Choosing the Route

 Choosing the Route


As we found, there are many, many, many ways to get from Lands End to John O’Groats.  Once you start looking, the multitude of routes to choose from can be overwhelming.  Combine that with selecting towns to overnight in, places to stay within those towns, where to eat on the way and in the towns, and you’ll have so many decisions to make that you might just stay home!


There are a variety of tour operators who will help do some or all of the organisation for you, selecting the route, the places to stay, some of the places to eat, and sometimes will even carry your luggage for you!  Tours can be as short as 10 days and we’ve seen some up to 26 days.  


‘Ride your own ride’ is a good motto to go by.  Select the route, the locations, the distances and the organisation to suit you.  An organised ride set up by a tour company is just as good as a DIY adventure.  Some people camp along the way.  Have a think about the shape you’re in, how long you want to pedal each day, do you want to carry your gear or not, shoestring or push the boat out a little, then look at tours and DIY options.  At the time of this writing, the cost of a longer tour and DIY were fairly comparable.


We choose the DIY option for a variety of reasons.  We’ve done both the organised tours and the DIY trips and are very comfortable doing our own planning.  Steve is knows his way around England and Scotland, and is comfortable navigating in both places.  We like to go at our own pace and don’t mind the luggage.  We wouldn’t want to carry the gear for camping, we definitely do not want to be doing 75 mile plus days and tandems, in our experience, aren’t really fast.  We wanted a rest day once per week.


Choosing the route itself can be as unique as you want it to be.  We wanted fairly simple, on bike routes, which tend to be on the smaller, quieter roads.  After looking at various different options, we choose to follow the Sustrans route - Lands End to John O’Groats on the National Cycle Network - which although longer, focuses on the scenic rather than speedy journey.  We bought the book, which has the entire trip mapped out, towns to stay in and cycle routes to take.  One alteration was necessary as we wanted a midway (ish) break at home.  That was the only (intentional) change to the route.


Knowing the route, we could then do the accommodation…

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