Day 0 - Saturday 28th July - meet at Land's End

Weather - Hot and Sunny

Camp Site - Sea View Caravan Park, Sennen, Penzance Cornwall

Molly and I had driven down to Cornwall on the Friday and stayed at the Travel Inn at Carnon Downs and had visited my parents who live in Truro. We called in again on the Saturday morning and then drove down towards Land's End stopping for lunch just outside St Ives. Leaving St Ives we took the North Coast road and after checking Molly in at her B & B, got to the camp site at Land's End to find that we were the first of the group to arrive. We found the part of the site allocated to Bike Tours and decided to visit Sennen Cove and the beach, rather than just wait for the rest of the Group at the campsite. As we started to leave the site another car drove in with a bike on a rear bike rack so we stopped to ask them if they were here for the GBBR.

So we met Mike Knight for the first time. His wife Alison and daughter Hannah had accompanied him to the start and by coincidence had booked into the same B & B that Molly was staying at in Sennen and also they came from Chippenham - just 12 miles from us in Bath. We found that we had other things in common so had a good chat while Mike put his tent up and by this time Wayne and Claire had arrived with the tents.

Wayne started to put up the first of some 15 tents which were being hired from Bike Tours by the cyclists so Molly and I and Mike and Alison all helped him and got very hot doing so. Later in the tour these hire tents became known as the "council" tents as opposed to the private tents where cyclists had brought their own. He told us that due to the very heavy traffic the rest of the party were still on the road having made very slow progress on the coach from London. This was the first weekend of the school summer holidays so Molly and I were very pleased that we had come down from Bath on the Friday and so had avoided the very heavy holiday traffic on the M5 and A30.

The next arrival was to be Pete and Natalie in the "big blue van" - the catering van from "Beau Nosh" which was to provide on site meals for the next three weeks and was to be such a recognisable landmark in guiding us to the camp site at each new location.

Soon after this the coach arrived and suddenly the whole area was crowded with hot tired coach passengers who were complaining of the long journey from London. They soon became busy unloading all their luggage from the large white van and as the bikes began to appear from the same van and were unwrapped from bubble wrap and pipe lagging the party began to take shape and to look as though they might be able to cycle all the way to John O'Groats after all.

While this was going on Hannah decide that she was bored with all this so Molly and I, Mike and Alison decided to make the most of the afternoon sunshine and went to sit by the swimming pool for a cold drink after our exertions helping Wayne with the tents while Hannah had a swim in the pool.

Things were really taking shape now and it was soon time for our first dinner from the Blue Van - the first of what were to be really excellent meals for hungry cyclists - always including a vegetarian option for those who preferred it. The meal was very leisurely and at the end Alex introduced himself and also the other staff who were to look after us for the next three weeks.

Alex would look after general arrangements and would also go ahead of us each day to mark the next day's route with "green arrows" which he would stick to sign posts or whatever he could find. Much later in the trip on one occasion a green arrow was stuck to the dried grass in a hedge where there was nothing else and in another to a dead tree by the roadside. The problem with the latter was that when Alex stuck the green arrow on the tree it was upright but by the next day when we passed it had fallen over and the arrow was pointing in a different and rather confusing direction.

Nic is the Mechanic who will follow the group throughout each day in his van and will help with any mechanical problems and at worst will transport any cyclist with a problem to the next site. Wayne, Brett and Cody are the site crew who erect the tents and the marquee at each stop and who transport the luggage in their van. A further very important duty was that they ran the bar when we were on a campsite where there was no bar already. Pete is the chef and Claire and Natalie helped him and served the meals.

Alex distributed the route notes and a set of maps showing the overall route we were to take over the next three weeks. There was a page or two of route directions for each day's ride which we should take out with us and this together with the green arrows would ensure that we did not get lost. As far as possible the route kept us away from main roads and as we found out in due course this often meant steeper hills or "undulations" according to Alex who drove the whole route by car and did not appreciate how steep some of these "undulations" actually were! Later on a member of the group coined the phrase "gratuitous loops" to describe the diversions taken off main roads in order to avoid traffic and which often just seemed to meander around side roads rejoining the main road further along. In some cases we decided that these diversions were unnecessary or took us too far out of the way and we ignored them!

It soon became dusk and Molly and Alison decided to leave for their B & B. This was now becoming serious - I was about to have my first night in a tent for as long as I can remember - and all after deciding at the outset that however I undertook this trip it would not involve camping!