The Journey to Land's End

Friday 8th September

Bill, Chris and Phil all live on the Wirral so they met up at Bill's house in Birkenhead to travel down to Cornwall together.

It hadn't been easy to book the rail tickets, so they were happy to be on their way, hoping the journey itself would be problem free.

Chris said "It should have been easy to book the train tickets on the Trainline service . However, good as this website is for simple journeys, it was quite unable to cope with journeys with several legs and more than 2 bikes. I reported this on the feedback link and was told that it would have worked if I had checked the "allow double time for changes" box. This was true for this particular journey but, as I discovered when I booked the other part of the journey, not for others."

After meeting at Bill's they caught the Mersey Ferry to Liverpool, then cycled to Lime Street station.

The 9:13 train from Liverpool to Plymouth was on time and they were lucky enough to catch an early train to Penzance enjoying good views of St Michaels Mount before arriving 2 hours earlier than expected. They had originally tried to book this earlier train, but were told it had no space for bikes. In fact it did and also a very helpful guard who was a keen cyclist.

Lands End

The 10 mile ride to Sennen was found to be very hard going in heavy drizzle, plenty of steep hills giving them a foretaste of tomorrows challenges. They started with a gentle ride accross Newlyn Bay, before hitting the first hill. Chris and Phil were soon walking, only hard man Bill managing to climb this first hill. Confidence was beginning to ebb already.

This evening saw them at Lands End having their 'cards' stamped and Chris being mobbed by an American tourist mistaking him for David Lamb a musical hero. ( I've not heard of him. Ed)