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Having settled on an idea I now had to do something about organising it. First of all, of course, there was the bike. That was straightforward as I still had the same trusty Thorn Club tourer I'd used for 'Lejog' and several other trips. I'd had it five years now and nothing had gone wrong with it, in fact it was even still running the original chain. I took it in for a service, fitted two new Schwalbe tyres and cleaned it so it looked all nice, sparkling and blue... just like the well-oiled machine it was.
Then there was the route to plan. I basically wanted one which would take me all the way from Ware down to Dover and then from Calais to the Mediterranean, avoiding as much as possible any hilly or mountainous areas. From an advert in the CTC magazine I had found there was a company, European Bike Express, which ran a bus service transporting weary cyclists and their bikes to and from the south of France. From looking at the list of pickup points it seemed I'd be able to travel in ease and comfort all the way back from Narbonne to Junction 26 on the M25, a mere 12 miles from my home. So that's what I decided to do: ride from home to Narbonne, dip the wheels in the Mediterranean, then ride home on the bus. Using the Satmap website 'Xpedition' route planner I plotted a route from Calais to Narbonne trying as much as possible to avoid any large hills. Then using Google Street View I checked the roads I'd chosen to make sure they were suitable for cycling and not multi-carriageway mayhem-ways. The resulting route was split into suitable daily chunks of roughly 50 miles a day which I think is a nice do-able distance to cover when there are no mountains in the way. Not a huge daily mileage but I wasn't in a race and that left me time to have a look round places. That left the English leg so I put together a simple course running from Ware to Dover via the Tilbury crossing and the North Downs 'Pilgrim's Way'; that was about 100 miles so I booked a night's accommodation in a pub at the halfway point, the Lower Bell in Aylesford. With all that done the route now looked like this: Ware - Aylesford - Dover - Boulogne - Abbeville - Rouen - Le Neubourg - Mortagne au Perche - Le Mans - Tours - Dangé St Romain - Poitiers - Ruffec - Angoulême - La Roche Chalois - La Reole - Agen - Verdun sur Garonne - Villefranche de Lauragais - Carcassonne - Narbonne - Narbonne Plage
With the likely stopping places and a few other contingency ones selected I turned to Google maps and made a note of up to three possible hotels or B&Bs for each one, just in case I couldn’t find anything by my normal method of simply riding past. This is what I took with me, less than on my Lejog trip and I also decided that this time I wouldn't bother taking a tent or sleeping bag. If I couldn't find a hotel or B&B I'd just have to sleep in a hedge. 2 spare inner tubes 1 puncture repair kit 3 tyre levers 1 pair of pliers 1 cycle multi-tool, 1 chain splitter, 2 spare links 1 pump 1 long-sleeved cycle jersey 3 short-sleeved cycle shirts 1 rainproof cycle jacket 1 pair of cotton shorts 1 pair normal padded lycra cycle shorts 1 T-shirt style base layer (not used) 3 pairs cycle socks 1 pair waterproof trousers (not used) 1 pair waterproof overshoes (not used) 1 pair Shimano cycle shoes with SPD cleats 1 drinks bottle 1 pair lightweight zipoff walking trousers (can be used as longs or shorts) 1 canvas money-belt 1 body wallet (for passport, papers and credit/debit cards) 1 pair canvas shoes 3 T-shirts 1 corduroy shirt (not used) 1 fleece 2 pairs socks 4 pairs underpants 1 notebook 1 pen Camera & charger Phone & charger GPS & charger & spare battery 2 european plug adaptors plasters Savlon toothbrush toothpaste razor vitamin pills paper map - IGN 1:1000000 Map of France (1 cm = 10 km) Cash & credit/debit cards Glasses Phrase book, passport, Eurobus ticket, EHIC card, insurance cert, ferry ticket I had three 'dry sacs', roll-top waterproof bags, into which I packed my clothes to make sure they'd always be kept dry. There was a small one for the socks and underpants, a second one for cycle clothing and a third one for 'normal' clothes to wear when not cycling. The rest of the bits and pieces went into a few plastic bags of different colours so I could easily find what I wanted. Then the whole lot went into the Ortlieb panniers, with stuff I might need on the ride in one and stuff I wouldn't need till the evening in the other. Organised or what. Did I do any special training for the ride? Well I go to the gym fairly regularly and have a weekly 20-25 mile ride with the U3A boys so I thought that'd be enough. I wasn't going to be racing along, just doing about 50 miles a day, stopping whenever I wanted and getting off and pushing if any hill felt too steep. I thought I'd be fit enough for that. Well it's fair to say that riding a thousand miles on a push bike anywhere, let alone through wild, foreign lands, isn't to everyone's taste, and I rather expected that if I was going to do the ride I'd be doing it on my own. Nevertheless I thought I'd ask and see. I asked a friend from work but he didn't feel up to it, and I also asked my old friend Andrew. He didn't feel up to it either. Then he had a slight change of heart, however, and decided he could come for the first few days then hop on a train and return to dear old Blighty - so that's what he did. In the event I cycled down to Dover and met him there, then we cycled as far as Le Neubourg together before he turned back and I carried on alone. It was nice to have his company for those days. Back to the preparation. I was going to be carrying a fair amount of cash on the ride so I bought a webbing belt with a hopefully concealed zipped bit on the inside where I stuffed as many 50 euro notes as possible. I managed to get 950 euros in there and still have it look like a normal cheap belt so I was quite pleased by that. The rest of the cash I split between my pockets and a body wallet. This body wallet, obtained from the internet, was a pouch which fastened round my waist and which I had bought to keep my passport and credit cards nice and safe next to my skin. It worked ok but got a bit sweat-laden by the (hot) end of the ride. I booked an overnight stay at a pub located halfway to Dover, Andrew booked us a B&B in Dover and we each booked our own ferry tickets to Calais as the online ticket system refused to accept that ‘no of passengers = 2’ was compatible with ‘means of transport = bicycle’ (rubbish system). I left Andrew to arrange his own return trip (train to Le Havre, ferry to Portsmouth and train back to Ramsbottom) and for my own return I booked a place on the Eurobus Express. The bus has a toilet on board and snacks and comes with a big trailer for bicycles so I paid my £143 and arranged to be picked up in Narbonne on 28th June and returned in comfort to England. I thought I’d better add a bit of insurance so I did that through the CTC for about £44, a special policy designed for wandering cyclists – fortunately I didn’t have to claim but it felt right to have some back-up if things went wrong. On top of all that I bought some lightweight canvas shoes for the evenings, a new GPS (a Satmap Active 12) with a bit more memory as the last one had given up occasionally on the Holland trip, a 1:1000000 paper map of France, and a 1:50000 digital map of France for the GPS. | ||
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