Well, here we are.
Day 100.
I'm not entirely sure how that happened.
When I last wrote, Yorkie and I had made some decisions about how we wanted to continue this journey. We'd stepped away from social media, stopped worrying quite so much about what everyone else thought and decided to get on with what we'd set out to do.
But there was something else I needed to sort out first.
Me.
I think I'd underestimated just how much the previous few months had affected me. It wasn't just LEJOG that I'd stopped enjoying. It was the markets, the people, the constant battles over where I could play, social media and everything that seemed to come with it.
Even the busking and, if I'm being completely honest, to some degree the piano itself.
That's quite a difficult thing to admit when you've spent nearly ten years of your life sitting at one.
Something that had always given me so much freedom and enjoyment had gradually become something I felt I had to do rather than something I wanted to do. Somewhere amongst everything that had happened, I'd started associating the piano with all the difficulties surrounding it rather than the reasons I'd fallen in love with playing in the first place.
The piano hadn't changed, but my relationship with it had.
And I think that's what I've been trying to find again over these last few weeks. Not just the motivation to keep cycling north, but the enjoyment of sitting down and playing. Of meeting someone who stops to listen or having a conversation with a complete stranger that you wouldn't have had anywhere else.
So I've been taking things a little more slowly. Not necessarily the riding, we've actually been moving along quite nicely, but everything surrounding it.
I've been turning up in towns, finding somewhere to play and doing just that, without feeling that I have to turn on a camera and share every minute of it.
And little by little, I've started enjoying it again.
I'm not quite sure I'm all the way there yet, but I'm getting there. And that's probably more important to me right now than how many people are watching.
We've spent the last few weeks making our way along the south coast, which was important to me for reasons that go back long before LEJOG.
Some of you will remember an incident in Poole several years ago that went rather viral. It affected me far more than I think people realised at the time, and going back there was something I'd wanted to do for quite a while.
This time I had a genuinely good interaction with the market manager.
It might not sound like much, but it meant a great deal to me. In some ways it felt like closing a chapter I'd been carrying around for years.
Christchurch had its own history following an unpleasant encounter earlier this year, and returning there was important too.
I suppose one of the things I'm learning is that a bad experience in a place doesn't necessarily mean every experience there has to be bad.
Although occasionally the universe seems determined to test that theory.
Take Littlehampton.
I wasn't even trying to set up and play. I was simply heading to Costa for a coffee when several people from the market started shouting at me before I'd even stopped. I'd already been threatened with having the police called, and I hadn't even had my morning coffee.
The following day I arrived in Worthing and couldn't have been made more welcome.
Same piano, same me, completely different reception.
And I still don't really understand it.
I do understand that markets and town centres have difficulties with some of the people who turn up calling themselves buskers. I've seen people arrive with loud amplifiers, backing tracks and speakers that seem to have only one volume setting. And then there are the karaoke singers who bring a microphone and a backing track and apparently think that makes them a busker.
I'm sure some of them are very good at karaoke.
But there's a difference between saying "I busk" and "I am a busker."
To me, being a busker is about far more than turning up somewhere and performing. It's about understanding the place you're playing in, respecting the people who live and work there and becoming part of that place for however long you're there.
I've spent nearly ten years doing this professionally. I play an acoustic upright piano without amplification, and I have a rather large standing sign explaining exactly what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and what this whole journey is about.
And yet, time and again, it's market managers, stallholders and shopkeepers who approach me as though I'm already causing a problem before I've even played a note.
You'd think the people responsible for running these places might take a moment to read the sign, introduce themselves or simply ask what I'm doing before deciding I shouldn't be there.
I'm not expecting everyone to welcome me with open arms, but surely a conversation isn't too much to ask.
Mental health isn't just a slogan on a sign to me. It's deeply personal and it's one of the reasons I started this journey in the first place.
I've had to learn the hard way just how much these encounters can take out of me. What happened in Sidmouth earlier in this journey was particularly difficult, and it stayed with me long after I'd left. It was one of several experiences that gradually wore me down until I'd lost much of the enjoyment I once found in the journey, the busking and even the piano itself.
I'm trying not to let that happen again.
I've been learning that when someone approaches me already looking for an argument, I don't necessarily have to give them one. Sometimes I simply say, "Okay, thank you for the information," and carry on with what I was doing, provided I'm entitled to be there. Sometimes I point them towards the sign and let them read about the mission for themselves.
I'm not always successful at it, but I'm getting better. I can't control how someone else chooses to behave, but I'm learning that I don't have to let their behaviour determine the rest of my day.
And that's important, because there are so many good people out there.
The public, for the most part, are wonderful. They stop to listen, ask questions, tell me their stories and occasionally sit for quite a while just enjoying the music.
Some of the people I particularly enjoy meeting are those who might otherwise go through an entire day without anyone really speaking to them. There are people living on the streets, elderly people who are lonely and others who simply seem to need a bit of company.
They'll often wander over to the piano. Sometimes they want to talk, sometimes they want to listen and occasionally someone asks if they can play.
Of course they can.
I've met some wonderful people that way, and some very talented musicians too. I know what it's like to have someone make a judgement about you before they know anything about you. I'd rather not do that to someone else.
Which brings me back to social media.
I know some people genuinely believe I enjoy the confrontations that occasionally happen when I arrive somewhere new. Or that I somehow go looking for them because they make good content.
I can assure you I don't.
But something strange happens when those encounters become part of a livestream. People arrive because there's drama. The algorithms seem to rather enjoy that, and sometimes the chat starts laughing or joining in. I know most people mean well and probably think they're supporting me, but they're watching something happen on a screen.
I'm standing there experiencing it.
And sometimes, even when nobody watching knows anything has happened, people will come into the livestream telling me how wonderful it is to see me looking so happy.
Meanwhile, ten minutes earlier, I might have been surrounded by five people threatening to call the police.
It's quite difficult to put on a smile and pretend everything is wonderful when it isn't.
I'm a real person. I have good days and bad days, just like everyone else.
I see other content creators struggling with this too. For some of them social media is their full-time job, and whether they're having a good day or a terrible one, they still have to show up, entertain people and play the game.
One of the things I've always loved about busking is that I don't have to do that. If I want to play, I play. If I'm having a bad day, I can choose not to. If I'm enjoying myself, I can stay a little longer.
That freedom means an awful lot to me, and I don't particularly want to lose it.
So I've been easing back into livestreaming, but on my own terms. I know some of you have missed hearing me play, and I do understand that. I enjoy sharing the music, and social media is an important way of introducing people to the PianoMission.
But I don't need to broadcast every moment of my day.
Sometimes I just want to be a busker.
Not a content creator.
Just a busker.
Away from all of that, the actual journey has been going rather well.
We've been moving almost every day, which makes a welcome change from spending weeks trying to work out what's broken and how we're going to fix it.
I've done a few night rides too, and I rather enjoy those. There's something lovely about being out on the road when everything is quiet. Less traffic, fewer people and considerably fewer conversations about whether I'm allowed to be somewhere.
Just me, the Vok, the piano and whatever questionable route I've managed to find myself on.
Yorkie might have a slightly different opinion about some of those routes.
But I like the peace of it, and after the last few months I've come to appreciate peace rather a lot.
I've also done some interviews recently, so I'm looking forward to seeing those come out. It's always nice when someone takes a genuine interest in the journey and what we're hoping to achieve.
And when Yorkie and I looked at the numbers, even I had to admit we'd covered quite a bit of ground.
On the actual LEJOG route, from Land's End to my current location, I've now ridden 568 miles.
Including all the other riding since arriving in Penzance, we're approaching 800 miles altogether.
With an upright piano.
I'm still trying to get my head around that.
We're also approaching my tenth winter as a professional busker.
Ten winters.
I really don't know where that time has gone.
And apparently I've decided to spend this one cycling a piano towards Scotland.
Excellent planning.
The Vok is due some much-needed attention before we head further north. It's done an extraordinary amount of work over some pretty challenging terrain, and with winter approaching we want to make sure everything is ready for what's ahead.
I really can't say enough about Vok and Fully Charged.
The engineering that has gone into this bike is phenomenal, and the support we've had from both companies throughout the journey has been extraordinary. We've had challenges, of course. Anyone following the journey knows that. But they've continued working with us to resolve them, and we simply couldn't be doing this without them.
We recently came across a Facebook post from someone who had seen me riding. Apparently some of the people commenting were convinced the photo must have been AI-generated.
Because obviously there's no possible way a cargo bike could carry an upright piano around the roads of the south coast.
I rather enjoyed that.
I can assure you the piano is real.
So is the pedalling.
And so are the hills.
And so is the Vok.
Before I finish, there's something I'd like to ask.
I know there are a lot of people who have followed this journey for a long time. Some of you have been here since before Land's End, and some have only recently discovered what we're doing.
I'm grateful for every one of you.
Yorkie and I have funded this journey ourselves, and we've always intended to do that. We've never expected anyone else to pay for it, although we're certainly not going to turn down people who want to get involved and help us make the mission a success.
Because the journey is only part of what we're trying to accomplish.
The bigger mission is about music and mental health. About making pianos accessible to people who might otherwise never have the opportunity to sit down and play one.
That's what the PianoMission is for.
And if you'd really like to help us, one of the most valuable things you can do is tell people about it.
Share the website. Share the journey. Share the GoFundMe.
Tell someone why a man is cycling an upright piano from Land's End to John o' Groats.
You don't have to donate to make a difference. Sometimes simply helping the right person discover what we're doing can open a door we didn't even know was there.
We would love to see more people get involved.
Because as much as Yorkie and I have realised that this journey only has to make sense to us, the reason we're doing it has always been about something bigger than ourselves.
Music belongs to everyone.
And I genuinely believe it can change lives.
Mine included.
So here we are.
One hundred days and nearly 800 miles of riding, with a few more stories to tell and a rather questionable understanding of what constitutes a normal way to spend your time.
But I'm enjoying playing again. I'm enjoying the road, and I'm learning that I don't have to share every moment of either one.
Sometimes it's enough to just be there.
To sit down at the piano.
And play.
Which, after everything that's happened, is rather a nice feeling.
See you somewhere along the road.
— James
