The last blog entry left us just about to go out for our “Gala Champagne Dinner” in…err.. Champagne. It also turned out to be “goodbye to Guy”. Guy had to be back in the UK by Saturday and so he left us on Friday night to get the train home. Despite some misgivings about having to weave our way through traffic, cross a couple of ditches and a roundabout, the restaurant turned out to be extremely nice. Very upscale and upmarket despite being housed in what looked like a Norwegian B&B. The food was very fancily presented and very tasty. The desert was rather strangely designed in that it appeared to be a culinary version of a sperm fertilising an egg. See photo…
While we were having a rather subdued evening, the “Wives And Girlfriends” were painting Cambridge a deep shade of red. Despite a great deal of quizzing from the Husbands and Boyfriends, very little information has leaked about the WAGs night out beyond some hints of large quantities of alcohol being consumed.
The hotel was a motelly sort of place and was fine although Dik and I had to share our room with 8 bikes. Not a problem but you don’t want to get up in the middle of the night and stumble around looking for the toilet when there’s eight bikes to bump into.
Day three dawned bright and clear just like the previous days. We really were very very lucky with the weather on this trip. If the weather had been bad it would have been a lot less enjoyable. We loaded up on carbs and Tony stuck with his Weetabix. This time he spiced them up with some fruit salad. It’s been a journey of discovery for Tony and his breakfasts.
The last day is often hard and was made harder buy a lot of…tenderness amongst a number of the riders. One person had a very upset stomach and Dik continued to be quite unwell. However, we set off and pretty soon we were in the groove rolling through the countryside south of Eperney. This is the heart of the Champagne region and you cycle past the vineyards of all the famous brands you’ve drunk. Unsurprisingly, there’s also a lot of Chateaux which you’ve never heard of and are probably destined to be “the second cheapest bottle of Champagne on your list waiter!”. © Homer Simpson.
Champagne can only come from Champagne (in fact I seem to remember somebody telling me that Champagne is really an adjective, not a noun and in languages where there’s a difference, Champagne is the adjectival form. Sorry, that was a bit of a digression.). Anyway, given that there’s a limited amount of land that Champagne can come from, there is a very strong economic incentive to cover every last bit of land with vines. Every hill, every little plot of land has vines on them. I had retained a romantic notion that the grapes are picked by walnut skinned little old men who then tramp them in some ancient barrel. Of course it’s a very mechanised business and all the vines are a regulation 90cm apart, no taller than 50cm and planted in absolutely utterly straight lines. This is to allow the mechanical pickers to work in between the rows. They also have very odd looking spindly tractors which can drive above the vines.
We were following the Valley of the Marne down towards Paris. There are quite a lot of photographs of this section in the photograph album below because it’s just so amazingly beautiful. Picture postcard France in many ways. Everything went very well for the first bit of the morning. Then John stopped in the middle of a village and directed us all off the Garmin route and over the Marne to the other side. Then it all got a bit hairy. Pete and Dik got completely lost and ended up doing at least 10 extra miles and a big extra hill. John actually stopped redirecting people and went on the right route himself. I ended up on my own and cut back across the Marne on a tiny pedestrian bridge. It was mayhem and there were a lot of the group spread out all over the Marne Valley. Eventually we all congregated at Chateau Thierry, had a coffee and waited for Pete and Dik.
At this point the stories diverge a little. I shot off to do the 50km to Meaux on my own. I was feeling really strong and it was a fantastic ride. The rolling countryside opened up and flattened out and one could sweep up and through the tiny little picturesque villages. For me this was the best section of the trip. For others it wasn’t quite so good and Dik for one was really suffering. The final section into Meaux wasn’t all that nice. Dual carriageways, big lorries, a couple of unexpected hills and traffic lights that seemed to be designed to go red just as a cyclist approach. JJ and Godric swept up and got Dik to the stop at Meaux but he was looking pretty bad. I think he would have liked to get the car into Paris but (maybe foolishly) JJ, Godric and I convinced Dik that we could cycle into Paris slowly and “it’ll be fine Dik, don’t worry mate, it’ll be easy”. Famous last words indeed!
We had two groups. The front group with John just whizzed into Paris in a pretty uneventful blast. They passed the back of Disneyland and got to the hotel without any problem. On the way into Paris, the only man who was not wearing cleats managed to fall over and also simultaneously get a puncture. Those of you who have been reading the blog carefully will have noticed that there’s no mention of punctures. That’s because we only had one in the entire trip which was Layton’s on the last day. Between us we cycled 4500 km and had one puncture. That’s really extraordinary good luck. Falling off your bike when you’re not even wearing cleats is just silly though!
The “slow” group was JJ, Godric, Tim, Dik and me. It was supposed to be an easy ride into Paris but things started to go wrong about 10km into the final section. For some reason the Garmins (upon which we are now utterly reliant) decided that there was no route into Paris. For some period of time they didn’t even think there were any roads. All we had was a compass bearing towards the hotel and a vague sense of direction.
It got hotter and hotter and we started to get a little sunburned. Godric in particular was like a lobster. In a vain attempt to get some sun protection, he rubbed JJ’s..err…arse cream onto his arms. The chance that some chemist thought “I know, this cream is going to be good for chaffed buttocks but let’s put some SPF 20 into it too” is pretty small. The roads got crappier, Dik got more and more wiped out. We were stopping every 10km for a coke and a rest. The low point was cycling up a horrible steep hill that we realised we didn’t need to cycle up after all. No wait: the low point was when Godric gave Dik one of those energy sweets and he spat it out instantly saying he was going to be sick. No, the low point was having no idea where we were going, cycling through red lights in the Paris traffic with JJ shouting back at us “It’s only advisory guys”… Eventually and very late we rolled into Paris Bercy and found the Hotel Pullman. The rest of the team was there and we fell upon beers like a marauding army. It was over.
The stats for the day are screwed up because of screwed up Garmins. Different people took different routes but it was slightly over 150km and the average speed was around 26km/h before lunch and about 15km/h after lunch. Some of the route is here:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/34135755
Cycling over we headed out to the restaurant that JJ had booked. Dik was so knackered, he stayed in, watched the football and had an early night. Given what Dik had been through in the past three days, that was very sensible. In retrospect, some of the rest of us maybe should have had a quiet night in too. The restaurant was a little place called Restaurant De Tournbievre and it is well worth a visit if you’re in Paris. It’s literally on the banks of the Seine right next to Notre Dame cathedral. Really very good food, a reasonable wine list and not too expensive at all. We drank for Britain: Emile the waiter plied us with champagne, three different wines and the chef brought out some special Armagnac for us to drink. For 14 people to eat enormous amounts of food and drink almost unlimited amounts of alcohol, it was 800 euros. Which is pretty good in Paris. Then it got a bit messy. JJ showed us his 50 euro underpants in the restaurant and some of us wanted to go on and continue to party. Emile pointed us a bar on Rue Descartes…
At this point the curtain drops and to save everybody’s embarrassment there will be no more blog about last night. A number of people got little or no sleep. You know who you are…
7.30am came round very very quickly and I’m pretty certain I was still drunk. Cycling to the Gare Du Nord this morning was probably the most dangerous part of the trip as 8 or 9 very hung over (or maybe still drunk) blokes tried to weave through traffic, jump “advisory” traffic lights and go the wrong way up one way streets…again. There was the now traditional comedy scene where there was nobody at the bike drop off place (just like last year). Coffee, cokes, sandwiches for breakfast and there’s a very quiet and subdued group sleeping on the train as I write this.
Although this blog is a joint effort from all concerned, I’ve done the writing and this gives me a licence to do a more personal section at the end and also to add some thanks.
Firstly, we all have to thank JJ and John for arranging the trip. Absolutely everything went like clockwork. Hotels, restaurants, trains, timing. The route was mostly done by John and was just perfect. Tough enough to be challenging but we went through some of the prettiest parts of Belgium and France. Once again, we all have to thank Mick for being the driver. We quite literally couldn’t have done this without Mick’s support. He drove the car, took all the luggage and wherever we stopped, for coffee or lunch, Mick was there smiling and dispensing water, mars bars and bananas. When we got to the hotels, Mick would already be there with the rooms sorted out and the bags out of the car. It is stuff like this that makes it possible and we all owe a lot to Mick as the most important member of the team.
Finally I’d like to thank everybody else for being on the trip. The 15 of us are thrown together due to a variety of networks and links but everybody gets on very well and we have a really really good time. The company, the laughing and the jokes are what makes it more than just a tough physical challenge. It becomes an experience which I personally wouldn’t want to miss. Thanks guys and here’s to next year.
The final photo album is below. There’s a few random pictures from previous days and once again, there’s probably too many sort of samey pictures but I know the WAGs like to see their own “special person” and to make sure that everybody is in the pictures somewhere there just have to be a lot of them. Oops, I forgot to thank Andy for being the official tour photographer (assisted by Ed of course).
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