LEJOG - Planes, Trains and...
...Bikes. That was the original movie title until they figured out that whatever way they upended John Candy, that he and Steve Martin were never going to get to Chicago in a snowstorm riding a tandem.
Today is day 1. I'm doing the shortest ride ever in the history of LEJOG. I will be meeting my old mucker London Alan and Kathryn at Lands End. It's gonna be a loop out of Penzance and back to the same Guest house I stayed at last night.
It's down to timing really. London Alan is in Newquay this week learning how to surf. To all intents and purposes he will resemble floating shark food for the next 3 days. He has quite pleasing tastes so is likely to be gobbled up by something salty. Kathryn though is flying down from Leeds and will arrive suitably coiffured at Land's End in a nice hire car to see me off at 5pm or so. Hence the short ride out as I didn't fancy a night ride in the dark with big hills and scrumpy drivers. I could have booked another guest house to avoid the embarrassment of returning to the same one but hey I'm a fat man on a bike so I don't do 'I'm embarrassed' any more..
Here I am departing York station carrying a small woman in my handlebar bag....
Next time I'm flying. Wot a bloody nightmare on the train yesterday. They say some things come in 3's and it just was not the Glasgow to Penzance train's day yesterday. Firstly trespassers on the line - delayed. Then a house on fire at the side of the line - even more delayed. Finally the train expired in the early afternoon heat (it was a glorious day yesterday) somewhere between Sheffield and that town with a wonky cathedral. Terminally delayed...
After a slow reverse back into Sheffield and as everyone had been encouraged in advance to get on the waiting train on platform 7, the rush of bodies hit it like a medium sized tsunami. The for sure now unemployed train guard should have said platform 8. LOL! I watched with eyes agog (can one have agog eyes?) as platform staff angrily tried to peel people and luggage and bikes out of corridors and off the roof of the wrong train.
Of course I was not part of that washout as me and the 5 bar gate (1) plus unhitched panniers and other bits were still struggling to get off the faulty one. My bike is a metal version of me and does not fit in the bike hanging letterboxes in coach D very well at all. Well, they do with a bit of determination, but that left me with the problem of folding an unfoldable bike to get the damn thing back out again.
But when I did I was the one, alone, on the faulty train's platform watching the melee unfurl on platform 7.
So imagine this. It's 5pm on a Friday at Kings Cross. The Edinburgh train is loaded to the gunwales. People are jabbering and gesticulating whether to get on the train or stay off. The platform guard is shouting at her non-customers that she is about to dispatch the train. It's hot and sweaty. Aircon has given up....
Bugger this I thought. I used the bike as a snow plough and got it and me half way on. People inside had wide eyes. The platform's little Hitler shouts in my face this train is leaving in 10 seconds! "Oh no it's bloody not.." I said with me and the 5 bar gate stuck half way out the door. "Try shutting that sucker!" pointing to the sliding door...
It's amazing how people can easily be made to scrunch up a bit more. Determination was written across my eyes and with a final push, like the Red Sea, the bodies parted and I was on. A fat blubbering wreck of a thing with two tons of metal bisecting the corridor. Really hoped that no-one wanted to use the toilet...
Overall it took 10 and a half hours to get to Penzance. Stunning countryside south west of Taunton. Horses (nah ponies?) everywhere around the bottom of Dartmoor. A mix of countryside that reminded me of some previous girlfriends: flat and boring, lumpy bumpy and rotund 'n' rolly. I've never had a mountainous girlfriend, you know the German type one needs to wear crampons with just to understand them. Plymouth station looked like a set of corrugated cowsheds but with lowered roofs. Similar was the city. The biggest landmark I saw was the council incinerator. I kinda understand why the Pilgrim Fathers left on the Mayflower...
The train crawled the last eighty or so miles like a lonely Monday late night stopper train somewhere in the Netherlands. I alighted the train onto an empty platform at 11pm. Somewhere between Exeter and the end of the line everyone else had got off. Apart from the train manager / guard / conductor (3 roles rolled into one) there I was all alone now with the problem of finding the guest house and getting in without disturbing the owner who for sure had gone to bed.
Tomorrow is the proper first day and the start at Lands End. Thank God that from here to the other end there's no more trains...
(1) 5 bar gate. Its a bike. A rather large unwieldy yet sturdy one resembling a 5 bar gate with tractor tyres at each end. Available at only the best fat man on a bike cycle shops and Massey Ferguson dealers...
Today is day 1. I'm doing the shortest ride ever in the history of LEJOG. I will be meeting my old mucker London Alan and Kathryn at Lands End. It's gonna be a loop out of Penzance and back to the same Guest house I stayed at last night.
It's down to timing really. London Alan is in Newquay this week learning how to surf. To all intents and purposes he will resemble floating shark food for the next 3 days. He has quite pleasing tastes so is likely to be gobbled up by something salty. Kathryn though is flying down from Leeds and will arrive suitably coiffured at Land's End in a nice hire car to see me off at 5pm or so. Hence the short ride out as I didn't fancy a night ride in the dark with big hills and scrumpy drivers. I could have booked another guest house to avoid the embarrassment of returning to the same one but hey I'm a fat man on a bike so I don't do 'I'm embarrassed' any more..
Here I am departing York station carrying a small woman in my handlebar bag....
Next time I'm flying. Wot a bloody nightmare on the train yesterday. They say some things come in 3's and it just was not the Glasgow to Penzance train's day yesterday. Firstly trespassers on the line - delayed. Then a house on fire at the side of the line - even more delayed. Finally the train expired in the early afternoon heat (it was a glorious day yesterday) somewhere between Sheffield and that town with a wonky cathedral. Terminally delayed...
After a slow reverse back into Sheffield and as everyone had been encouraged in advance to get on the waiting train on platform 7, the rush of bodies hit it like a medium sized tsunami. The for sure now unemployed train guard should have said platform 8. LOL! I watched with eyes agog (can one have agog eyes?) as platform staff angrily tried to peel people and luggage and bikes out of corridors and off the roof of the wrong train.
Of course I was not part of that washout as me and the 5 bar gate (1) plus unhitched panniers and other bits were still struggling to get off the faulty one. My bike is a metal version of me and does not fit in the bike hanging letterboxes in coach D very well at all. Well, they do with a bit of determination, but that left me with the problem of folding an unfoldable bike to get the damn thing back out again.
But when I did I was the one, alone, on the faulty train's platform watching the melee unfurl on platform 7.
So imagine this. It's 5pm on a Friday at Kings Cross. The Edinburgh train is loaded to the gunwales. People are jabbering and gesticulating whether to get on the train or stay off. The platform guard is shouting at her non-customers that she is about to dispatch the train. It's hot and sweaty. Aircon has given up....
Bugger this I thought. I used the bike as a snow plough and got it and me half way on. People inside had wide eyes. The platform's little Hitler shouts in my face this train is leaving in 10 seconds! "Oh no it's bloody not.." I said with me and the 5 bar gate stuck half way out the door. "Try shutting that sucker!" pointing to the sliding door...
It's amazing how people can easily be made to scrunch up a bit more. Determination was written across my eyes and with a final push, like the Red Sea, the bodies parted and I was on. A fat blubbering wreck of a thing with two tons of metal bisecting the corridor. Really hoped that no-one wanted to use the toilet...
Overall it took 10 and a half hours to get to Penzance. Stunning countryside south west of Taunton. Horses (nah ponies?) everywhere around the bottom of Dartmoor. A mix of countryside that reminded me of some previous girlfriends: flat and boring, lumpy bumpy and rotund 'n' rolly. I've never had a mountainous girlfriend, you know the German type one needs to wear crampons with just to understand them. Plymouth station looked like a set of corrugated cowsheds but with lowered roofs. Similar was the city. The biggest landmark I saw was the council incinerator. I kinda understand why the Pilgrim Fathers left on the Mayflower...
The train crawled the last eighty or so miles like a lonely Monday late night stopper train somewhere in the Netherlands. I alighted the train onto an empty platform at 11pm. Somewhere between Exeter and the end of the line everyone else had got off. Apart from the train manager / guard / conductor (3 roles rolled into one) there I was all alone now with the problem of finding the guest house and getting in without disturbing the owner who for sure had gone to bed.
Tomorrow is the proper first day and the start at Lands End. Thank God that from here to the other end there's no more trains...
(1) 5 bar gate. Its a bike. A rather large unwieldy yet sturdy one resembling a 5 bar gate with tractor tyres at each end. Available at only the best fat man on a bike cycle shops and Massey Ferguson dealers...
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