I have heard it said that retrospection is the sport of the aged and infirm.  So here goes.

It all started around 2010, prompted by Pippa Jones who had a lot of experience of getting people to do things outside their comfort zone.  She got me into pedalling by making me go on tour with her lady friends, with whom I could sometimes keep up.  Our first rides were from:

• Shrewsbury to Barmouth, where I set off at 6:00pm, 8 hours behind the others, getting to Bala just before closing time on my ancient road bike which was soon deemed not fit for touring; 

• Shrewsbury to Cheltenham (so that Pippa could go to the opera) on my old mountain bike, which was so uncomfortable on the rear end that it nearly got binned as soon as we arrived; 


• Walney to Wearside, my first coast-to-coast, by which time I’d bought a half-decent road bike (and had my first experience with cleats that caused a lot of chaos as well as amusement).

We had some adventures on these trips, during which Den (Pippa’s partner) and I developed plans for a trip on Hadrian’s Way, from Ravenglass to Newcastle.  That was in 2016 and it was such a lot of fun that we decided to do something in Cornwall, starting in Land’s End.  Jokingly I said that this would be the first in a series, thinking that one day we might make it to John O’Groats.  Only later did we decide we wanted to do it round the coast, and later still we decided we wanted to go all the way round.  We've now done a fair proportion of both the British and Irish coastline, but we still have some way to go, and our further adventures will be recorded here in due course.

Rhyming