A Guinness World Record attempt as a LEJOGLE relay
In the summer of 2022, I’m organising a LEJOGLE relay. In case you didn’t know, LEJOG is a bicycle ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and JOGLE is a ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End. LEJOGLE is a ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and back again.
To sign up, simply leave a comment on this page, telling me where you’re based, and what sort of distance you can cycle. The comment will not be published.
I have applied to Guinness World Records to have the attempt recognised as an official record attempt, with the record being The largest number of cyclists to participate in a LEJOGLE relay in 28 days. That’s quite a mouthful!
So far we have provisionally signed up almost 100 riders. Why only provisionally? That’s easy to explain: agreeing to participate is a serious commitment, and one which most likely require you to take leave from work. It isn’t just something you can agree to on a whim, only to pull out of a day before, as that could potentially be letting a lot of other people down.
As far as I possible can, I will try to arrange at least two riders to cover any given segment. Doing so will have drawbacks, but also benefits – should any one rider be unavailable on the day they’re meant to be riding a segment, then we will have another rider already available. Unfortunately, in terms of number of riders counted by Guinness World Records for a record attempt, I expect they will only count one rider per segment. Despite this, I absolutely believe every single rider who participates will share in the record, should we get to set it.
Speaking of the record, if GWR accepts our record attempt, and if we set a GWR record, GWR doesn’t name the individual participants. Should you be one of the riders, and want that fact known, I’ll keep your name listed here, on an updated version of this page. Obviously, I’ll only list your name with your permission.
Currently
At the moment we have a long way to go before we have a final route. I’m plotting people’s locations on a map (not accurately – just the approximate location) to see where gaps appear, and as you can see below, we still have many gaps to fill. Especially northern Scotland is a problem, because it’s so sparsely populated. It may well be that we need to recruit one or more cyclists riding a full LEJOG to carry the Spot satellite messenger through northern Scotland, and to have another cyclist just setting off on a JOGLE take it over from them, but time will tell.
If you can, please do sign up! Please just bear in mind that you will be making a full commitment. Also, if you can only do out-of-hours cycling, then it’s unlikely you’d be able to participate.
Next steps
I will be working on a provisional route. You know your local area far better than what I do, so I’ll be more than happy to adjust the route to your preference, but bear in mind the constraints of fixed starting and ending points for segments, so help cater for those riders before you, and those after you. The final route we’ll end up will be convoluted, as we’re trying to fit in as many cyclists as we possible can.
The maps below show how much of the route we probably have covered, but I need to explain a few shortcomings. For starters, in the Midlands, especially around the Birmingham are, we have many riders. In practice, that means each rider will do a far shorter distance, which isn’t reflected in the circles on the map. To draw the circles, I looked at the rider for a rough are that offered to cycle the longest distance, and drew a cicle on the map using that. It isn’t accurate enough to identify riders (deliberately so) and ignores many other riders within that circle. I will see what I can do to create more accurate maps with circles, but for now this will do. Where circles overlap, it shows we have at least two riders who can hand over to each other.
As I expected from the start, northern Scotland remains a problem. We have other factors to contend with, too. I absolutely want this relay to be as inclusive as possible, and I’m very happy that in the Morecambe area we have a rider who will do – for them – a mammoth effort of around one mile. North-west of London we have another rider who will have their aging mother in a wheelchair, aboard a specially-adapted bike. The overall route will ensure that these riders remain included, and I’d encourage more to join in. We also have at least one rider who offered to cycle around 40 miles. On a BMX!
