Myself (Ashley Middlewick), and best friends Chris Thomas and Tom Smith are embarking on a 2-week long Lands End to John O Groats cycle trip. We'll be kicking it all off with Lands End parkrun, doing Erddig parkrun in the middle and finishing with Thurso parkrun shortly after John O Groats. Not contempt with just doing the LE JOG cycle and the parkruns we also decided we'd throw in the 3 Peaks (Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis). Whilst planning the route it became very apparent that Week 1 would be significantly easier than Week 2 so to even it out a bit we decided to include the 2 other peaks that make up The 3 Welsh Peaks (Pen y Fan and Cadair Idris) as well as the worlds steepest road (Fford Pen Harlech) in Snowdonia which has a maximum gradient of 40% to the first week. We will be covering 1090 miles cycling/running/hiking together hence the fundraising target.

Unlike previous trips we've done in the past (most notably The Istanballers and Arctic 2 Africa) we'll be staying in accomodation every night to save having to lug the tents/camping gear on the bikes. We're also much older (this trip marks 10 years since A2A) and now have enough of a budget not to slag it in our tents. Just as well as this is our most ambitious trip yet.

The two biggest days (which I'm genuinely concerned about) are:
Day 8 - Doing Erddig parkrun before cycling 137 miles to YHA Eskdale arriving before the 10pm check in deadline
Day 15 - Cycling 65 miles to Thurso parkrun, doing Thurso parkrun and then cycling 109 miles to Inverness in time for our train at
8.23pm

The charities we're raising money for are:

UNACC - a small local Lunch/Social club for OAP's that I volunteer at. Croydon Council has recently cut funding meaning that money is needed to keep the project running. It's a wonderful positive environment to be in (for both the volunteers and old people) and definitely good for mental health.

British Heart Foundation - This was Tom's choice. A charity close to his heart as he's had family members and friends impacted by heart disease.

The Raising Hope Foundation - A small charity who help orphaned and vulnerable children in Ghana. We raised money for them when we did The Istanballers and A2A. We finished Arctic to Africa in Ghana and stayed for a week volunteering at the summer school/orphanage there and it had a profound impact on us.

We'll be posting updates (hopefully on a daily basis) throughout the trip via Youtube and Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/@TheGreatBritishLegOff-pm8eu/featured
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550118515646

Please give what you can, follow our progress and wish us luck!!!