. . I stumbled across this quote again and thought it was appropriate to the pleasures derived from riding the end-to-end :

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.  Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

~ Ernest Hemingway