Devon and Cornwall are both beautiful counties to be sure but coming at the end of the best part of a 4,000km road trip they are perhaps not an ideal place for a weary middle-aged cyclist to finish! The price for stunning views here is steep ascents and hair-raising descents and frankly I would have given my right pedal to finish this journey in East Anglia! However, I'm proud to say I made it, spurred on by the generous hospitality and kindliness of my hosts.
But, as many of you know, I didn't make it on the date I'd expected to finish :-( My final weekend in Cornwall became increasingly damp and misty and I awoke on Monday morning to a heavy mist or light fog. Undaunted, I set off along the country lanes near Lands End towards Penzance and it was only when I realised that I wasn't spotting oncoming cars' headlamps until they were less than 200 yards away that it dawned on me that drivers would not see my puny bike lights until they were nearly on top of me. I felt like an accident waiting to happen. Angry and disappointed I pedalled into Penzance station and boarded a train, did the wise thing and came home only a 100 kms short of my goal.
But David was there to greet me when I arrived, with a smile on his face; he had consulted his diary, the weather forecast, booked a couple of B&Bs so that he could drive me back to complete the journey the following week :-) How good was that? I was so thrilled not to be cheated of a quietly triumphant pedal over the bridge and up the hill to Looe station and to have David share this final leg of the journey with me.
This week the weather was perfect and I was in the perfect frame of mind to complete this marathon experience. The previous week I had been weary and focussed on the goal of crossing the finishing line. This week I was back to enjoying the journey, revelling in every minute of the experience, the sights, the smells, the sounds and the beauty all around me. True to form, the sat nav gave me one final laugh a few kilometres outside Looe when it tried to have me cut through a dense hedgerow and across a trackless field but I've learnt to live with its foibles!!
What I wasn't ready for was the emotion I felt as I pedalled into Looe station where I'd started on 17th July. I found myself fast-forwarding through the past few weeks in the saddle and the reality of this adventure began to sink in - the beauty and variety of the landscape, the colours, the views, the solitude, the peace and the freedom I'd felt. I hadn't set out to cycle around the coast for my own benefit, I'd done it to raise money for the training village in Malawi, and yet I have benefitted so much from the whole experience. This is something that will always stay with me.
