Accommodation

 Accommodation

What we call ‘Big Adventures’ have always been part of our life together.  Our view is ‘do it now while you’re physically capable’, the time to sit in front of the TV is when you’re 90!  The Big Adventures began with motorbike tours, short and then longer as we became more comfortable with them.  The longest was 17 days from England across Europe to the Black Sea, in Romania just south of the Russian border.  We’ve done long distance cycling tours.  The days on both types of trips can be ‘challenging’ - hot, cold, rainy, windy, further than you think, harder than you think, losing our way - all sorts of challenges.  The ‘deal’ with these trips is that at the end of the day, we will stay in a decent hotel (clean, but doesn’t have to be pricey), we get cleaned up from the day, often have a nap, get changed and go out for a nice meal (meets our food criteria, but again doesn’t have to be pricey).  I’ve spent many days looking forward to our evening!

As our evenings are a big part of the trip for us, booking the accommodations for 40 different locations proved to be an interesting experience (which may be a good reason to go with a tour operator if you don’t like that kind of logistical exercise!).  The route involves a stop every night.  While there are companies which can organise the entire trip and carry your luggage, there can be constraints in terms of time and places to stay - you may have to go faster or slower than you might choose.  We found 10, 14 and 26 day tours, usually with no rest days.

Many people who cycle LEJOG are focused on getting the trip done in a short timeframe, 14 days for example, and if the trip is about getting from point A (Lands End) to point B (John O’Groats) and 90ish mile days are doable, that can work.  However, for us, this was an opportunity to tour a large portion of the UK in a way that we’d never been able to do before - up close and personal, if you will.  I, particularly, did not want to put in all that effort and be absolutely shattered at the end of each day.

As mentioned in The Route chapter, we went with the Sustrans Lands End to John O’Groats route on the National Cycle Network.  It consists of 28 ‘stages’ or days cycling.  We chose to add a rest day each week with a two-night stop and a two-day / three night break at our home midway through the trip.  With the pre-trip four night / five day Shakedown Pedal (discussed in a later chapter) this meant we needed places to stay in 40 different locations - a very interesting logistical challenge!

There are some things to keep in mind like rest days and getting to and from the start and end points of the trip.  On a solo bike, trains are a viable option and can eliminate two or more overnights.  Tandems don’t seem to be welcome on today’s trains, most of which no longer have luggage cars, so we rented vans on both ends and had two extra nights’ stays.  Not everyone wants or needs a pre-trip Shakedown Pedal covering a representative sample of the route - 5 consecutive days, hills, mileage - we (I) did.  Therefore, a big planning exercise, which in the end took quite a bit of time, but (given the wonders of the Internet) wasn’t that difficult.

For purposes of planning, there was some necessary criteria and the rules applied were:

• Stick to the route - all accommodation needed to be as close as possible to the centre of the end of day target town and as close as possible to the route itself.  No wandering 5 miles off into the countryside, even if a booking site said it was a lovely place to stay

• Bike storage - there needed to be a place to store the tandem which was not on the street or chained to a fence out front

• Free cancellation - stuff happens and being stuck with 40 days of non-refundable bookings would be an expensive proposition and was a bit more than we wanted to spend, if something changed

• Breakfast - having one meal a day included over the course of 40ish days was a big savings 

• Dinner - trying (where possible) to be at the centre of the day’s target town meant that we could walk to a restaurant in the evening.  The alternative, in more rural locations, was to book a place which had a restaurant on site.  Essentially, short walks, no taxis

Be aware!  I had initially thought that all booking sites had similar price points for the same hotel.  This was not the case and there were significant differences in prices and amenities for the same hotel from site to site, and even between the same site’s website and its own app!  Because there could be anywhere from a £10-30 difference in price, differences in cancellation fees and whether breakfast was included or not, at the time of this writing, I ended up checking Booking.com and the Booking.com app, Expedia.com and its app, Hotels.com, and also the direct websites for the accommodation.  The direct websites sometimes had the best deals, but not always.  My preference would have been to pick one booking site and use that for all the bookings, but saving an average of £20 per place booked was significant enough for me to make the extra effort.

Being as close to the route as possible at the end of the day was also important.  After climbing the notorious Cornwall hills and then having to pedal another five miles to a B&B (and then five miles back in the morning) was not something we wanted to deal with.  Pedaling a couple blocks off the route, taking a shower and having a stroll to dinner sounded like a good end to a long and / or hilly day.

And speaking of dinner, being in the centre or close to the centre of town made finding a restaurant easier and having an evening stroll to it a pleasure, rather than yet another ordeal at the end of a long day.  

Ensuring that there was a place to store the bike was critical for us.  Having a bike disappear on the third day of the trip, with all the disappointment and associated chaos / cost, was not something we wanted to deal with if we could help it.  Most places were happy to put our bike in their back garden, a storage shed, a garage, a function room, a luggage store or a secure parking lot.  B&Bs, guesthouses, small hotels had lots of flexibility in this, larger hotels in bigger cities often did not have any form of parking - although several were fine with putting the bike in their luggage or function room.

To get all of the accommodation booked, we mapped out each day on a calendar using the Sustrans route.  Knowing that, I was able to scroll through the different booking sites until I found the best price for an accommodation meeting the above criteria.  I would book it, print out the reservation and make any notations on the reservation (if breakfast was not included, for example).  All reservations for the first half of the trip went into a folder.  All reservations for the second half of the trip went into another folder waiting for us at our midway stop at home - paper doesn’t weigh that much.

This is not a job to be doing whilst watching Netflix or listening to a podcast or chatting on the phone.  Booking a hotel in the wrong town on the wrong date can be traumatic, and expensive!

Planning and booking accommodation for 40ish days was a good sized job, but if you want to customise your trip, as we did, it was necessary.  For us, having a rest day each week was important.

Key things to remember for accommodation:

• Book close to the route

• Storage for the bike

• Walking distance to dinner

• Preferably not at the top of a hill!

• Free cancellation

• Check and double-check and have someone else check your dates and what you’ve booked!