Day 1 - Sunday 13th July - Land's End to Bodmin - projected distance 60 miles.

Now the time for planning, for preparation. and for prevarication is over. The action has started. After breakfast in our hotel in St Just, we made our way over to Land's End, I unloaded my bike from the car, and I posed for the obligatory photos by the famous sign. There were a few other cyclists around who were also going to John O'Groats.

Then off I went, in the sunshine. The first town to visit was Penzance, where market stalls were out along the front. Not quite the Promenade at Nice, but never mind. The town looked much better in the sunshine than it did under the clouds last night.

My Garmin Geko GPS was working very well, directing me along a nice route, away from the awful A30, which is effectively a two-lane motorway. I went through a lot of Cornish villages with remarkable names, including the marvellously-named Praze-an-Beeble. I also went through Leedstown, which is about as near as I'm going to get to the home of football on this trip.

My LeJog lasted all of 20 miles before the first drops of rain fell, but the clouds soon blew away. I made my way north and east, through more quiet villages, and past quite a few old chimneys from disused tin mines. The first 40 miles of today's ride were lovely, but then the hills started to bite. I amused myself by hurtling down one at almost 46mph, but it wasn't quite so funny going back up the other side. My legs were getting tired.

For the last 12 miles I had the pleasure (not) of going up the A30 for a few unavoidable miles. It's grim on a bike, with cars flashing past at 70mph. Oh, and it was raining, and I was tired. I was very glad to roll in to Bodmin and to find the hotel at about 3pm. My support crew were far too busy having a good time down in the sunshine on St Michael's Mount, so they didn't turn up until 6pm, leaving me to soak in the bath and watch speedway on Sky TV. Later we went into Padstow for more fish and chips.

The map is below, showing exactly where I went and which hills I rode. Tomorrow is going to be a long day - 80 miles to Exeter. I hope my legs recover. I'll be making myself a protein shake in a minute.

Might be changing plans slightly for tomorrow, and ignoring the original GPS plan to skirt around Dartmoor. I might just go straight across, which is a shorter route, but does involve a mighty climb to 450 metres. We'll see - it might depend on the weather, which looks as though it may be mixed.