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Therewasabutcher'soppositeandwewanderedovertotryandfillupourwaterbottles.
'Ahhh, no problem,' said the lady behind the counter.
She asked us what we were doing and so we told her the story.
'You'll be wanting some lunch then, too. How about some chicken thighs?'
'That's very kind,' I said, 'but we don't have any means to cook them.'
'Oh, I see, fair enough. How about a couple of pork chops then?'
'Errr, again, I think we'd struggle to find somewhere to cook them for lunch. Thanks
anyway.'
'Hmmm, so I guess bacon wouldn't be any use either then? How about some ham?' she
asked, not wanting to be defeated.
'Some ham would be brilliant, thanks. I'm sure we could get some bread from some-
where.'
'Therearesomecookiesforyouthere,too,'shesaid,handingusacarrierbagcontaining
ham, cookies and our water bottles.
Idiscoveredthatin1988Camelford'swatersupplywasaccidentallycontaminatedwhen
20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate was poured into the wrong tank at the local water works.
The long-term effects on the residents are still under question. All I can say after meeting
the locals is that it explains an awful lot.
There was little chance that we would have successfully navigated ourselves to John
O'Groats without the aid of a map or route book. Asking random strangers 'which way is
Scotland?' was provingfruitless. Werealised that weneeded amore organised approach to
navigation.
'THE LIBRARY!' I shouted.
'What about the library?
'We could borrow a map or a route book from the library. It solves all our problems. It
will make getting to Scotland a hell of a lot easier, and we don't even have to spend any
money.'
'Genius,' said Ben.
The library didn't loan out maps, nor did it have a vast selection of Land's End to John
O'Groatsroutebooksbutitdidhaveone-
Bike Britain
,byPaulSalter.Thiswastobecome
our bible over the following three weeks.
Borrowing the topic proved far easier than we expected. Despite having no identifica-
tion, we were able to charm the librarian with our smiles. We promised to return the topic
to our local library after we had finished and for it to be transferred back to them.
The topic was perfect. It detailed a route from Land's End to John O'Groats following
mostly minor roads. It was spread out over a 21-day schedule. The only problem was that
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