On-board the Lib Dem battle bus where Sir Ed Davey is planning more stunts

I am writing this on board Yellow Hammer One - the Lib Dem battle bus - as it embarks on a final five frenetic days of campaigning which will take us from John O’ Groats, the very top of mainland Britain, to Land’s End, the very tip of Cornwall.

If you were taking the most direct route, you’d clock up just shy of 900 miles on the journey.

But that isn’t how election campaigns work and I’m told we’ll have covered around 1,350 by the time we arrive, with no fewer than 17 stop offs on the way.

We know by now that Sir Ed Davey loves a good photo opportunity and so, unsurprisingly, he posed for the cameras under the famous sign.

But starting in John O’ Groats wasn’t just a gimmick. The legendary landmark sits in the Scottish seat of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.

It’s one of two seats in Scotland that the Lib Dems won at the last general election but is now notionally being defended by the the SNP because of boundary changes.

The other is North East Fife (formerly East Fife), where Sir Ed stopped off on Saturday lunchtime for a quick game of shinty - a team sport played with sticks and a ball.

The Lib Dem campaign team have calculated that, of the 15 seats they won in 2019 and at subsequent by-elections, only eight would be theirs under the new boundaries. And Sir Ed will tell you, time and time again, that they aren’t taking anything for granted.

That’s why they’re keen to cover quite so much ground in their final five days of campaigning. But there is something striking about our hectic itinerary.

After stopping off in four important target seats in Scotland and crossing over the border into England, the next time we get off the bus we’ll be so far south we’ll have reached the edge of the Cotswolds.

The Lib Dems hold just two seats and have only a handful of targets between Gloucestershire and the Scottish border. They have focused much of their campaign energy on the South West of England and the Home Counties, in seats where they came second to the Conservatives last time and believe they can win. And that is what they intend to do from now until polling day.

On the campaign trail in Edinburgh on Saturday, Sir Ed Davey was trying out his circus skills.

There may only be a few days to go, but I’m told that the Lib Dems’ stuntman-in-chief still has a couple of big surprises up his sleeve.

Have you heard our podcast Talking Politics? Every day in the run-up to the election Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda…