Saturday 16th June

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"Shouldn't you be training for this?" asked my mother, for the 500th time as the dates for our end-to-end cycle got closer and closer. "I have been training," I sighed, which was kinda half true. I had just run a marathon, so figured I must have some fitness somewhere in my body, and besides surely I'd get fitter as we went on. "I think you're mad," said my mother for the 700th time, "And Richard's really worried about how little training you've been doing too."

A few years ago, I read an account in the weekend newspaper of a reporter cycling from the most North-Easterly point of the UK, John O'Groats, to the most South-Westerly, Land's End. Something about it really resonated with me, and from that moment, I resolved at some stage in my life to do the same thing. I thought my chance might come last summer, as part of a gap year I was taking from work, but no-one else I knew was free or keen. Then it transpired that my brother would have a few weeks free just before he got married this summer. "What a way to send him off," I thought to myself, and he seemed keen when I mentioned it to him. I managed to take the leave, Richard got a new bike for Christmas, things slowly began to slot into place...

I am told that the prevailing wind in the UK is south-westerly, and so cycling south to north means that you're more likely to have the wind behind you. It also gets the Cornish hills out of the way whilst your fresh. However it was always going to be quicker for us to get back home from Penzance than the highlands so we made the decision to cycle north to south. "Besides," we laughed to ourselves, "North to south is all downhill, isn't it!" We were pretty sick of that joke by the end of the ride.

And so, on Friday evening we cycled the short distance to the train station and got the train into London. We cycled the short distance across central London to Euston - incidentally the hardest station entrance to find anywhere in the country. Moments later we were on the sleeper train to Inverness, getting periodic updates from my Dad on the score in the England-Sweeden Euro 2012 match.

We arrived in Inverness at 8:38 and wandered into town. As we locked our bikes outsides the MacDonald's that we had decided to have breakfast in an old Scottish dude came up and started chatting to us. "Where you cycling, lads?" he asked, and we explained our planned escapade. "Very good," he said squeezing my back tyre. "That's as flat as a pancake!" he laughed to himself.

We had a couple of hours before our train to Wick, so we set up camp in the shopping centre. I bought some cycling gloves at Highland Bikes, and we bought some sandwiches to eat on the train. It was as we headed towards the platform at Inverness station that we hit set-back number one. "No-way!" shouted the guard, waving his arms at us and our bikes. "Ye cannae take bikes on this train. No room. No way." "But we've booked tickets, and on the phone they said you couldn't book bikes onto these trains," I protested. "They lied. No-way! No-way!" was the flat response. We pleaded, offered to take our front wheels off, all to no avail. The man at the ticket office was much nicer. "You're not the first, and you won't be the last," he chuckled to himself, before "You're in luck. Plenty of space for bikes on the next train."

Well, the next train was 4 hours later, so we headed back to the shopping centre and got pizza for lunch and read to pass the time. Soon we were on the train as it meandered it's way through the highlands towards Wick. It was a little galling pulling in to Thurso, where we had booked to stay the first night, but we stayed strong and changed into our cycle gear just as the train was pulling in. This was around 6pm, and my tyres were now as firm as the number on their sides suggested.

Much of this journey was characterised by Richard leaving me behind, but actually the first person to have to hang around waiting was me. "You're friend's bag fell off," said the friendly highlander who paused as he drove past me, correctly guessing from our matching cycle jerseys that we were together. A few minutes later and we were off, heading up the A99 along the coast to John O' Groats.

It was just before 8pm that we got to the few scattered houses and ferry port that makes up the famous remote UK village. We took our photos by the "Welcome to..." sign, and then headed to Duncansby Head which was only a mile out of the way and featured some very cool stacks. We ate our sandwiches by the light house and called home to say where we were.

And so it began, properly. "We're doing it!" I called to Rich as we headed out on the A836, "We're on our way!" The National Cycle Network route 1 starts at John O' Groats and goes all the way to Inverness. We had our own route planned, so we stuck to the A836 which at that time on a Saturday evening was pretty deserted and looking beautiful as the sun set over the islands just to the north. The NCN1 kinda zig-zags across the A-road, so we kept seeing the blue arrows suggesting alternative routes for us.

The north coast is beautiful, funny as it was just to be heading west and not even slightly south. We phoned ahead to Sandra's Backpackers, who said that arriving at 10pm would be fine. We stopped once for water, before pulling into Thurso, which is a fairly substantial and rather pretty town. We stayed at Sandra's Backpackers, which is definitely one of the best hostels I've stayed in on my many travels. It's above a fish and chip shop, the owners are helpful and super-relaxed, and they provide wi-fi, bread and jam all free of charge. They let us keep our bikes in the back yard, and laughed at us for wanting to lock them up. "No-one steals bike's around here, lads," said the dude showing us around, before dropping ominous warnings about some of the hills we were about to encounter on our next day.