Lands End to John o'Groats Unicycle Record

End to end by unicycle in 6 days, 8 hours and 43 minutes. Job done!

Our last day was stunningly beatiful.  We were on the road by 4.45am, and plodded up the deserted A9 out of Inverness and over the Black Isle.  We spotted Venus and Mars as the first streaks of dawn appeared on our right in the east.

There was a gentle tail-wind helping us along for most of the day which made it faster and more enjoyable than most of the previous days.  Most of the road was gentle and undulating and ideal for spinning along, eating up the miles.

There were a few stiff climbs during the day though, including the infamous Berridale Braes (below).  The signs warning drivers to ‘Keep in low gear’ were heeded by Sam but not Roger, who had better braking abilities and descended in high gear.

Roger storming the Berridale Braes

The last section seemed to drag out a bit, with the ‘last hill’ never quite where we expected it to be.  Even a local roadie cyclist whom we met out of Wick said there were just two hills to go.  There were about 4 or 5, including the last one which, at 80 meters is the size of Penglais Hill in Aberystwyth.

But finally we could see the delapidated splendour of the famous John o’Groats Hotel down on the coast in front, and we rolled down the hill, past the ‘John o’Groats’ road sign and up to the finish.

Two tired but happy unicyclists at John o'Groats

We will be writing up the whole trip as an article for Uni – The Unicycle Magazine,  which will include more of Paul’s awesome photos and annecdotes from along the way.  I’ll put a bit more up on this blog too though, but I still need to catch up on some sleep!

We had some amazingly good weather – not a spot of rain and tail-wind on the last day when we needed it; we had no significant mechanical problems (even Roger’s tired borrowed hub lasted out); the navigation stayed on course for 99% of the miles (just an 11 mile error); and even without much time to practice riding on the machines we used, our bodies and joints all survived (just). Paul managed to avoid strangling us, despite minimal detailed planning and erratic behaviour on the part of a couple of often lethargic unicyclists.

So, achieving this time was hard, very hard. But we were also not as well prepared as we might have been, and got lucky…  it is certainly not unbeatable with better training and planning.  So, who’s up for it next?