Meet George and Vic at Brighton station. First train cancelled due to two pissed teenagers being dicks. That’s our time buffer gone. Meet Mark at Hastings station. Tailwind across Romney Marsh, heads down, smash it to Dover (didn’t need to worry about that lost half hour). Weave through a long tailback from the outskirts of Dover.
Dunkirk. George snaps a spoke. Detour to bike shop in De Panne to have it fixed. The rest of us have a coffee and pootle along the beach until we meet up with George further along the coast. Canals and cyclepaths all the way to Bruges. Dinner at Subway on the edge of town. After dinner entertainment provided by kids jumping off a high bridge into the canal.
Cyclepaths and cobbles into Gent. Find hotel. Check-in. Bikes in lifts. Bikes in hotel rooms. Comfy seats in the lobby. Food. Beer.
Day 2 – Ronde Van Vlaanderen and #TRCno6 (162km)
Breakfast on a sunny street corner in Gent. Canal path to Oudenaarde, then bits of the Tour of Flanders route – Wolvenberg, Molenburg, Koppenberg, Oude Kwaremont. Cobbles in summer heat are just as horrible as cobbles in cold drizzle in early spring. I don’t need to ride these again.
Geraardsbergen to soak up the atmosphere at the start of the Transcontinental Race No.6. Drink beer. Chat to friends racing. The buzz on the town square raises a desire in me to race. Feel quite emotional. It may be the beer. Drink more beer. Ride up the Muur with a can of Jupiler in a bottle cage to cheer the racers on their way. Bumble back down the cobbles to the bar on the corner for another beer. Ride back to Gent. Spot an open bar on a street corner in the Gent ‘burbs. Another beer. Back to the hotel late. Another beer.
Day 3 – Gent, Belgium to Reims, France (242km)
Wake up and instantly regret the last couple of yesterday’s beers and late night. Nowhere near enough sleep. George and Vic have already left to ride to Calais, Mark is getting ready to get train to meet them in De Panne. I’m heading south solo. My head hurts and I’m bloody exhausted. This is going to be a long day…
Breakfast from a petrol station. Boring roads. Headwind. More boring roads. It might be the hangover and the headwind but I’m not appreciating Belgium. When do I get to France? Big messy roads, French places on signposts, must be nearing the border. Road number prefix changes from N to D. Oh, that’s the church we had a nap at on the Transcon last year. It’s getting relentlessly hot. And that wind can do one. Long straight undulating roads like only the French can do. Stopping for water at every opportunity. Field after field after field after field after field… Where the hell is Riems? The last few kilometres take an eternity.
Hotel F1 somewhere in a maze of streets on the outskirts of Reims. Reception closed at 21:30 so I check in via a touch screen in the lobby. Carry bike up the stairs. F1s are always a bit hit or miss but this one feels well dodge. I’m sure that guy downstairs is dealing drugs from that open window. Shower. Pass out.
Day 4 – Reims to Chaumont (190km)
Up and out early, climbing through champagne country. Long straight undulating roads like only the French can do.
Follow the river Marne for a couple of hours and then circumnavigate Lac du Der-Chantecoq. Stop for ice cream and water whenever possible. Start to climb away from the Marne but eventually drop back down to it and pick up a canal path to near to Chaumont. Run out of water.
Steep ramp up in to Chaumont. Can’t be arsed, get off and walk. Into the centre of town for a coffee and a beer. Supermarket picnic in the Hotel F1 on the south side of town. No drug dealing here. Decide to ride as far as Salins-les-Bains tomorrow and book an apartment in a nearby village for tomorrow night.
Day 5 – Chaumont to Salins-les-Bains (175km)
Wake up to thunder and rain. First hour or so is cold and wet. It’s actually quite nice after 2 days of searing heat but by mid-morning it’s warm and by mid-afternoon it’s stupidly hot again. Feels hotter than the last two days. There seems to be very little in the entire department of Haute-Soane and what is here is closed on a Wednesday afternoon. Constant up and down, very little flat, a rolling terrain. Warm water in bottles. Magical mystery tour of Gray looking for a shop, a bar, anything! What do people do in this town for food? Where is everything, where is everybody? Add it to the list of places I never need to come to again. Almost out of water. It’s another 30km before I find a cemetery with a tap. Thank fuck for that. Not quite so warm water is slightly better than unpleasantly tepid water.
First sighting of the Jura. Pass a campsite with a bar and a vending machine! WHOOP!! Coffee and cold fizzy pop and a Snickers bar. That’ll get me as far as the supermarket in Mouchard. Ingredients for dinner stuffed in a musette and a snack for now. Slow spin into the foothills to the apartment. Absolute luxury compared to the F1s of the last couple of nights. Make a cup of tea. Shower. Bung all the kit in the washing machine. Cook dinner. Hang up the washing. Bidons in the freezer for tomorrow. Cook a second dinner. Pass out.
Day 6 – Salins-les-Bains to Morzine (149km)
Gnocchi for breakfast. There are a lot of hills to get over today. Quickly stop for a coffee in Salins-les-Bains. First climb is a beauty. Gentle ascent through woods to a meadow plateau. After three days of sunburnt crops it’s a lovely change to be surrounded by mountain flowers and fields of green. Pedalling seems easier. Another coffee in Champagnole before the next climb. Riding in the hard shoulder of the N5 (but it saved a good chunk of kilometres). A loop of a town looking for food. Another climb. A seriously overpriced bottle of Evian. Switzerland. Hairpins galore and a stunning view of Lake Geneva and the Alps beyond.
Straight onto a boat across the lake and back into France.
Shit roads to Thonon-les-Bains. Really shitty road. A Juggernaut judders to halt alongside me, wheels locked up, the car behind him skids across my path. Fuck this shit!
Up the valley to Montriond. A long steady climb through a gorge. Start to recognise the road but don’t remember it being such a drag last time I was here. Overtaken by an old woman on an e-bike. Come on legs, not much further. Five kilometres to go. Head spinny might fall over bonky faint. Stop for an ice cream and slice of tartiflette. In that order. Soft pedal slowly up the road and find the apartment.
Cold beer in the fridge! Thanks Nick! Tip contents of wallet on floor. Fourteen euros. That’ll get me a take away pizza.
The ferry turns and powers away from England in a soft haze that mutes the whiteness of the chalk, rendering the cliffs as almost inverted shadows.
A mirror image the other side of the channel as mist solidifies into landforms.
Heat bounces from the road. The snap, crackle, and pop of bubbling tarmac.
Waves of green and a sky crowded with white butterflies bouncing about on the skylark’s song.
Ra- Ra- Rasputin blares from a radio in a bar on a town square, then echoes from a car window at the end of the street.
Missing the hotel opposite the junction and going around the block. A World Cup quarter-final on TV and supermarket picnic on the bed.
Long straight roads through the hinterland and docks.
Port 3150-3200.
Port 3200-3250.
Port 3250-6000.
Pont Rouge.
Pont 6.
Bridge raised for a barge. About turn, find another way around. A tiltshift world, building block containers in glowing white and primary colours. Across rivers and inlets. The climbing starts.
Headlands and hairpins.
Headless turbines fold the cool sea fret. A brief relief from the heat.
Sitting on the train to London a small amount of trepidation floats around my mind. I’ve yet to complete a 600 kilometre audax having failed to complete the Hailsham 600 and the DIY in France last year for different reasons. I know I can do the distance but it’s been a while since I’ve ridden any further than 200km. I didn’t ride much further than this in eight days in the Dolomites recently. However it’s just riding a bike and I know how to do that. Keep pedaling and the rest sorts itself out. Slow and steady, minimise faff, eat and drink properly and it will be fine.
Arriving at the ride HQ at a scout hut in Raynes Park I sign in for the sleep over and promptly meet two riders, Simon and Ian, also from Brighton. Seeing as we have to ride to Wales and back over the next two days we decide the ideal prep is to pop to the pub (‘Spoons in keeping with true audax spirit) for a quick pint. Chatting whilst strolling and drinking we realise that we know loads of people in common, have been to some of the same gigs, even possibly done the same rides, but not actually met until now. Sensibly we have only one pint before heading back up the road to kip on the floor of the scout hut.
Saturday
It wasn’t discussed last night but I ask Ian and Simon if they fancy riding together for a bit. We might not ride at the same pace and I have an idea of how fast I want to ride, but 600km is a long way on your own so some company will be nice. We’ll see how it goes. I’m still quite conscious of my Transcon experience and feel that riding with others adds to the pressure. However this is an audax so dropping off a wheel and riding solo or joining another group of the road isn’t the same as scratching from a race in a pair.
Out of London we’re riding a bit too fast I think but probably due to the excitement of starting plus big city roads tend to increase the speed just to get the hell off them as quickly as possible. Many sets of lights, roundabouts, and couple of bits of dual carriageway pass before the urban dissipates and we all relax into a more suitable pace. I recognise some roads around Windsor and Eton from the St Crispin’s Day Night Ride a few years back, and then we pop out in Marlow, cross the Thames and head into the Chilterns. There’s a definite change in landscape, narrow lanes through tunnels of trees and short climbs. Another rider joins us through the hills and to the first control at Watlington. Brevet stamped with the buy ten get one free loyalty card coffee bean stamp. Coffees and chocolate twists all round and back out towards Oxford on the relative flat. Beyond Oxford the landscape changes subtly again as we start to climb into the Cotswolds towards the next control at Stow-on-the-Wold, arriving around lunchtime. We order food from a small cafe and the woman writes the name and address on the back of the receipt as evidence we were here.
After lunch we continue through the hills and then drop onto undulating roads to Worcester. Somewhere we cross another county border. As well as the three of us since before Stow we’ve been riding in a bit of a rag tag group with others that join us for parts then drop back or ride ahead on other sections. Part of the beauty of audax is this meeting of riders on the road, chatting a bit, then going your separate ways, then maybe hooking up again on another bit of road or at a control. There’s comfort in the constant bumping into the same people along the way, the sense of not being alone, a common pursuit.
Joining a cycle path on the edge of Worcester we follow the River Severn past the cathedral and onto the finishing straight of the Women’s Tour of Britain (well, the dismantling of the gantry and grandstand) and look for the next control. The first 200km has taken ten hours. We’ve a vague schedule of trying to get to the overnight sleep control at 370km by midnight so we’re more or less on schedule. More food. Another receipt.
Next up is an info control in the top left corner of the route before we turn south towards Hay-on-Wye. There’s a long steady climb about fifteen kilometres out of Worcester and I drop off the back of Simon and Ian but they are waiting for me at the top of the hill. Ahead is a stunning widescreen vista where England meets Wales and the Brecon Beacons rise abruptly beyond. It suddenly hits me that I love doing this; riding all day, drifting in and out of places, watching the subtle shifts in landscape, the rotation of the day. Tiredness and occasional boredom comes and goes but the pleasure of travelling under my own steam and being outside are constants. I haven’t felt like this for a while. Yeah I’ve enjoyed being up on the South Downs and feeling winter blend into spring into summer but I’ve not felt the desire – or need – to go and ride across a country in one go since before the Transcontinental. Today I’ve been reminded that I absolutely bloody love doing this.
We dive down out of the hills into farmland bisected by small lanes of variable surface and I’m starting to feel fatigued and struggling a bit. The info control is next to a pub so I run in to get a coke but buy a tonic water. Oh hello the indecision of tiredness, it’s been a while my old friend. I wish it had a gin in it. We crack on to Hay-on-Wye arriving just before 9pm. More food. Another receipt. I sit under the entrance awning next to the automatic doors so that I get a blast of warm air every time they slide open. With the falling dusk there’s a chill in the air so we pull jackets and buffs and knee warmers from saddlebags. Heading out of town we pass a hotel and a joint decision is made to see if we can get a coffee inside. Dumping our bikes on the terrace there is the sound of a disco emanating from around the back. Inside coloured lights dance around the edge of double doors. It’s like a portal to another world from a sixties sci-fi film. We stroll to the bar and they ask if we’ve come for the disco. Another joy of audax is riding into the evening when the juxtaposition of a stupid ride versus the real world is slightly more surreal than usual. There’s the standard “You’re doing what!?” conversation before tea and coffee appear on a tray out on the patio. We decline another invitation to join the disco. We’ve decided to sit outside despite the dropping temperature so that we don’t linger too long here. There’s still a way to go to get to Chepstow and bed, and if we sit on the sofas in the nicely warm hotel we may not leave…or be sucked through disco portal into the world of DNF.
A couple of cups of tea seem to have sorted me out and I feel much better tackling the next part of the route. Or maybe it’s because we’re getting nearer to a bed and turning back towards home. Whatever the reason we all seem to have perked up and we ping along chatting away. Riding into the mountains the light fades completely, the shapes of the hills dissolving into the dark. The Black Mountains. We enter a tunnel of light of our own making. Somewhere in the darkness a sheep bleats.
The route slowly winds up a valley to Blwch and the next info control. We’re off schedule for arriving at Chepstow for midnight and drifting towards arriving sometime between 1 and 2am. Midnight was the optimistic schedule in my head but any time before two is OK – that still means some sleep and back out at dawn. (My average time for a 300 suggests midnight was doable, however my track record with 400s contradicts this). We spot a red light ahead and as we get closer we realise it’s a guy we’ve seen on and off all day, and was complaining of not feeling good back in Hay, sat on a bench. We ask if he’s OK and he quickly latches onto our wheels. He’s considering packing but in the middle of Welsh mountains in the dark miles from a train station this isn’t really an option so he hangs on to our wheels so that we can help him as far as Chepstow. Maybe a sleep will help or at least there’ll be people and better bail options for getting back to London.
After scribbling the name(s) from the war memorial in our brevets we descend into the Usk valley along roads I vaguely know from a Tourist Trophy ride here a few years back and from many Green Man Festival attendances. In Crickhowell we pass a group of revellers all poshed up outside a restaurant and crack on down the A40 to Abergavenny which is lively on a Saturday night (Sunday morning). It’s another instance of audax clashing with the real world, a sense of having fallen into a crack down the side of normality. A feeling only heightened by a gentle fatigue fairly rapidly washing over me. We joke about stopping for a pint and a kebab. At least I think it’s a joke. Simon may well be being serious. We pass the bright lights of a twenty four hour petrol station and delve back into the dark. I’m starting to feel the lack of sleep last night.
All the way from the last info control has been pretty much downhill so we’ve made up some time, but the road to Chepstow is turning out to be a bit of a slog which leads into a frankly horrible hill that never seems to end. I stop counting after the third false summit. Finally the road tips downs into Chepstow and we navigate through a housing estate to a community centre for food and sleep.
Sunday
Around 4am there’s a fair amount of shuffling going on in the hall as people are awaking and getting ready to go back out on the road. I nip the loo and find Ian bent over sink as if about to be ill. I ask if he’s OK and he looks at me as if he doesn’t recognise me. This doesn’t look good. A short while later Ian passes me in the corridor and says “Sorry, I need to lie down for a bit longer” and disappears back into the dark hall. Outside it’s raining.
Simon and I grab some breakfast and hope that Ian feels better soon. Chatting to a couple of others that have ridden the Brian Chapman Memorial audax I discover there was a way of avoiding last nights climb, well this morning’s climb seeing as it was only about 4 hours ago. I make a mental note to remember this for next year if I enter again. Someone spots TCR#5 on my forks and asks about it. Turns out they also raced, finishing in 16 days. As he leaves he introduces himself as cap no.39 and asks which cap number I was. I answer 262a and he smiles. He tells me he volunteered at the start of TCRno4 and was given one of the left over race caps after the start, number 262.
Surpisingly Ian appears at the table with a plate of food. Looks like we’re on for all of us heading back together. This didn’t seem likely an hour ago. One benefit of the extra time spent here is that it’s stopped raining by the time we roll out through the door. The potential downside is we’re now nudging up against the time cut. However if we can maintain the same overall speed as yesterday we should gradually claw time back. There’s still the possibility of breaking 36 hours.
We set off slowly over the Severn Bridge, easing ourselves into the long day ahead (but not as long as yesterday). We climb up a lane I think I recognise from London-Wales-London and then turn onto the main road to Yate that I definitely remember from the Hailsham 600 and know can be ridden fast as it undulates downwards over a handful of kilometres. A glance over the shoulder every now and again to check Ian is still there.
Turning off onto smaller lanes the climbing starts again. The section to Pewsey is characterised by being hill after hill after hill, every time we climb I know it’s inevitable we’ll lose the height and the road will rise again soon enough. Such are the Cotswolds. Bloody hell some of these climbs drag on. Somewhere Simon punctures. Ian takes a nap. Then I puncture. Thirty minutes lost. Out of the Cotswolds and pretty much straight onto the Wessex Downs. Familiar names on signposts: Calne. Devizes. Chippenham. Hang on I know this road. From a ride to Bespoked, or maybe Mayhem? Whatever I’ve definitely ridden it, but the other way round. Which means I know there’s another hill coming. More time spent on the small ring. When we (eventually) arrive in Pewsey – and that last bit over Pewsey Vale is a right old trudge – we’re still a bit too close to the cut off for comfort.
The 30km stretch out of Pewsey retraces the Hailsham 600 so when Ian says he’s struggling to keep his eyes open I know plenty of places where a nap can be had. Ten minutes is all it takes to recharge his batteries. However mine suddenly seem to be draining and I’m hanging off the back unable to close the gap. Is that a twinge in my left achilles? Is my right knee niggling? My chain is definitely making a horrible please lube me, please lube me noise. At Whitchurch I tell Ian I’m happy to roll to the finish on my own, they don’t need to wait. There’s a faint trace of Transcon guilt rising in the back of my mind, I don’t want to be holding anyone up. Ian says “No, we’re sticking together.” I only met these two yesterday, this is beyond expectations or necessity. I lube my chain and grab some food from a shop.
As it turns out a silent and smooth running chain plus necking a smoothie has restorative powers and we’re all back on it. Perhaps it’s because we’ve crossed the 100km to go mark. Just a normal Sunday club run left. We cross Hampshire towards Surrey and this also aids my resolve as I grew up close enough to here to recognise place names on signposts so some comprehension of what’s left filters through my head.
We pull onto a petrol station forecourt in Hindhead. More food. Another receipt. A double espresso. Sitting on bags of logs or charcoal with our audax picnic drizzle fills the sky. I realise it hasn’t actually rained on us all ride until now. There were times yesterday when it looked likely, the sky turned onimous but it never actually rained. We rode on some damp roads this morning but again had avoided the rain. And by the time we’ve circumnavigated the Devil’s Punchbowl and dropped off the hill it’s stopped raining. Seems the cloud was just sitting atop the hills.
Less than 60km to go. ‘Oh I know this road’. Green tunnels through woodland. Roads I’ve ridden recently. 50km to go. A sign for the Surrey Hills. Roads I rode as a kid. 40km to go. Our speed increases in tiny increments the closer we get to London. Then it slows to a crawl over Coombe Lane. I don’t like this hill but it’s not as long as I remember it. Thankfully. Fast descent. Miss a turning. Less than 30km to go. Suburbia. Something resembling a sprint between Surbiton and Esher. The edge of the city. Thames Ditton. Surbiton. Cycle paths and speedbumps. A couple of wrong turns. Skids in underpasses. Getting over excited because we’re almost done.
Thirty eight hours and forty two minutes. We hand over our brevet cards and receipts to have our homework marked. Once it’s all ticked off we tuck into yet more food. In the disabled toilet I change out of my cycling kit into civvies. Damn, that feels better.
Thank yous and goodbyes are said before we freewheel down the hill to the station stopping at the Co-op on tbe way to get some beers for the train. Job done. It’s good to have ticked off a 600. I guess it’s 1000 next…
Thanks to Richard Evans and all the volunteers from Kingston Wheelers for organising a great audax, the friendly chat and awesome food at the start, middle(ish) and finish. See you for Rowlands RAAAmble in September.
Last year I took part in the fifth edition of the Transcontinental Race but unfortunately didn’t finish the race, making it across parts of Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy before stopping short of Control Point 3 in the High Tatras mountain range in northern Slovakia. After recuperating in Poprad for 36 hours we rode up to CP3 (at least putting that ghost to rest) on our way to Kraków airport in Poland to fly home. I saw ‘we’ as I was racing in a pair with my friend Jo. My disappointment of stopping mid-race was combined with feelings of guilt for letting down a friend and ruining their race. Scratching out of the race in a pair affected me more than I initially realised and dragged on for a while. For quite a while afterwards I fell out of love with riding a bike. Most of my riding was functional – commuting – and done on my own. My fitness fell off a cliff. For a long time I didn’t want to ride with others, didn’t want to feel that others were waiting for me.
Despite feeling awful the day we rode through the valleys from Merano to Bolzano to Trento and eventually onto Bassano del Grappa I did my best not to just look down at my stem the whole way. I looked around and it was clear this was a beautiful corner of the Dolomites. I made a silent vow to myself to return one day and have a proper look around. A few weeks ago I flew to Venice airport, re-assembled my Reilly Transcon bike in the arrivals hall, and rode off into the mountains. Same set up as for the Transcontinental except for different wheels, no dynamo hub this time as I had no intention of riding at night unless it was to and from a restaurant. This was credit card bike packing not a race.
I’d booked a B&B for each night of the trip and worked out routes between them. Each day wasn’t a particularly long distance, about 85km on average, but did include a lot of up and down, 15,000 metres of ascent over the eight days. That climbing was squeezed into the middle six days, it’s very flat between Venice and the mountains, which rise from the north Italian plain quite dramatically. No messing with gentle foothills or gradual rising into mountains: A large expanse of flat… then BAM! Mountains.
Some days I had different options between B&Bs, others there was only really one road. My route plotting was essentially based around riding the wiggliest roads I could find on the map. Always go the pretty way, never the shortest. Each morning I decided how the legs felt and picked a route from the list on the Garmin. I also had a paper map of the Dolomites which allowed me to adjust things on the fly if I felt the need or simply the desire. One day I realised that my plotted route was a bit daft – boring cycle path, then a steep climb up a main road -but scanning the paper map I found other squiggles through valleys and plateaus, which had the added bonus of being about 20km shorter. It turned out to be beautiful alternative, long steady climbs and fun scream if you want to go faster descents, a picnic lunch next to a lake at a thousand metres.
The mountains in spring are great for cycling. Being the quiet bit between the ski season and high summer the roads were empty and the weather was neither too hot nor too cold. However spring plus mountains does mean the weather can be changeable. Most days there was rain at some point, usually late in the afternoon, but I generally managed to miss it by either finishing riding mid-afternoon or tactical use of coffee stops as the weather also tended to change quickly. Except the longest riding day of the trip where it rained heavily pretty much all day. That was a day for delving back into the Transcontinental resolve, gritting my teeth and just pedaling. It’s easier when you know there is a bed and a shower waiting for you at the end of the day rather than a bivvy bag under a flyover.
Days were fueled by pizza, pasta, gelato, and espressos. There was no rush so I stopped when I felt like it. Took in the views. I rode over Monte Grappa, the mountain control point in the Transcontinental Race, twice. Once from the south, once from the north, managing to ride most of the roads up or down it. I rode a few parts of our Transcontinental route, a couple of bits backwards, and stopped at the petrol station a few kilometres outside Trento where I’d needed coffee and Fanta and a moment to recompose myself after a minor sweary meltdown on the way out of the city last year.
About half way through this trip it became apparent how much fitter I was this time last year and when I took part in the Transcontinental. Looking at the map I had with me I also noticed how far I’d managed to ride the day I felt run down and full of snot. It was actually quite a long way. Despite the whirlwind of negative feelings at the time of dropping out of the race and in the weeks and months afterwards in retrospect riding 2200km across Europe in under 9 days isn’t something to be sniffed at (even if I was sniffing a lot at the time). It was at this moment I also realised that my love of cycling had returned, big time. Bikes are bloody ace. So are mountains.
One day I may even have another bash at the Transcontinental.
The Sussex Spring Classic 2018. 120km of stupid fun on the lanes, farm tracks, and bridleways of Sussex in homage to the spring classics of northern Europe (more Tro Bro Leon than Flanders). A bit late this year due to being disorganised and shit weather. The annual email to the usual suspects ended with…
*disclaimer: there are four new sections, three i’ve never ridden before and the other one i haven’t ridden for a few years as the last time it was flooded up to my bottom bracket. i’m sure it’ll all be fine.
Stroll up the street to cable tie AUK Control signs to lamp posts. Wander back to the sports club…
and wait.
Scan the start list for familiar names, a few. Stare out of the window…
and wait.
The first rider pulls into the car park, wheels his bike through the door. Check time, scribble it next to the name on the list, and on the brevet card, stamp card. He’s on a fast one and heads off immediately. A few minutes later four more. Stamp cards, offer tea, coffee, food. Chatter. Water bottles refilled and they’re off. Another rider arrives, water top up is all that is needed.
Look out of the window, wait some more.
A slow trickle of people starts, pairs and trios, the occasional solo rider. Matching club jerseys and groups that have coalesced on the road for company and a wheel to sit on occasionally. Some stay, some leave as soon as their card is marked. Make cups of tea and coffee, heat up soup. The room slowly fills with conversations. Riders appear at shortening intervals.
Having a good ride? Stamp card, tick another name off, flick kettle on, make tea, make coffee. Would you like food? What have you got? Sweet potato and pepper soup with a bread roll, flapjack with fruit. Yes please all of that. Make more tea, run out of cups, clear tables, wash up cups, dry up cups, refill kettle.
The sun is starting to set. A steady influx of riders now. Count the spaces with no times, forty riders through, eighty left. A few more arrive. Bikes lean against walls and radiators. Carbon, aluminum, steel. Deep section rims and dynamo hubs. Aero bars and Carradice saddlebags. A powerpack taped to a top tube. A rear wheel is removed, the tube pulled out and replaced. Another rider appears at the door.
How are you? Stamp card, tick another name off, flick kettle on, make tea, make coffee. Would you like food? What have you got? Sweet potato and pepper soup with a bread roll, flapjack with fruit. Yes please all of that. Make more tea, run out of cups, clear tables, wash up cups, dry up cups, refill kettle.
Sugar in tea for those who don’t usually have sugar in tea. Where have all the teaspoons gone? Hoik a teabag out with a fork. It’s dark outside. LED lumens flash through the window. Count the lights…one, two, three, four more. Lean over and flick the kettle back on. Names of DNFs texted through, cross them off the list. Knee warmers, jackets, buffs, gloves, all tugged from framebags. Getting cold out now. Lend my down jacket to a woman who can’t get warm. Someone rolls himself in a foil blanket and crashes out on the floor. There’s the low hum of snoring from the corner of the room. Bodies lie next to phones plugged into sockets. I’d quite like to sit down. A few more riders wheel bikes through the door.
How you doing? Stamp card, tick another name off, flick kettle on, make tea, make coffee. Would you like food? What have you got? Sweet potato and pepper soup with a bread roll, flapjack with fruit. Yes please all of that. Make more tea, run out of cups, clear tables, wash up cups, dry up cups, refill kettle.
Count the gaps on the start sheet, about thirty left. People are slumped on tables or leaning back and staring into space. Someone is asleep under a table, another has his feet up on a windowsill. Thousand yard stares. Gentle snoring. A broken freehub. A long wait for a friend with a car. A rear mech failure, stuck on the 11. Frayed cable doesn’t look like it’ll take much more, wind the screw in so at least the chain sits a couple of cogs up. The big hills are out of the way.
Midnight. Waiting for about twenty more. Dribs and drabs. The gaps between ticking off names lengthens again. Empty gel wrappers and half eaten bags of peanuts left on tables. Another couple of lights in the street outside.
How you doing? Stamp card, tick another name off, flick kettle on, make tea, make coffee. Would you like food? What have you got? Sweet potato and pepper soup with a bread roll, flapjack with fruit. Yes please all of that. Make more tea, run out of cups, clear tables, wash up cups, dry up cups, refill kettle.
Two in the morning, only an hour left, three names left. Have they scratched? Did someone forget to get their card stamped? Are they out there somewhere? They’re pushing right up against the time limit. I don’t fancy their chances of finishing on time if they’re not here yet. More importantly I’d like to go to bed now. Stack chairs around the sleeping guy waiting for a taxi back to London.
Eight minutes past three. Officially closed. Those three missing names remain on the list.
Wash up, dry up. Sweep the floor. Switch off the lights. Lock the doors.
Awake before the alarm and sun rise. Fall out of bed, flick on the radio. The World Service, still too early for Radio 4. Thick black coffee, teaspoon of sugar. The Shipping Forecast, the long version, inshore waters included. It’s still early but light outside as I bounce the bike down the steps.
Freewheel down to the sea. The moon is slowly sinking towards the horizon, below a ship reflects pink light from the hidden rising sun. I watch the ship as I ride beside the sea. How close is it to the harbour? Can I beat it to the lock gates? I don’t have time to get caught at the locks today. Past the twisted metal of the burned out harbour shed I cut inland, zig and zag around the warehouses and through the suburbs. The tracing paper moon fades into the deepening sky. Empty streets but for a paper boy and a paper girl, bikes dropped at the end of driveways.
Along the river under the flyover I ride in the shadow of the hillside. By the time I cross the river it has breached the line of the hill and I cast a long shadow. Into the trees briefly, a sharp little climb to a gate, then to the pig pens. The sound of my breathing fades as the gradient eases. First gate. Second gate. The back wheel slips on the narrow muddy line that almost runs parallel to the fence. My tyres press their patterns into recent footprints in the mud. Is this the way Angus is running?
I stop for a moment to take in the view back towards the sun. Stretched shadows and the shimmer of early morning soften the hills. I rode those hills two days ago under low grey skies. A skylark sings. A song implicit of this place, heard out of context a sound that, without fail, evokes home and warm hillsides. Chalk and flint under wheel. I pass the trig point and splash through puddles. A lone figure is further along the ridge, a red jacket vibrant in contrast with the green and blue that fills the rest of the view. It takes two dips and one slight rise to catch them. I slow and say “Morning!” to Angus and we continue the route together.
I rattle across the cattlegrid as Angus passes through the gate to it’s side. Above us, ahead white figures dance amongst the trees, the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men. This is why we came, to meet Spring. From among the trees I see the sea to the south, and to the west the familiar shapes and shadows of the scarp slope – Truleigh Hill, Devil’s Dyke, Newtimber, Ditchling Beacon. I can see home and the Ashdown Forest floating above distant mist. Almost all of Sussex, both of them, East and West, are visible from here. The dancers finish with a song.
A druid invokes the God and Goddess, the Sun and the Moon.
Paths past garden gates, those neglected places where stinging nettles and wild flowers thrive. Next to a railway line and over a stream that is obscured from view throughout town; behind the houses, buried under streets, channeled through concrete, feeding into the Ouse somewhere in the Railway Land. It’s running high and fast now as winter’s rain drains from the Downs into the overflowing chalk aquifiers deep below. Alleyways, brick walls, fences, hedges, sneaking around the edge of town. Edgelands, the liminal places. A smattering of colour amongst the trees beside the chalk path. Guerrilla gardening or seeds fleeing from manicured lawns and tidy beds? Past the back of the prison and up through the tunnel of trees to the race course, the track rutted and pockmarked with hoof prints. Out of the shadows into the sunshine and wind.
Ahead, something is riding on that wind. A raptor of some kind? Definitely not a crow or magpie, maybe a buzzard. The tail flicks round, forked, then a flash of red as the sun catches it’s torso. A red kite, wow! Not seen one of these here before and never seen one so close. Stop to watch. Ten, fifteen metres away, a metre from the ground, then further up to catch the breeze and hunt along the ridge. Hassled by a crow it circles up into the sunlight, silhouetted, splayed feathers at the wing tips, definitely a forked tail. Yes, a ride kite. Glides down on the other side of the track, surfs the wind along the hillside. I watch until it is little more than a dot fading into the blue.
Orange-pink cracks of light in the murky grey sky to the east contradict the weather forecast I saw the day before. This is good. If it lasts. The predicted headwind is present though. By 35km I’m cowering in a bus stop on a junction, 5km later when I spot an open café I’m wringing water out of my gloves. The forecast was correct. Never mind, need to bash out 315km today so neck a hot sweet coffee and back on the road and across field after field. Sky fades into the land, and everything dissolves into rain. The grey sky drains the land of colour, ahead of me looks like a slightly out of focus badly exposed photograph. I pull the peak of my cap down a little.
I pass a stone outline of France with a picture of a cyclist and then spot a picture of Jacques Anquetil on the side of the road. I look down and the Garmin says I’m riding on Cote Jacques Anquetil. Something to look up later as I’m too cold and wet to stop now to check it out. The road swoops down into the Seine Valley and the distinct shape of the hillside ahead is familiar from riding near this way last year.
I stop for another coffee and to warm up a bit. As I pay for my coffee the woman says something about it not being cycling weather. I have to concur. I ride a couple of hundred metres down the road and spot a bakery, I pull over to grab some food. I exit the bakery into rain. It’s hammering down. I run over the road to another bar. I order a hot chocolate and look at the clock on the wall. Almost five hours to ride 80km (and 30 minutes to ride the last 250 metres). This isn’t fast enough. I start to recalculate plans in case I don’t pick up the pace.
I climb in and out of a couple of small river valleys and wind and rain until I find myself following the Seine into a strong headwind. At least the rain has stopped. I spy a bus shelter and decide it’s time for some lunch and to have a look at the map and rejigger the day’s plans. Three hundred k’s is off the table for today. I’m well off schedule and a look at the forecast tells me the wind is going to get stronger. Chartres is 110km nearer than Blois (my planned stop for today) and the Formula 1 hotel has rooms. I hit ‘Book Now’ on my phone and dig my credit card out of my wallet. OK, sorted. This is a holiday after all. I’m not training for anything daft this year. 110km done, 100km to go.
I cross the Seine and a while later the Eure twice, then climb gently to vast plateau of fields a huge sky rushes by. Clouds race, showers pass, I mutter about the wind, on more than one occasion I am out of the saddle on the flat just to move forwards. Open fields and wide horizons and wind. A wind that whips and sideswipes me. The words “Fuck off wind!” are torn from my mouth and flung across a field. My leg knee grumbles. This is a fight I’m not going to win. Skylark song is buffeted about the sky. I unclip. Swing of water. Biscuit from my musette. I look behind me, a rainbow stretches across the horizon. Clip back in.
I find myself crossing the Eure again. The sun is shining. A can of iced tea in a bus shelter next to a bridge. Must be getting close now. Chartres is on the Eure isn’t it? Ten kilometres down the road and ‘Chartres’ appears on a signpost with a green bicycle. Spirits rise, as does my speed for a short while. I trace a line between a railway and the river. I stop and sit on the step of a Salle de Fete in the sunshine to eat a biscuit. A jazz piano trio start up inside. I stay for two songs and as I ride away I see a banner for that evening’s entertainment strung across the building above where I was sat. I must have caught rehearsals.
Garmin says straight ahead. Up a slight hill. Cyclepath signpost says right. Flat. I turn right onto the cyclepath to the outskirts of Chartres where the signposting gets vague, so I follow a kid on a BMX hoping he’s heading into town. The spires of the cathedral appear at the end of the road catching the evening sun. Quick look at my phone to find the hotel. I check in and collapse on the bed and consider how many dinners to have.
Once I’ve eaten two dinners from MacDonalds (both equally disappointing but I’m too tired to walk any further than the Maccy D’s next to the hotel) I look at the map and weather forecast to work out plan for next couple of days. After looking at a few options I decide that tomorrow I will ride as far as today’s intended destination, Blois. This means I can have a lie in and an easier day to recover a bit before continuing with the two planned 200km days to Geuret and then to Gagnac-sur- Cere. The thought of getting up early to knock out 300km into headwind all day doesn’t appeal. I book into the Formula 1 in Blois for the next evening and fall asleep.
…
Next morning I drink vending machine coffee and watch French cartoons. Seeing as I only need to ride 110km today I get another coffee and watch some more. I check what the weather is doing out of the window and watch a few more.
I ride back into town to find a bakery and take a look at the cathedral before zigzagging out of town trying to find my plotted route, heading south through the suburbs and into the grasslands. Another flat road, another unbroken horizon. I can see exactly where I’m heading and clearly there’ll be no respite from the wind. This goes on for quite a while. Hunker down. Pedal. Bored.
I tend to route myself via the inbetween places, often only seeing cars on the horizon, on the big roads, whilst I travel on smaller roads, crossing or running parallel to those faster strips of tarmac. Today I seem to have managed to route myself inbetween the inbetween places. For about 40km I see nothing but grass and wind turbines. I don’t think I change gear or need to steer for those 40km. The only ‘hill’ I encounter is when the road is raised over a railway line. I dream of a left turn. Not right, that would involve riding directly into the wind. Left means a tailwind. This is a futile desire. I know I’ll be riding into a cross-headwind all afternoon.
Eventually a junction to break the monotony. I turn onto a smaller road, a lane into a small hamlet. The sky breaks and I’m joined by my shadow. Clouds rush overhead. I pass through small villages, but no shops, no bars. I’m reliant upon cemetery taps for water and my musette for food. I start to see powerlines vanishing to a point on the horizon, an indication of something bigger than a village. I notice the sparkle of sunlight on car windows ahead and remember that my route runs tangentially to the A10 motorway before Blois. The motorway and powerlines converge where buildings break the horizon. I’m getting near.
Negotiating busy arterial roads and roundabouts on the outskirts of Blois is a bit of shock to the system after two days of very little traffic. I find myself sprinting across two lanes of a dual carriageway and a slip road to the relative safety of the gutter. I follow the blue signs to ‘Centre-Ville’ and ride to the middle of the bridge over the Loire. I stare down river for a moment and take a swig of water. I freewheel back off the bridge into the busy town and find a bar with a spare table in the sunshine for a coffee and a beer. Then it’s back up the hill to the F1 via a Carrefour Express to stock up on dinner and spare food for tomorrow.
…
I trundle through the cobbled streets and over the Loire before the city wakes up. Not even the bakeries are open. I follow the edge of the river for a while. From the Loire valley I rise and fall gently to the Cher valley and follow that river for a short distance before turning back into the hills. The clouds have broken as I climb back up onto the agricultural plains and I watch shadows scud across the fields. However the landscape is subtly shifting, less of the monocultures of the last two days, smaller fields, woodlands, roads that curve and undulate, a sky that appears smaller. Throughout the day the change gets greater, arable gives way to livestock, the hills get larger, the climbs longer.
Before the hills start in earnest I traverse a corner of La Brenne, the Land of a Thousand Lakes. Long straight roads lined with drainage ditches and trees, the lakes glimpsed through the leafless branches. The narrow water courses beside my wheels remind me of riding on Pevensey Levels, where these have many names; streams, ditches, sewers, guts, havens, fleets – I’m sure there are many French names for them here too. Clicks and splashes distract me as I ride but I’m too late to see what makes the noises when I glance sideways. The road is straight and quiet so it’s easy to watch the stream for a few metres, I see a splash but not what made it, but then am surprised to see a turtle on the side of a ditch. Do you find turtles in the wild in France? I make a mental note to Google this later. A mile or so later I see a signpost with a silhouette of a turtle in a red triangle. I guess you do.
Beyond the lakes the lanes narrow and start to twist and corkscrew and climb. I leave the flatlands behind me and start the climb toward the Millevaches. I seem to be going up just to come back down just to go up again just to once again come down. Half of the days climbing, a thousand metres, is gained in the last quarter of the distance. Every now and again I catch a view of the dark lumps of tomorrow’s hills, they look substantial. Ducking and diving between villages and steep sided river valleys I luck upon a small auberge next to the river Creuse. Two euros for a coffee and an Orangina. Geuret is on the signpost opposite, 25km.
I don’t follow all of the signs for Geuret as I found some shortcuts, but I end up on a cobbled farmtrack covered in mud and cowshit and remember there was a section I couldn’t Streetview and the satellite images hadn’t help much. It was 50/50 whether it would be rideable. On another day I would risk it but I’m 185km into day 3 and I’m tired and just want to get to the hotel. I turn around and follow those signposts for Geuret to find the hotel, a meal, and a beer.
…
I set off early but not too early. The sun is over the horizon and a patisserie is open on the outskirts of town. The climbing starts from the off, the town is built on a hillside. A long climb follows, like those in the foothills of mountains, a relatively easy gradient up through pine forest. There’s definitely a different feel to the landscape. A pattern emerges – climb, plateau, undulate, climb, plateau, undulate. Emptiness but for trees. It’s quiet but for the rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat of unseen woodpeckers.
It’s hazy today but warm. Tights, jacket, and gloves have been stuffed in the saddlebag. Shorts and knee warmers, jersey, gilet, mitts, and the gilet is unzipped for most of the day’s climbs. Having ridden through Anquetil’s bit of Normandy on the first day I now find myself in Raymond Poulidor’s bit of Limousin. A sign on the side of the road informs me I am riding on the Circuit of the Legends along one edge of Lac de Vassiviere. Something to look into later.
Somewhere after that there is a fast swooping descent, on the drops and grin like an idiot. Alongside a river, under a railway bridge, over the river, over the railway lines and stop in a town square and unpack lunch, penknife, and spork from my musette. I check the route, 85km, half way, sort of. However I’ve climbed as high as I’m going to climb for the day and the roads should start to tip down and follow a downward trajectory all the way to the Dordogne river now. This is a simplification but it makes the next 100 odd kilometres seem less of an effort.
Indeed there are definitely more downhills after lunch, still a lot of sharp ups between them, but I do seem to be utilizing the big ring more. I plotted as straight a line as possible between overnight stops to keep the overall distance low. What this means is lots of tiny roads between big roads. The big roads follow ridges and rivers, easy gradients tracing the contour lines of the map. The little ones disappear off into steep valleys inbetween. Back in the inbetween places. The pay-off for less distance is a lot more climbing, but another pay-off is no traffic, pretty roads, and amazing views. As I hit yet another ridge line I see the snow covered peaks of the Massif Central. This means I must be getting close to Argentat, which is good as 1) there’s a long descent to Argentat, 2) from there I have a flat road along the Dordogne to Gagnac-sur-Cere.
Indeed, I career down a steep twisty descent to a river that feeds into the Dordogne – I almost end up in the river when I go into the last corner to the narrow stone bridge over said river a tad too quick. One last hill is squeezed in before I get to the outskirts of Argentat, It’s early evening on Easter Monday and the town is quiet. I stop on the bridge and look down to see if the bar on the riverside is open. It is but I decide to crack on. Only 25km to go and I should just get it done. I stuff a hand into the musette to see what biscuits I might have left and find a bar of marzipan chocolate I forgot I had bought earlier in the day. Bonus.
This last bit I know, I’ve ridden it many times over the years. It’s longer than I remember, and the road surface has deteriorated a lot since I last came this way. Buzzards hunt in the fields squeezed between the hills and river. Mentally I tick of known landmarks – the bridge, the campsite, the left turn that heads up into the hills, the sign for the canoe place – until I pop out at the second last junction. Engage autopilot. One long straight uphill(ish) road past the supermarket, kink to the right, one long straight downhill(ish) road, first roundabout, second roundabout, round the back of the jam factory and I’m done. I settle down on the aero bars and pedal.
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