Day 14 (120 miles!!!)

Today was a very big and long day. We set ourselves an ambitious challenge and we succeeded in completing it.

We started the day learning two important lessons. One, that when you buy porridge it is very important to get he right oats. Not ones for Flapjacks, like we had done, but for porridge. Dam you Mr Oats, (no pun intended, he was actually our French teacher) for not teaching us that vital bit of French. Two, that adding peanut butter in the attempt to hide the disgusting taste is a truly awful idea. Even Archie who has never fussed about the porridge before, struggled at finishing it.

At least it gave us lots of sugar for the big day ahead of us. Arch and Fred, did the first shift and covered 55 miles, in just over 3 hours of continuous cycling. A huge effort, which included going past the remnants of a festival the previous night. The roads were littered with intoxicated French youths, who enjoyed shouting/cheering and occasionally offering us crates of beer!

Jack in support managed to go to the wrong Hirson, the other was an hour away, so meeting up with the hearse was slightly delayed. Fred and Jack were going well till Fred got the first puncture of the trip. Having fixed it, he then got another one about 5 seconds later. What bad luck… A spoke on Archie’s bike broke while this happened, but was just about able to carry on with a very wobbly wheel.

After a quick lunch we were back on the road, for the final push to the campsite. We arrived in good time, and Archie had managed to sort out his broken spoke so we are all set for another big day tomorrow.

This post makes today sound rather easy. I can assure you it was not. A lot of “digging deep” had to be done by all of us. It was pretty dam tough at times, and our legs are defiantly not thanking us for it now. A similar distance is planned for tomorrow, so we will just have to grin and bear it. After our top effort today, we are sure we can do it.