LONDON TO PARIS REFLECTIONS

Firstly, thank you to Stuart.  My postings have all be plagiarized and customised from his blog at monmarduman

Reflections. Overall it was great. Seeing new places, riding both intimately in a group but also doing extended stretches paired up with Dylan, the craic associated with reflecting on the day's events over a beer (and / or a monster pizza) in the evening, the fantastic personal feeling that comes from raise a few quid, which in turn might make a few lives better, all combine to make it an event that really imprints itself on your stock of stored and shared experiences.

What else - well, if we were to do something similar again I think we agreed that the ground rules need to be much clearer, particularly relating to the different speeds that people ride at. Groups almost inevitably proceed at different speeds, and a greater understanding how that would be managed out on the road would probably prevent frustrations arising throughout the group.  We found the best way to tackle this was to agree a meeting point approximately 15 to 20 kms ahead.  This allowed Stuart to not get too frustrated and could ride purposefully, for Dylan and I to spend most of the ride together as we're fairly evenly matched and for Andy to know that we'd be waiting when he got there.  Either that or make sure everyone's evenly matched, but that can be tricky to achieve. Also, when choosing places to stop for the night, don't disregard how you're going to feed yourselves. What I mean by that is check out where the hotel, B&B, whatever, is in relation to the nearest town, restaurant etc. Having nowhere to eat nearby can be a pain - our decision on hotels was driven by 2 factors - lowest cost and positioned to break the journey into reasonably sized chunks. Another lesson learned is really confirmation of something that worked well this time - route planning. Whether you use maps, GPSs or route sheets out on the road, they're only as good as the effort that has gone into planning the route in the first place, and ours worked very well - plenty of back roads, particularly in France, but not so many that navigation became a faff.  Stuarts investment into the route planning was much appreciated by the rest of the group.

Formule 1 hotels are a bit of a challenge, but they bring benefits too.  They're cheap, they're mostly clean (although I'd advise finding the more recently refurbished ones when you can), the breakfast is great value and I didn't feel uncomfortable about wheeling the bikes into the rooms.  Just enough room for 2 bikes and a washing line - its all we needed.  The worst part was, with sharing a room between 2 blokes, one of us had to sleep on the to bunk.  Its plenty big enough, but the sponge mattress is woefully thin - clearly meant for kids.  You live and learn (and save money).


For me this was the culmination of 2 years of planning and training and I'm pleased its something I achieved.  I wanted to this on a managed trip with someone carrying luggage from hotel to hotel.  But, reluctantly, I have to admit that Stuart was right to persuade me to do the ride in a small group and to carry all our own luggage - somehow it feels much more of an achievement.  I don't feel the need to do anything like this again, I'll be happy keeping fit enough to ride 50 to 70 mile sportives and just do it for the enjoyment of being out on the bike.

Tres bien.