Supplies

Today it was Fred's task to stock up on the food supplies needed for the trip. Let's just say he got plenty. Lucky this challenge is hungry work! 


I think our diet will be: porridge, pasta, repeat!

Hearse Exploits

Having recently been slightly worried about the chances of our trusty hearse making it over the Alps, steep ascents and hairpin bends are not the best friends of a modified 1989 Ford Grenada, we are pleased to announce she has been passing all tests with flying colours.

Jack successfully drove her 400 miles from near Truro to the New Forest as a test drive. Thankfully all went smoothly. Jack suffered the most, as the poor old girl can only shift at 60 mph (at 65mph things start to sound a bit dodgy!) which meant he was sat for rather a long time on the A303. Lucky she has a fancy speaker system installed, sub-woofer and all, to keep us entertained.

In a bizarre turn of events, she was also entered into a vintage car show down in Cornwall. She proudly took her place alongside original Bond cars. Genuinely! All pretty exciting. By all accounts she held her own.........

Even more bonkers, the Bishop of St. Germans blessed her with the righteous words "May you be a place of safety, security and reliability.” Notice the Cornwall theme to all these slightly odd exploits..... No more needs to be said....

Archie, Fred and Jack

NB: All of the above is completely true.

Pride of place at the vintage car show.

The Team

Archie, Fred, Jack and the Hearse!!!

Cornwall Training Block

Last weekend we were all down at Jack’s house for a group planning and training session. Let’s just say the Cornish hills made it pretty brutal!

Rather crazily Archie had actually cycled down to Jack’s. Nearly a 240 mile trip from Andover to Truro! He did admit later that it was a silly idea in hindsight. He had only got off the plane from Australia two days before. But the extra miles in the legs will definitely help when the going gets tough. Probably somewhere in the Alps....

We trained hard every day for 4 night stay down there which was really good.  The toughest ride has to be the 20 miles to Caerhays beach and back. There was an absolutely savage hill to get back up from the beach. All of us were blowing pretty heavily afterwards.

Jack has been doing fantastic work with the hearse, fitting speaker systems and the like, as well as sorting out the interior. He has also given her a rather fetching paint job, but don’t worry it still looks very much like a hearse!  The only “minor” problem we had was when the fuel transmission fluid pipe burst on our first test drive. :( Quite a lot of red sticky liquid spilled everywhere! Initial thoughts were that we had bought more than we had bargained for from the funeral directors. Thankfully we were proved wrong......

We are all getting really excited now about the approaching challenge!

Only 14 days till we start cycling....

Archie, Fred, Jack