We all got to the bar in the hotel and had what would laughably be called a “pep talk” by JJ.  This inspirational and motivational speech seemed to consist mostly of phrases like “tomorrow will be a bastard” and “it’s going to be really really tough” and “if you make it to lunchtime without a major acute myocardial infarction, you’re going to be one of the lucky ones”.  That all made us feel pretty perky.  It was also one of the contributors to a great deal of sleep being lost last night.  For some people it was phonecalls in the middle of the night, for others the sounds of the pimps arguing with the punters outside our hotel, for others it was the sweet sweet sound of freight trains clanking through Liege at 4am and for most of us it was the fear of the following day.  The heating in the rooms was on max so one had the choice of the pleasant sounds of urban Liege and a reasonable temperature or alternatively one had to sleep in a sauna.  Oh and the prospect of the 6.45 breakfast and 7.30 start weighed heavy on the mind…

So breakfast was a slightly subdued and tense affair.  Men of a certain age decked out in Lycra looking completely wasted didn’t really inspire a lot of confidence.  That being said, Tony Flinn brought his own breakfast!  12 Weetabix all the way from the UK.  You just can’t trust Johnny Foreigner’s breakfasts you know.

There was a tremendous amount of faffing around before we managed to “bike up” and get off through Liege.  It’s not what one would call a pretty town really and the traffic was heavy.  However, after about 3km we turned off onto the steepest hill of the day.  There should have been a sign in Dutch saying “De Bastard Heuvel” or something.  Really really steep, seemed endless, no warming up and at one point I really thought I might have to get off.  It was only the peer pressure and the thought of endless evenings of ritual humiliation at the hands of the L’Etape Boys which kept me going.  It should be mentioned that three of the group (John, Godric and Guy) are doing L’Etape this year.  So they are as fit as butchers dogs and consider today as just a gentle warm up for the main event.  For the rest of us, it was a lot more brutal.  So I think that hill was the last time I saw L’Etape Boys until coffee.

The hills kept coming and the group split up into a number of smaller groups each doing things at their own pace.  There’s a reasonable spread of fitness and speeds in the group so it’s hard to keep everything together.  However, it was all going well until we came into a town called Sprimont and Tim’s bike just stopped.  The chain had broken.  Now, there’s a lesson in this:  If you want to build your own bike, don’t get Guy and Tim to do it.  Use a professional.  Mick came back to pick up Tim and found a bike shop to fix the bike.  The rest of us just ground it out until coffee.  This was in a rather beautiful town called  La Roche en Ardeness.  A really nice run down into the town which sits in a river valley.  Now, that should have been a big hint that there was some pain to come but we all just drank coffee and felt good about ourselves.  70km done, the back of it broken, how hard can it be?  And only 30km to Lunch?  Dik is really quite unwell and so he took the car to lunch.  La Roche was also notable for having the fattest man in Belgium in it.  Really.  Huge.

Right out of La Roche, it was just an absolutely monster series of hills.  Rolling, long, steep in places.  Tony Flinn had been given a card by his wife entitled “How Hard Can It Be?”.  Well he managed to cycle into the back of a stationary car and cut his lip.  So it can be that hard.  He’s explained to me about 3 times how this can happen but I’m still none the wiser to be honest.  Seems pretty difficult to me.  There were some occasional slightly odd routings and we did end up doing a few backtracks and some time on woodland paths which was…entertaining. 

Lunch was in Saint Hubert about 100km from the start.  A nice little bistro with a Swiss theme…only in Belgium eh?  We’d planned to have a nice quick stop and get back on the road but by now, the sun was shining, the temperature was perfect, it was really beautiful so we kicked back and had some food.  Ed’s was particularly notable in that nobody really seemed to know what it was but when it arrived it was a horrible bit of cold fish with a horrible sauce.  Really really bad.  But there were chips and lasagne and meaty things which were great.  This is going to be a recurring theme of this holiday.  The food.  When you’re a “man of a certain age”, you get used to not eating huge amounts of food otherwise you end up like the “fattest man in Belgium”.  But when you’re burning up 4000+ calories a day…oh yes baby, bring on the deep fried lard and I’ll have two puddings thank you. 

I was the “broom” after lunch.  This involves staying at the back and making sure nobody gets left behind.  Sadly it was me who got left behind so I was my own broom.  The first section was being tarmaced and so by the end of it all our bikes were covered in tar and little tiny stones and shit like that.  It really was horrible.  Then it was just a long 50km on not very pleasant roads.  Quite a lot of dual carriage way, quite a lot of painful hills.   Actually a really big lot of painful hills.  The legs were feeling it a bit by then.

There was a really nice run down into the beautiful town of Bouillon where we’d decided to have a beer.  We’re hoping to have beers in Broth, Borsch and Bisque later in the trip.  The road was wide, flat and really nicely downhill.  Flying into Bouillon felt really good.  But the course had one last sting in the tail.  A huge long grind up to our hotel.  Not wildly steep but long and painful.  The L’Etape Boys raced up it.  I think John won but maybe it was Godric.  We can let them fight it out.

So, given that everybody was at a different speed, my personal Garmin Stats don’t reflect everybody’s performance.  The complete route is here:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/33917872

For me it was 149km, with just under 2000m of climbing.  That’s a lot.  And explains the pretty pathetic average speed of 22.5km/h.  I’m sure the L’Etape boys did considerably better than that.  I used 5665 calories according to the Garmin (although it’s probably more like 4000) and had an average heart rate of 141 which is mildly scary.

Everybody is feeling very perky now.  This is likely to be punctured pretty quickly tomorrow morning when we realise we’ve got to do the whole thing again and then do it again the following day.  Still, alcohol intake this evening should dull the fear…

Here is a photo album with a selection of Andy’s pictures.

View Full Album

So, after the successes (and excesses) of the previous trip last year from Brussels to Paris, a similar but not identical group has reformed to tackle the somewhat harder ride from Liege to Paris.  The full list of idiots who have agreed to do this are Guy Boyce Cam, Geoff Connell, Ed Currie, Tony Flinn, Ewan Kirk, John Lane, Andy McGuinness, JJ McNeil, Peter McNeil, Martin Mitchell, Godric Smith, Layton Tamberlin, Tim Tyndall and Dik Veenman.  As was the case last year, Mick Mahindra is driving the car, bringing the bags, and being the support vehicle.  If it all gets truly horrible somewhere in the Ardennes then there’s maybe space for two people to get a lift from Mick…Looking at the route, I can foresee fights breaking out somewhere round about the 100km mark on day one as people treat the two places in Mick’s car rather like the last helicopter out of Saigon.

It’s rapidly becoming traditional for us all to meet at St Pancras, drink champagne and then everybody buys huge amounts of food to “eat on the journey”.  Oh and more champagne to “drink on the journey”.  The tradition was fully complied with and we staggered onto the train weighed down with huge amounts of food.  This is the downside of setting off on a trip where there’s heavy exercise ahead.  One feels that it gives you a licence to eat just about anything you want.  Last year I came back weighing more than I left despite using up some huge amount of calories every day. 

Oh and although we’re all very familiar with telling our children “don’t eat their sandwiches right away”, we had a quick laugh at the announcements in the “comedy” French accent and then we all scarfed down our food before we reached Ebbsfleet.  I’m slightly confused as to what Ebbsfleet is.  Is it a place?  A road junction?  What’s the point of it?  Nobody ever seems to get on there.  I suspect it’s to make the Eurostar “accessible” for people who live outside Zone One in London but if you live outside Zone One, it’s a damn sight easier to get to St Pancras than it is to get to Ebbsfleet.  Maybe this is enough ranting about Ebbsfleet…

Anyway, the journey to Brussels was pretty uneventful.  Some reading, some sleeping, some talking of rubbish.  Sort of the usual.  We had 20 minutes to make the Liege train after the Eurostar arrived.  We found the platform but had to spread out like some sort of spy ring because you’re only allowed 4 bikes in total on a Belgian train (who knew eh?) and we had 7 bikes.  No problem getting on and the train pulled out of Brussels Midi on its way to Liege…only to stop at Brussels Central, sit there for 20 minutes and then we were all thrown off because there was a “probleme technique”.  So much grumbling, getting on the train, getting off the train and finally we managed to work out that the next train to Liege was a slow train that stops everywhere.  Some running around, some hanging around on the platform and eventually we got the train.   Annoying after it all going so smoothly up to then.

Long long ride to Liege which is a bit of a horrible town.  The railway station is nice.  Designed by a spanish architect.  The Hotel we’re in is…umm…not very good but it is bang in the middle of what passes for the red light district in Liege.  Not the most salubrious part of town. 

Absolutely knackered.  Straight to bed.  Early start tomorrow.  John Lane wanted us to leave at 6am but we’ve managed to get it back to a 7.30 am start.  It’s going to be an awfully ugly day tomorrow with some really tough hills and nearly 100 miles of cycling.

The training continues.  This route was surprisingly hilly since it was heading out into the fens which are normally flat and annoyingly windy.  A nice day for it though.

Obviously a picture of a sandwich doesn’t quite record the event properly.  So here’s some professionally taken ones.

I entered for the Peterborough 100 (100 miles, 168km) which is run by Action Medical Research.  Not entirely sure what they do but I’m sure it’s a good cause.  For me it was all about training for the upcoming Liege Paris trip which is about a month away now.

John Lane picked me up at 5.45am (ugh) and we drove up to the start.  Met Andy McGuinness there and basically set off right away.  It was incredibly cold in the morning and since it was forecast to be warmer later, there was a bit of compromise about the clothing which turned out to be a mistake first thing.  At one point I was cycling with my hands down my shorts just to try to heat them up.

Predictably enough, John and Andy dropped me after about 30km so I was on my own for most of the trip.  I always find the 2nd quarter of cycle routes particularly difficult and this one was no different.  It had got a bit hotter but it had got a lot more hilly.  The countryside is beautiful near Peterborough.  Rolling farmland and quaint little villages built from the local Midland stone.  The villages were nice but the “rolling” made for a lot of pain since you’d think that you’d got to the top of a hill only to see another downhill stretch followed by yet another uphill stretch.  Really horrible.  However, it is classic “English Countryside” filled with little villages called stupid things like Batterston cum Trouserwyke and Little Snogton etc.  Also, it was quite noticeable that there were no jet contrails in the sky.  Thank you Eyjafjallojoekull.

There were a lot of feeding stations on the way which enabled me to keep my caffeine intake  up and my intake of crap sandwiches.  I was too knackered to do much except take a picture of my crap sandwich.  Despite the sandwiches being a bit crap, the whole event was very well organised indeed. 

The rest of the ride was a bit better.  These events are full of men and women in ill advised lycra which leaves little to the imagination and is probably the least flattering clothing in the world.  The rather depressing thing is one gets passed by tubby men and women and some men with beer bellies large enough to look like they’re in the terminal stage of some a strange fertility experiment where they’re attempting to give birth to octuplets.  More hill climb practicing for me I think. 

So the last section was a lot better since I got on the wheel of a few groups which were doing 30km/h+ and as long as I drafted them I could keep up.  It’s a nice feeling cycling in a larger group especially when other people are doing the work at the front.

Rolled into finish line after just under 7 hours on the bike.  168km at an average of 24.3km/h.  1339m of climbing and 5607 calories expended (although the Garmin is notoriously generous on its calorie estimate.  Probably could have done another 30k or 40k but not another 140k like Chris does when he does his 300km rides.  Map of the route and the stats.

The first day Liege Paris is about the same distance but 2000m+ climbing.  Oh dear.

This ride was very easy after yesterday.  Beautiful sunny day, quiet roads, just gently spinning along.  There’s definitely something mad with the Garmin estimate of calories used though.  According to the Garmin, this ride was 1000 calories!  That’s completely bonkers.  I’d be surprised if it was a third of that.