Tuesday, 12 May 2015

Day 1 – Le Grand Depart

Given that it was rather early on a Saturday morning, there were a surprising number of people out in Cholsey to wave goodbye – or perhaps it was just to make sure that Dave was really leaving for a few weeks… I suspect that the excellent bacon butties provided by Claire, Sheila and Mark were also a strong contributing factor.  What a turnout!  Thanks for the great send off.

It didn't take long for the 1st puncture and an even shorter time after that for puncture number 2, it was just a bit mean for them to happen to the same person! Despite a few minor setbacks, we made good time to the cake & lunch stops provided by Claire, Rachel & the team in good time. Our team of domestiques delivered us to Fareham on time and well protected from the wind, thank you!
For more details of part 1 of the route, our Strava profiles can be found here:

A slightly windy ferry ride got us into Cherbourg and it was straight back onto the bikes to get to our accommodation for the 1st night. Thank you very much to the lovely Sarah Temple-Phillips, who has the pleasure of working with Dave at the Canal & River Trust, for letting us stay at her house in Le Vretot. And thanks to Brittany Ferries for getting us to France.


Part 2 of the ride can be found here:

(If anyone can explain why David always has more elevation than me when doing the same route, please do! And no, it’s not because he starts from a lower height…)
I think it’s fair to say that day 1 was a long day and 3 very tired cyclists quite happily crawled into bed after burger & chips (dinner of champions!)

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