Begging Letters!

A lot of the weekend was spent with a combination of route planning and writing begging letters, when not playing Taxi Driver to my children. Anyone with teenage children will know what its like, unfortunately there is no one to share the task with, when they come to stay with me every other weekend. The only problem being my Daughter is into Horses and works at livery yard whilst studying this means some very early starts. My Son on the other hand is mad keen on Golf and whilst I used to have a pretty low handicap (5) he is going to be way better than me but it does mean he is at the course and range from dawn till dusk at times, especially last weekend when he had a tee time at 8.00 and he wanted to be there 45 mins before to warm up. Now that wouldn’t be too bad, but the destinations are both about 10 mile away and whilst not in opposite directions, they are certainly not the same. Then at the end of the day the reverse is required. I timed it out one week and it was nearly 4 hours of my day spent running them about on the upside we do tend to have good conversations whilst driving around, I’ve banned their iPods in the car, I got fed up of the silence in response to questions or grunts.

The route planning is moving on at a pace the first book of 100 pages of route is now complete and it takes me from Calshot to a place call Halton Quay in Cornwall, quite close to St Mellion That has taken me the best part of 20hrs to do that work. Print the pages off, check and trace out the route, then double check that some suspect parts are actually legal to ride. As I have said previously I will use the closest legal highway or byway to the coast at all possible times. You will also see from the picture below, there is a question over the definition of coastline and I have chosen not to cheat, so I will trace out the tidal estuaries a closely as I can.


I thought I was doing really well until I had a look at a map of the UK, and it just went to show how far this really is. I’ve worked out by my calculations it will take me approx 3 days, 6-8 hours a day riding to get down to St Mellion. By following all these routes as closely as possible, given some of the roads I will be on and how twisty they are I reckon my average speed will be less than 30 miles an hour, taking into account stops and comfort breaks etc.

I have had a quick look at some of the other sections and thankfully there are long stretches were the main A road is the closest to the coast and I will be able to pick up some speed, in fact most of the North Cornish Coast from Land’s End upwards is covered by major highways, the only problem would normally be traffic, however I am planning to do these sections early in the year, well outside the main holiday season, so I should be okay there.


I starting off calling this piece ‘Begging Letters’ well I’ve had my first response, one from Ordnance Survey, giving me bad news. Something I expect from most of them, however ‘if you don’t make the call, you won’t make the Sale!’ They were very pleasant but basically stated that their sponsorship budget for the year was already committed. Still haven’t heard back from Wightlink Ferries yet and they were the first ones I got in touch with.

To be honest whatever I get is a bonus, I just want to reduce my costs and in turn the level of support Mayflex are giving, they are being very good and flexible in allowing me to do this. Churlish as it may sound, a lot of organisations wouldn’t even think about supporting one of their employees to do this never mind, provide the support of the Marketing Team to get it off the ground, quite frankly without them I would not be as advanced in the planning or have the whole challenge looking as professional as it does.

Okay Guys, I know you’ll be reading this and I am not creeping, I really do appreciate the help!

Well for another week I need to sign off and get back to some real work. Hopefully the weather will be better next weekend and I can get the bike out of the Garage and I can take some photos of the work I have been doing. That is if we haven’t floated off by then, the flooding in the lanes round by me, threatened to cut the village off today, it certainly stranded our Postman, whose van conked out in the middle of a flood.

Take care and as Mick says ‘Hey up, Father!’