The Route

Hello : )

I have just finished the route and here is a quick google maps version of it. These are not all the final roads but its the general direction town to town.

I had to put it in a tiny URL as the google one was really long.  http://tinyurl.com/JOGLE

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements or places that are nice, if so please leave a comment or a an email :P

Ciao

Isaac

New equipment :)

Having just finished all my January exams, I decided to treat myself and get some new equipment for my bike. I have gone a bit overboard spending around £200 but I cant wait for it all to arrive. 

The bike shop in my town is poorly stocked and the people there are more knowledgable of mountain bikes etc.

Because of this I cycled to their other shop about a 30 mile round trip before work and got loads of stuff. I have now ordered a Pannier rack, a cycling computer, some carbon soled cycling shoes and peddles with the cleats, a mud guard and I found a small one man tent in an outdoors shop.

 I did have some cash on me at the time so I bought some over shoe's, it makes such a difference and I could really notice how warm my feet were cycling home :P. 

In a few weeks its the half-term holidays so I am planning few larger trips, the first of which is from Adlington where Im going to visit some family then cycle back to Mid Wales. Its about 120 miles and should be great fun. I will get the train there and cycle back which is what I did for the cross wales trip.

The second trip in the pipeline is cycling to Snowdonia and back with my friend Rhys. I am really looking foreword to both of these.

As for the John O' Groats - Land's End trip, planning came to a halt during exams but I hope to be setting dates within a few weeks and then we start to book train tickets :P.

Training wise, Rhys and I have been getting up at stupid times in the morning, as early as 5:30 and doing 15-25 miles before school every other day. I am also continuing to cycle everywhere, to sixthform, work etc and am still doing my 30-60 mile trips twice at the weekend. 

I set my record in distance last weekend making 62.4 miles in 4 1/2 hours over some huge hills. I was so pleased but so tired too and had work 2 hours after I got back.

I will have more pictures up soon and the specific info about the stuff I have bought

Ciao

Aberystwyth to the hills

Here are the pictures of aberystwth to about 11 miles in at the top of a huge hill. 8 of those 11 miles are a nasty hill and it was hard going. The hail became quite bad at this points which led to bad flooding on the road with streams of water going down the hill. 

training day 1 & 2

For the last two days, I have been training by doing some short bike rides of around 25 miles around my house and I have discovered some great roads for cycling. I have tried out two types of bikes, first a mountain bike and secondly a road bike and I have decided from this experience to get a road bike for the big trip next year. Above are some pictures of both trips and some video of me on the road bike, I black taped the camera to the handle bars and it worked well.

I have also bought some equipment for my training, I bought a new helmet from Argos of £7.97 which is a bargin considering I budgeted for £25 on the helmet. I have also bought some cheap lights which do the job but I will need new ones for the big trip and I also bought some fox cycling gloves from my local bike shop for £25 which is quite alot but they were worth it, my hands are not sore at all.