It’s early Monday evening, and at 6.55am tomorrow morning our End-to-End cycling adventure begins.

It’s hard to believe that it is all actually going to happen.

Little did I realise 3 years ago when I met up again with Ian Riley (an old friend from my teenage days) for the first time in over 20 years that eventually we would reach a day like this. He came along to one of our Stockport Community Cycling Club rides having just completed a LEJOG himself (but was interested in repeating the experience). I had returned to cycling a couple of years previously and was now vaguely interested in such a ride, however his enthusiasm planted the real seed of the idea of the E2E. Over the next year we talked some more and eventually we decided to set a date for adventure – 2012. We plotted a route, decided to invite others, and then about a year ago booked most of the accommodation. Sadly Ian has since had to drop out of the E2E Team (though he is still riding with us for the first week). And over the last year further arrangements have been sorted and finalised.

So the accommodation is booked, the routes finalised, the catering arrangements are sorted, the transportation is planned, the finances in places. Yes it is all ready, even my bar bag for taking on the plane tomorrow morning and my clothes for wearing tomorrow are ready! Apprehensive? Yes. Ready? Yes, definitely.