October 10th

We’re away! After an uneventful drive down on Monday we woke up to a glorious sunrise over the Cornish peninsula. Before even breaking camp we headed down to Nanven Cove for some beautiful sunrise shots of the coast, and to dip our boots for the unofficial start of our end-to-end quest. From here on, the bike travels under its own power.

With camp packed we headed down to Land’s End for our slightly more official start at the famous signpost, behind a slightly tacky ‘shopping village’, and some explanatory pieces to camera about the trip. Then I kicked the bike into life and, after warming it up, slipped it into gear and gently let out the clutch. Nope, a quick turn of the key, twist of the throttle and we buzzed away.

With all that filming we were behind schedule for the rest of Day 1, stopping for our first charge when WE needed a recharge, rather than the bike, at the Bike Chain cafe in Blissoe who also kindly let us run an extension lead through their window while we had our tea and cake. Later, after our second charge in an unglamorous Asda car park, it was starting to get dark so we decided to split up to save time. Finn headed directly to our campsite in the van while I took the slower (but more battery friendly) route down the back roads. I eventually caught up with Finn who had already put the tent up at about 9pm when I rolled into the camp site ‘on fumes’ as it were. In the dark (with an unlit speedo) I’d been a little less frugal with the electrons than I had intended!

We awoke early this morning on the western edge of a misty Dartmoor and set out to spend the morning filming the sun rising over the bracken, before dropping down again at the other side into Dunsford for a charge at their micro-hydro station. There we met up with Peter Henshaw, who has been an enormous help getting articles about us into  magazines, riding his extremely economic Honda NC750. His local knowledge guided us as far as Chard, although not without us getting our Type 2 chargepoint cable stuck in a charger at the Otter Garden Centre during another tea and cake recharge! Many thanks to the staff there who helped us get it out again. From there we headed up to stop with family near Sherborne, arriving at a much more civilised hour than last night. Tomorrow we retrace our steps to Crewkerne for our first big filming visit, at Ariel.

So there we are, the first two days, three counties and 200 miles have been successfully dispatched! Not a hiccough from the bike (yet…) and plenty of tea and cake!