A Passion for cycling: A trip to France

Muddy Funster, Mickael reports on an epic trip that he completed last year

I have been cycling quite a lot this year (2010) and wanted to do a challenging ride. What I had in mind was to go and visit my parents in France but leaving the car at home. They live in a small village called Mont-devant- Sassey near Verdun. This is about 600km from Newbury and the initial plan was to do it in three days with a friend, using our road racing bike. I was however left on my own very soon after we started to discuss the idea, which was going to make the ride even more challenging. My plan also slightly changed since I decided to go as far as I could in 2 days. This would have brought me 100km short of my end destination where my parents would come and collect me.

I did not want to fit any luggage carrier to my bike and known from previous long ride that my back would hurt if heavily loaded. So I went to get the smallest back pack I could get, a Camelbak of 2L capacity from which I removed the reservoir. This was enough space for 3 inner tubes, tyre levers, chain tool and pins, Allen keys, light and batteries, yellow reflective jacket, jelly babies, energy bars, nuun electrolyte tablets, a tube of deep heat, some money and my passport, (no more space for spare clothes and shoes). I was physically well prepared for a long distance ride but was a bit concerned with the navigation side. I spent few hours preparing the route on google map, printing out 39 A4 pages that I attached to the handlebars.

I left Newbury on Saturday, 5th June 2010 at around 8.30am and arrived in Dover the same day at around 8pm. This was a total of 9 hours and 57 minutes pedalling during which time I covered 249km. (This doesn’t include the time I stopped for looking at the map, refill the bottles and have something to eat). The weather was good for cycling: dry and sunny but not too warm. I was uncertain of when I would get to Dover and therefore did not pre-book the crossing. Unfortunately when I arrived in Dover the P&O ticket office was closed and then decided to have a good night sleeping in a B&B before restarting on day 2. The hotel was interesting, (but that is a whole other story).

The next day, I left the hotel just before 8am and headed towards the car ferry's ticket office where I got a 9.30am crossing pass. It felt awkward to cycle up to the crossing gate in the motorbike lane. I was the only one on a bicycle and the first to get on board, (first hill of the day). It is a painted floor in the ferry and then very slippery with the water so I have been strongly advised to walk to the bike rack. The ferry docked in Calais at 11am UK time, 12pm French time and I realised I had a lot to do (over 200km). The ride was a lot more difficult because of the rain and a strong side wind. It was also very hilly for the first 100km and the road surface was very rough. What appeared to be a long journey for French local (from Calais to Arras) made me smile knowing that this was only half of what I was going to do on the day. 8 hours and 32 minutes later, (or 219km), I reached Hirson, where my sister picked me up.

I was quite pleased with the ride since I managed to do 448kms in two days, despite losing half a day on the crossing. The following Sunday I was doing the Newbury sportive; 203km in 8 hours 14 minutes and 15 seconds. I totalled 1508km cycling for June and recorded 9014kms so far this year against my target of 10 000km.