways as well as many of the green A roads. What this map book does not tell me so well is steep gradients so for all I know I could be saving myself a single mile and negotiating a ludicrously steep hill. But I reason that this is all part of the adventure and my Galaxy has some pretty low gears should the need arise. For details of roughly where I plan to be from one day to the next, see the detailed itinerary.