Cycling UK Forum

I'm leaving for LEJOG on Saturday, using the Sustrans book as my guide. Solo effort, camping, 13 days. 2 years ago I did a tour through France including the Midi Canal but all a slower pace.

Looking forward to it but any advice especially if anyone has used the Sustrans book, would be welcome! :0)

Ta.

Hi,
I’m hoping to ride lejog using the book in 2018.
It looks like I may be going off piste from the route in a couple of places.
I want to put the route onto my Garmin or into Strava (or both) but it might take a while.

Let me know how you get/got on using the book.

All the best.

The OP was here all of 25 minutes and never returned.
That’s Sustrans routes for you......leaves you feeling lost

Simon Berry (Google and you should find it) tried to do LEJOG using Sustrans routes about 10 years ago on a Moulton - he got so far behind schedule within the first 5 or 6 days with gates and poor surfaces that he had to abandon the route and use proper lanes and roads.

Rob

I seem to recall Ellie Bennett http://lejogging.blogspot.co.uk/ tried to keep to Sustrans route. 28days ?

The route suggested in the Sustrans NCN book isn't daft. There are a few places where I'd divert from the suggested route (*cough* Bewdley-Bridgnorth *cough*), but by and large it seems rideable. There are more country-lane NCN routes now than there were 10 years ago (whether that continues is not yet clear...), and several sections of route have been improved since, particularly in Scotland.

That said, it looks much more like a three-week route than a two-week one. It's 1,200 miles, which is 92 miles for each of 13 days. 92 miles/day on the NCN is heroic verging on impossible. Whether the OP did manage it in 13 days we may never know, but for your own attempt, I'd suggest choosing one of the more "usual" routes if you only have two weeks.

My take on following a Sustrans route is you travel 50% further at 2/3 the speed than if you stuck to the more direct roads .....

So a 3 weeks trip sounds about right.

Hi all. I just bought the Sustrans book LEJOG using the NCN and would love to give it a go in the early part of 2018. I would probably stick to the stages given as I think I could only manage an average of 50 miles per day. I certainly couldn’t do a 2 or even 3 week attempt as I am a bit oldish. Can anyone give any feedback on using the book and how accurate the instructions were? Thanks all.

Hi percespb

I did a self-supported camping/hostel LEJOG in May/June '17 with my son using a mix of Sustrans and Cicerone routes. In short, we did Sustrans from LE to Bristol, Cicerone from Bristol to Gretna and Sustrans from Gretna to JOG.

We all do the LEJOG for different reasons - and we have different constraints in terms of of time, finance, fitness and so on. The Sustrans route is obviously not the route of choice for the 'challenge' rider - so I'm assuming you've chosen it because you really want an unhurried LEGOG that lets you better appreciate the contrasting landscapes that you're passing through? And of course stay away from the traffic. Our choice of route was also partly influenced by visits to friends along the way.

I agree with others here that it's a three-week route. IMHO, trying and do it in anything less would defeat the object of the route itself. That's not to say that there are not sections of the Sustrans route where you can pile on the miles (Lockerbie to Abington for example).

We made some changes to the route - for example, in the N/W, we chose the Cicerone route through the Trough of Bowland and loved it. I don't think we'd have had the same experience traipsing through Mosside/Whalley Range and so on. Other times, we put aside both route books and took advice from local cyclists - for example when we reached Altnahara (Stage 26) a helpful older guy suggested we turn right and follow the B873 round Loch Naver and then follow the road north to Bettyhill. This gave us a memorable couple of hours of quiet cycling. Unless you've a particular reason to visit Tongue, I'd use this suggestion.

One final thing. You say you're going to buy the GPS file and use it on your Garmin. We did this and found the file wouldn't work (some error message about 'exceeded number of waymarks'). So, frustrating waste of time and money. By contrast, the free Cicerone file worked perfectly. The Sustrans book itself worked fine for us

I hope this is helpful.

Mike

mfpnl wrote:You say you're going to buy the GPS file and use it on your Garmin. We did this and found the file wouldn't work (some error message about 'exceeded number of waymarks'). So, frustrating waste of time and money. By contrast, the free Cicerone file worked perfectly. The Sustrans book itself worked fine for us

If you get that massage then you need to load the file into 'Garmin Basecamp'.
Then set the program to reduce the number of waypoints.
Save the new file and reload into your GPS.
But you will lose some of the routes fine detail as it will straighten lines, think going from a circle to an octagon.

I only average 50 mpd when on tour.
But I've done Home -> LE -> JoG -> Home on my recumbent trike three times now taking between 14 and 17 weeks to do the full distance.
I've a rough idea where I'm going when I set out, but I make up the fine detail of the route as I go along.
So it's easily possible to do something like JOGLE while doing 50 mpd if you have the time.

Tigerbiten wrote:So it's easily possible to do something like JOGLE while doing 50 mpd if you have the time.

Indeed. As cyclists we think of it as a cycling challenge, but there's plenty who've walked it and they tend to do so over around three months, and then those who run, I understand the record is nine days!!
I met a woman at a hostel a few years ago who was walking it and where possible using old drovers routes. She'd allowed five months and was a few days ahead at a third of the way through and enjoying a couple of rest days, she was also complaining how far it was to walk to the pub!

Thanks Tigerbiten for that tip.

I assumed there must be a setting that needed changing - but of course I no longer had access to Basecamp. The first stage did load OK (I tested it before I left home) but the subsequent stages wouldn't load.

Whatever, I know what to do now if it happens again.

Thanks

Resurrecting an old thread for anyone who might be interested in the future. I've just finished LEJOG using the route Sustrans suggest in their book. Solo and mostly camping with a tarp. It took 12 days and was almost exactly 2,000km. About 19,000m elevation gain. Some sections were slow-going but the routes generally were great. I used a cross bike with 40mm tubeless Gravel Kings. The first day was LE to Bude, which I would probably not do again as it was super hilly!

CardiffCycle wrote:I'm leaving for LEJOG on Saturday, using the Sustrans book as my guide. Solo effort, camping, 13 days. 2 years ago I did a tour through France including the Midi Canal but all a slower pace.

Looking forward to it but any advice especially if anyone has used the Sustrans book, would be welcome! :0)

Ta.

Hey,
How did it go, how was all the routes ?
Carsten