Geographical spread of Philpott's

Met a Philpott today on a social ride with the London Cycle Touring Club. The ride is part of our 'training' for Lands End to John O'Groats, which we really haven't done a lot of. Anyway, people were friendly and seemed happy to chat about our new Thorns and thought that three weeks was a good length of time to do our upcoming trip and still make it feel like a holiday. Beautiful day and nice not to navigate ourselves for a change.

As we started cycling after lunch, a regulart called Richard Philpott cycled past and introduced himself. More interesting than the fact that we're probably not related is he said that according to a London University study into geographic origins of last names, the Philpott's came from Kent, which is where we were cycling.

You can see a pretty cool map illustrating where Philpott's were in 1881 here

Lands End to John O Groats planning session

There are just two weeks until we head down to the bottom of England and then cycle to the top of Scotland, so today we finally sat down and plotted each day's distance and possible campsites to stay at along the way. Still looking a little daunting aside for three easy days through Cornwall at the start and I suspect our 'break' days without cycling are likely to get gobbled up by wrong turns and inaccurate milage estimates.


We headed out on our new bikes last weekend for three days to get used to them and trial out a bunch of camping gear, realising that we can do a huge 135 km if necessary, but it is hard work, and that leather bicycle seats don't wear in immediately.

Last thing to do is figure out how we're going to document the trip - work has suggested daily postcards (to them, of course) and I like the idea of mobile blogging either with laptop or via text messages. If all of that sounds like too much there's always pen and paper...