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Video: Britain by Bike - an animated John O'Groats to Land's End

A little inspiration ahead of the weekend

It's Friday, and to inspire you to get out on the bike over the weekend (in case the forecast warm weather isn't enough) here's a sweet little animated video featuring cyclists riding a triplet from one end of the UK to the other.

It's the work of art collective Sentio Space and is aimed at backing the CTC's Get Britain Cycling campaign. It's certainly a lovely piece of work.

The folks at Sentio Space say: "A few of us cycled from John O’Groats to Lands End a couple of years ago, raising money for two organisations called Amantani and FoodCycle. The idea of making an animation, taking the story of the trip and telling it in a creative way, came to us and wouldn’t leave. So we got together a group of illustrators, designers, and animators, and made it happen."

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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7 comments

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Angelfishsolo | 9 years ago
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Love the video. When I get around to doing this ride I plan to put a little wiggle in the route to cross the Welsh / English border  1

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Chrisbpr replied to Angelfishsolo | 9 years ago
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Angelfishsolo wrote:

Love the video. When I get around to doing this ride I plan to put a little wiggle in the route to cross the Welsh / English border  1

you should,the stretch from Monmouth to Chepstow through the wye valley was one of my highlights.

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truffy | 9 years ago
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Did Nessie really give them a lift? Very accommodating, I must say!

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bendertherobot | 9 years ago
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Very lovely. But (pedant mode) that's Scotland and England  3

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dave atkinson replied to bendertherobot | 9 years ago
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bendertherobot wrote:

Very lovely. But (pedant mode) that's Scotland and England  3

i'd draw you a venn diagram, but i got home at 4am and i'm tired, it's not really worth the effort.

bottom line: you can happily say either. you don't need to go to every place in britain to make it britain by bike. the fact that it's not *just* england or scotland makes it britain. you don't score any pedant marks.

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chalkboard | 9 years ago
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lovely film - brought back some happy memories for me of my LeJoG - wonder why they went from north to south though?

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paulrbarnard replied to chalkboard | 9 years ago
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chalkboard wrote:

lovely film - brought back some happy memories for me of my LeJoG - wonder why they went from north to south though?

Easier that way it's down hill...

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