LE2JOG

One of the reasons that I have been doing a lot of panoramas on my iPhone recently is that I've been hatching a plan to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats.

If all goes well I will leave on Sunday morning and arrive in the far north 14 days later. That's the good news. The bad news is that I appear to have damaged my left knee in some way - I suspect a slight tear to my cartilage but it might be something else. Anyway, I've decided to persevere and see what happens - if it gets too bad I'll just head for the nearest station and get the train home.

This probably sounds a bit mad but there are a couple of reasons why I'm so keen to do it. Firstly, there's the mid-life crisis effect... I was 50 earlier this year and want to do something big to celebrate. Secondly, I want to do the ride in memory of my former friend and colleague, Rachel, who died more or less exactly a year ago. To that end I intend using the ride to raise money for the hospice in Bristol that helped look after Rachel in her final months- more on that in due course.

So, I'll necessarily have to travel light - certainly no big SLR. I'll probably take my small camera but I will only be able to blip from the iPhone, hence the experiments. This text has been typed in on the iPhone - get used to lots of typos.

So the next time you see my bike it will be fully kitted out with mudguards, racks, panniers and so on. I'm filled with a mixture of excitement and trepidation! I will, of course, blog the whole trip here - though I also plan to tweet the route as well.

More tomorrow...