day 2

This has to be short as I'm being eaten alive by midges and outside is the only place with any signal. Today was tough, 129 miles of the Scottish highlands, from the east coast to the west. My knees are knackered, I can hardly pedal uphill and Green had some dodgy prawns and it gave him the squits. Glad we made it, tomorrow is another monster though...

Chris

Day 2, Day 1 of riding

TODAY WAS RUBBISH! Rain, wind and me complaining for 106 miles. Scotland is too big. Had lunch at Simply The Best chippy, the polish guy who served us really wanted everyone to have a bag. No-one did. Gutted.

Tonight we're staying in a castle.

Attempt number 2...

So the last post didn't work and took ages to type out on my phone, so this will be short cus I'm tired! Long story short - we're here! There were fun and games on the way up, car crashes, our car broke, but thanks to JR we made it in one piece. Green mostly slept and I mostly broke the car by accident. The end

Chris

Also...

before I forget, thanks so much to everyone who's donated on our Just Giving page so far. We've just passed the £600 mark today, so thank you for your generosity. It means so much!

And the more you donate, the faster we'll peddle! The bus doesn't stand a chance (sorry Alan!)

Chris

The night before the night before...

Well tonight is going well, I've already realised that I've left some shorts and a jersey at work and I've got no car or keys to get back there. I'm great really.

Green should be round soon, then off to Asda to stock up on supplies and other stuff we probably won't need or I'll forget about and leave here in the flat.

Champion.

More soon, I bet you can hardly wait.

Chris

Training ride to Malvern from Wolves. In a word; Hilly.

So, yesterday myself and the machine that answers to the name James Green, completed a training ride to the rather posh place that is Malvern. Not the sort of place you'd expect to find a street called "Cockshot Road", but it's there. Nice.

The ride there was fairly quick, bang on 2 hours and 8 minutes, according to my trip computer. There had been a few climbs on the way there, but nothing major. So we stopped for food and decided on the route home. The thing about using Google Maps is it's all just a load of lines on a screen, it doesn't say that there's a man eater of a climb on your chosen route. Well there was and it hated me. Stupid hill.

I've since found out that this hill is called Ankerdine Hill (which kinda rhymes with what I was calling it halfway up) and it was part of the Tour of Britain route in 2007. There's a video on youtube of the climb, viewed from the bars of someone taking part in a time trial up the hill. It's here if you want to see what it's like. It made me realise that I need to really up my training on steep stuff like this, as it really sapped all my strength for the rest of the ride home. Every hill seemed like a mountain after that.

So, more training tomorrow night, nothing as challenging as Ankerdine though.

Nice one to Green for waiting at the top for me, I'm pretty sure he got up there in a fraction of the time I did!

Cheers, Chris.

Give us your cash!

We have a page set up to accept your donations here - www.justgiving.com/bike-vs-bus, the pledges are already rolling in, so thanks to those who have already given. As for the rest of you - what are you waiting for?!

Cheers

Chris