LEJOG Day 1

Total Miles - 130
Total climbs - 7, 456 ft.
Lands End - Penzance - Truro - St Austell - Liskeard - Tavistock - Dartmoor - Exeter
Top Tip For The Day - DON"T cycle through Cornwall & Devon
Quote of the day - "Have you got sun cream?"

Apologies to all that we didn't blog this yesterday. We knew day 1 was going to be tough - the greatest distance coupled with over a quarter of the total climbs on our first day. We headed down to Lands End to take pictures yesterday evening to save a bit of time today - gorgeous sunset. Sadly, Mother Nature & the Devon & Cornwall tourist boards conspired to complicate matters with torrential rain that started at 2AM and continued throughout the day. Along with high winds. Reports claim over 60mm fell at most locations along our route. Ferries were cancelled, along with planes grounded, roads were closed due to flooding. The upshot of this was the most difficult physical & mental challenge we've ever undertaken. One constant hill after another in driving rain & a headwind is every cyclist's nightmare. Matters got worse as we reached Dartmoor at 91 miles and began our biggest climb. Visibility got down to 20 yards due to mist, fog & rain. Massive thanks to Tony & Diana - our support crew - without whom we would probably be curled up under a rock somewhere on the Devon moors. The dry clothes, encouragement, food, cups of tea and even following us at 4 MPH with headlights on to light our way! Truly above & beyond! As a result, we rolled into Exeter at around 9.30 PM, were picked up at our Day 2 start point after around 11 hours of cycling in the most horrendous conditions and ferried to our campsite.We then pitched the tent in the rain, ate & slept, and the blog had to wait until today. Having technical problems with the memory card in the camera so watch this space to see exactly what we went through!