Accommodation and direction to go

The sort of accommodation you prefer will affect your route options and the cost of your tour. If there's only a few of you you may be able to get away with finding somewhere to stay each day as you go. The more people there are and the more specific you are about what sort of accommodation you want the more likely it will be that you need to pre-book it. Pre-booking can also have the advantage of giving you a daily target. It's sometimes difficult to find accommodation away from the touristy areas, and sometimes difficult to find it in popular places if you go at a peak time.

Choices available are:

• Camping. I don't have much information about doing this as a camping trip. If you have a list of appropriate camp sites I would like to hear from you. Bike Adventures run an organised camping tour, see here.
• Hostels. Primarily those of the YHA and SYHA. The CTC has a hostel based trip description available in their Land's End to John O'Groats pack. It's free to members and can be bought by non-members, although it's worth joining anyway for all the other benefits.
• Bed & Breakfasts, and small hotels. The CTC pack also has a B&B route description in it.
• Hotels. We use hotels on our organised tour. They are mostly of 3 star standard with a couple of 4 stars and a couple of Guest Houses where there isn't a large enough hotel.

Everybody has to figure out how to get to and from the trip. We have had a reasonable amount of experience at helping people with this.

Land's End is only 10 miles from Penzance and is reasonably accessible. Most of the trains arriving at Penzance will carry bikes and the First Great Western service will carry a tandem. You need to book these trains on the phone or at a staffed railway station, preferably one that's a reasonable size.

John O'Groats is a bit more difficult to get to and from. By rail it can take a long time and the trains have a limited capacity for cycles. Fortunately First Scotrail run an additional freight service by road between Thurso and Inverness, you can have your cycle carried by this service while you travel on the train.

Rail travel with a bike can take some organising. Luckily we have had a lot of practice at it. We travel extensively by train with our bikes without too much trouble. You can find out the current situation for the rail companies you need to use at the A to B website. We recommend taking out a subscription for the magazine.

Direction - This doesn't bother some and is of critical importance to others. The arguments go like this - going South is downhill, at least in philosophical terms. Going North, you get the prevailing wind. This is reasonably true, although during the summer months the wind speeds tend to be quite low and can blow in any direction, so it's not that important. The tours all start and finish at sea-level, give or take a few metres, so it doesn't really matter which way you go.

I personally think it's easier to start at John O'Groats, mainly because the roads in Scotland are better graded, that is the hills are kinder, than further South. It also means you are fit before you get to difficult part of your trip, Devon and Cornwall.

If you have access to historical wind data so that I can demonstrate the wind effect I would like to hear from you, the Met Office want an awful lot of money to provide it.