The Great Cycle Ride - Le trip 
Well, we did it! 1027 km cycled in 12 days (10 whole days and two half days). Sadly Andrew Holdstock decided the day before we left that he was not well enough to go, having had a flu-type bug for two weeks and not being able to shake it off.
So three of us set off on Sunday 6th April – Mike Jeffries, Ken Streat (a friend of Mike’s) and me (Susanna Chapman). We encountered almost every possible type of weather on the way – blizzard and hailstorm (in Plymouth before we caught the ferry), sunny warm days (22ºC!) in Spain and the south of France, thunderstorms, wind, torrential rain, drizzle and frost (ice on the outside of the tents one morning!). We were lucky that we only had two really rainy days; most of the time it was bright, but not too hot – ideal cycling weather.
We had a real variety of cycling experiences
too – the Route Nationale (main
road) from San Sebastian to Biarritz was a
bit of a nightmare (hilly with lots of
traffic), but the cycle paths through the
pine forests next to the coast in Landes
and the Gironde were wonderful. North
of La Rochelle we struggled to cycle on
roads across bleak marshes with a strong
northerly headwind. We had some days
on quiet ‘D’ roads through beautiful
countryside, and saw lots of different
flowers and birds (including swallows,
herons, and storks nesting one day) and inadvertantly a short section of motorway,which was very fast riding.
We passed through Nantes, which is quite a large city and
impressed us by giving priority to public
transport and bikes – the cars had to
squeeze between the bus and tram lanes
and the cycle lanes! We followed the
Nantes to Brest Canal for a couple of days,
and some of the towpath was rough
gravel and some was a lovely smooth
surface.
Most nights we camped, although finding open campsites wasn’t always easy – three nights we camped in sites that were closed (cheap but a little short on facilities!), and one night we camped out in the woods and had a campfire (we were a bit worried the local fire brigade might be round, and might have been more so if we’d realised we were near the boundary of a military camp, but nobody bothered us!). We also stayed three nights in Youth Hostels (at Teste-en-Buch near Arcachon, La Rochelle and Pontivy) when it had been raining all day or when all our stuff was wet from the night before.
We cooked on Mike’s trusty
Trangia stove most
nights, but we also had some
meals out – pizza was popular! We also got in
the habit of stopping at the first boulangerie/
patisserie we came across in the
morning to pick up bread for lunch and
pains aux raisins for our morning snack!
We had very few problems – Mike had a
couple of broken spokes, but we bought
new ones at a friendly bike shop in
Lacanau, Ken had a total of four punctures
until he bought new tyres in Royan,
and I had problems with my knees (but
survived due to a wonderful knee support
Ken had brought with him, and luckily
didn’t need himself)
We would like to thank everyone who sponsored us – we have yet to work out all the details of the Gift Aid, and to collect in all the sponsorship, but we think at this point we have raised approximately £1700. Roughly half of this will be coming to the school, to be used to add to the fund for the blackout blinds for the hall, and half will be going to the Joliba Trust, to be spent on women’s projects and environmental work in Mali.
If you haven’t sponsored us and would like to, there is still time!
The trip (I wouldn’t call it a holiday!) was a great experience, and I personally am amazed that I managed to do it (from a position of hardly having been on a bike for five years before last Christmas). I am still slow up hills (and I have to thank Mike and Ken for the many times they stood waiting for me), but at least I can now get up the hills! It is hoped that a cycle tour of some kind will become a regular fixture in the school calendar, and I would recommend it to anyone – if I can do it, so can you!
Susanna Chapman