Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum

When you're cycling 100 miles a day you'll be burning around 500 calories an hour. You need to replace about half that to maintain your efficiency or you'll start to feel fatigued. That's quite a lot of eating.

The traditional B&B full English breakfast isn't the best thing for cycling, although I know hand on heart that for all the tea in China that there is no hope of turning one down before we set off in the morning. I mean... come on! Unfortunately, it contains too much fat and it's too heavy yet sometimes in life you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Cereals and fruit are a better option. During the day we will try to snack little but often-on high-carbohydrate foods. Marks & Spencer’s used to sell low-fat apricot flapjacks, which were ideal and very tasty, but most people preferred the full butter type so they stopped selling the healthy version! However, their low-fat oat cookies in apricot and apple varieties are almost as good.

Bananas are, of course, the traditional cyclist's food and an excellent source of carbohydrate. That's why you see so many banana skins on the roadside on the approach to steep hills. I am going to keep a few Power Bars (high carbohydrate) in my panniers as an emergency source of oomph!

Drinking is just as important as eating; otherwise the process of converting carbohydrate into muscle energy cannot work. Once again, we intend to drink little but often, and keep ample supplies of water with us. We are going to carry two water bottles each, on a hot day we'll get through them in a couple of hours so will have to top up regularly at any opportunity.

Above all, experience has shown us the hard way that we will need to eat before we feel hungry and drink before we feel thirsty. If we don't, we will risk experiencing a phenomenon which cyclists call "The Bonk". All of a sudden you feel totally drained of energy and you may well feel that you can't go on. It's a shattering experience to say the least, especially when your 50 miles from the next port of call as no ones going to magically appear with any fast tracked solution. You’re on your own...

An average human tends to burn around 1200 calories per day. We will be burning in the region of 6000. We will have to think seriously how we are going to consume a similar amount on the road and quite possibly in the middle of nowhere considering the route we have chosen to take. If we get this wrong it could be crucial in our development. All the accommodation has been booked for each day so there is huge pressure for us to hit our targets or else it will put the whole schedule into jeopardy.

We have been told to expect to lose around 8% body fat over the journey despite how much we try to eat to replenish the burnt calories. So we are going to consciously eat as much carb rich food before we hit the road in a few days time.

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