Jun 2007

Distance - 54m (85km) [Total dist 145km*]
Max speed – 39.4mph (63kmh)

• both start and end points were changed after route had been mapped out, so actually distance was slightly different. And mine is obviously shorter because I didn't cycle all of it.

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Thirteen cyclists on thirteen bikes had planned to set out on day 1, until a slight technical issue was realised. With the driver in China, somebody would have to drop out and drive the van. Selflessly, I volunteered. Now, you might think that it's a bit of a cheat to drive the whole way, and, in fairness, you would be right. In mitigation, it had been agreed that driving would be shared between 11 of us (excluding the two had had drive down and would then drive back to Sweden). Five days – plus the Mountain loop stage which was an out and back and didn't require the van – mean't that everybody would then drive. I had no desperate desire to cycle from the start, and figured that if i got out of the way, it would be better.

Packing up in preparation for the start of the trip South

Day 1 was a nice 91mile (145km) jaunt south, over reasonably friendly terrain and in reasonable weather, and thus I headed off in the van through the back roads of France, with the aim of trying to get to the predetermined meeting point before everybody else and then riding back to meet them. But first I had to go for a big satisfying dump. I just know you wanted to know that.

I tried to follow the same route as the cyclists, more or less, but things (obviously) happen much faster in a vehicle and on more than one occasion coming through villages, I knew I had gone wrong, and then spent a good while trying to get back on route. As it was, by the time I'd stopped to take a couple of “action” (in the loosest sense of the word) shots of the guys going past, got sidetracked (and well and properly traffic jammed) in a village fete, got to and parked up in Fontigny, the lunch pause, got changed and fixed my bike, I had barely managed to 5miles back down the road before I was passed by the first group coming in the opposite direction at a fair old whack.

A 45minute lunch pause later, and leaving the newly arrived Mats S with the keys and to await the trio of back-markers still out on the road, and I was a proper cyclist again. Such a thing has not happened to me in over 10years, and it felt both great and weird to be back in a group of cyclists. The feeling of great and weird swiftly changed to one of realisation, both about what I was doing and that this wouldn't be an easy paced roll in the country. It was actually good fun. On the first climb of any note (though it was barely 2km), i was pleased to discover that instead of being waaaaay last as I'd expected, I was up with the front duo for a long way and came up third. Perhaps I had a chance of surviving this week after all?

It was on the way down the other side that the fun really started. We went down a narrow country lane, and the surface really wasn't very good. I've always been a decent descender and I was fast discovering that my bike was also pretty good. The problem was, the surface really wasn't. Then we came around a corner with a lovely view of a reservior ahead and the road suddenly got increasingly steep. But I bounced down with the brakes on more or less full, and all was going fine until a sharpish left hander near the bottom, which i turned into to discover a pot hole and lots of loose gravel weren't going to let me, and thus in a kind of comical slow motion bounce i slid half way around the corner and then over a large divot before taking a refreshing if unplanned detour into a hedge before finally getting back onto the road, amazingly still upright, and astonishingly given the amount of holes and crap on the roads, not a single puncture.

With some tired legs nearing the end of the first day barely 20km to go, we made the unpleasant discovery that whilst Beaune may only have been 20km or so away, it was also over the other side of a big ridge. We were on the main road, and it was the kind of hill I hate. One that goes uphill. Actually, what I really hated was that after the first long straight drag (ok), were a series of false flats separated by shorter sharp uphill sections, all of which mentally made you think that you were constantly going up and down, whilst your legs are telling you that you very definitely aren't going downhill at all. Barely 100m after we had started the climb, and we were all strung out, and then rapidly split into mostly suffering small groups and individuals. I somehow reached the summit second only to the speedster Hasse, astonishingly even beating Göran, our former Swedish champion by a few hundred metres. Sure, it was only a few km long and a climb of only 250metres or so, and, admittedly, I'd only cycled half a day compared to everybody else, but I was still well chuffed, as I'd expected to be really struggling and coming in well down, both on any kind of uphill stretch, and the end of every day.

We regrouped at the summit (and turning off the main road), but then on the run down the other side towards Beaune, split right up. I was amongst the front group and feeling OK. Then, following on from Tonnerre's BMW club, as we rolled into Pommard with the end in sight, we came right into the centre of a gathering of (mostly) classic Porsche 911s, taking up much of the centre of the town. I had to stop for a couple of minutes whilst a Porsche driver finished doing donuts in the road. When I could finally pass, I headed out of town, and tried to catch the group again. The road turned into the kind of hedge lined winding road that is common in the UK, but not in most of the rest of Europe. And it was heading back uphill. Reasonably steeply.

After a few kilometres of this winding uphill and my going at a fair lick to try and catch up, it suddenly opened out into a long straight section and I still couldn't see anybody ahead, and I the gnawing feeling that maybe this wasn't the correct way suddenly became more serious. On as serious uphill section as that, and being only a minute or two behind the group, I really should have been able to at least see somebody ahead, even if i hadn't caught them. I then waited for about 5minutes to see if anybody came up from behind, and then when nobody did, started retracing mysteps. It was almost at the bottom of the hill that I punctured. B*gger.

So, as I sat there trying to help lost German tourists (they had to ask, didn't they?) and awaiting the glue to dry on my inner tube patch, I sheepishly made a phone call. “Erm. Emil... Where the heck are you? Montagny-les-Beaune” came the reply. “Uh?” thought I, and a few seconds then ellapsed as I perused my route card, confirming indeed that there was no Montagny-les-Beaune listed. “Where the bl**dy hell is that??”. It transpired that, for reasons that remain hazy, the days finish point had been changed to Montagny-les-Beaune (obvious really. Why else would they be there??), but the route cards hadn't. A fixed rear wheel and handful of bemused but helpful French people later, and I was back on track. I rolled into Montagny, then started wondering if it would have been helpful to know the name of the hotel as well. But it was solved easily enough.

A van load of beer and whiskey, plus shower, happily awaited.

2 hrs 15 later, Christer and Mats S finally rolled in, in the rain, and having also got lost (but gone a different way to me) in the run in. With two having come in the van, we had then all just about negotiated the day's events, and were looking forward to a well deserved meal. So turning up at the local restaurant to be told that, sadly, they were fully booked and couldn't help us didn't exactly go down very well. This news would possibly have been better received if there been even a single customer in said restaurant. There wasn't. So it was that we squeezed onto the floor of the van into Beaunne and in France, on a French holiday weekend, were forced to eat American Steak.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day. And, sadly, another cycling day.

The group lined up across the road early in the day, and still looking remarkably happy. From L-R: Emil (or Stefan. All this was his dratted idea), Frederik (looking damned cheery as always. It must be the EPO...), Torbjörn, Mats P, Göran (who was Swedish national champion in 1980, and thus somewhat quick), Jomar, Hans, Christer, Mats S, Hasse (who is just damned fast), B-G and Hans Ola (the Kaizer)

Ten hours of beer drinking whilst standing in a train corridor later, I was in Paris. The support vehicle was somewhere here. I was supposed to be in it, but a private issue had come up suddenly, and thus instead of driving the support vehicle from Sweden to Paris (bollocks was I going to fly), I had had to make an unscheduled detour via Zürich. But I had at least made it to Paris, more than most people were expecting, and, in fairness, I was hoping. Excited - the word is stupid - cyclists were shortly to fly in from all corners of Scandinavia, and a photo shoot was planned by the Eiffel Tower. Ok, it never happened, but I did at least have the delights of trying to find two people waiting "at the Eiffel Tower" amongst the several thousand other people waiting in the same location. Which was bad enough even knowing who the heck they were, and just thankful I wasn't looking for strangers.

I should probably mention now that really, there isn't no point to this blog entry at all. I'd decided befoerhand that I should probably do an entry for each day, but looking back, nothing happened at all worth noting. So you may as well just skip this altogether. I will.

The rest of the intrepid adventurers cried off. We hadn't even started and we've already lost 10 people. This bodes well. So after a short wander to Notre Dame and the Louvre, a quick photo (of the 3 of us who had made it) by the tower to the confusion of the poor Japanese girl who took it, and it was time to head south. Now. Something that i suggest you don't do in future is put 3 cartographers in a vehicle with a speaking GPS and expect them to know where they are going. And trying to get out of the centre of a large city. For the next hour or so, with alarming regularity, Frederik (driver) and I were treated to a constant stream of the GPS lady saying things like "turn left in 200metres" at the same time as Mats was saying "No. Turn right in 200metres", normally whilst we were going the wrong way down one way streets and with the road signs suggesting we should be travelling in a 4th direction... But, at legnth, we somehow made it on La Periperique, where as tradition dictates, we then sat in traffic jams for a while before finally getting slung, swing shot like onto a useful-ish motorway heading south.

Oh, and apparently, we weren't actually going to Chablis at all. We were going to Tonerre, about 15km further East. Nobody tells me anything.

Astonishingly, within minutes of each other, and having missed a rain storm, we all actually arrived, in Tonerre, greeted, as you do in random towns in central France, by a couple of camels grazing outside the railway station in a rain storm. Even more amazingly, we had somehow managed to arrive with the requisit number (13. Of all the numbers of people to start with, why 13?) - and correct - bicycles, bags, clothing, spares, plus the most vital of all: doping products. We had all the beer, whiskey (and vitargo) we could need. What could possibly go wrong?

A refreshment or two in a local bar, followed by the curious discovery that we were sharing a hotel with a Belgian BMW owners club (who all drove bog standard average BMWs. It's just like having a Vauxhall Vectra owners club. There's just no point) and inspired by the discovery that the very rooms we were inhabiting would be taken by Tour De France teams barely 2months later, led to a spell of vaguely frenzied activity as bikes were assembled and checked. And with that it was time for a short warm up. Or, if you prefer, prologue.

Thus it was that in true team presentation style before a team time trial, we lined up with a motley assortment of 9 fully T-Kartor outfited cyclists, one with a T-Kartor top but Bianchi shorts (yup, muggins, the Tk shorts I had been given at that point were XXXXXXXL, and i, basically, am not) surrounding our star rider resplendant in his yellow jersey and shorts. Oh, and two two guys who decided to skip it and sleep instead.

About 120metres later, the road started to go uphill and we all suddenly started wondering what the bloody hell we were doing. An hour or so later, and after covering barely 16 miles, I was lying knackered on the grass infront of the hotel preying like hell for some kind of salvation, or other useful excuse which would prevent my having to ride. A meteorite to wipe out Earth, maybe.

This is going to be a hard week. And we don't actually a support driver. He's in China

((with apologies for lack of photos in this thrilling, not really, installment. I don't have any, but i'll try and add them in when i scrounge them later.))

You produced the damned thing, so if it's wrong, it's your fault! It was a lovely wet Monday and we were traipsing around obscure London suburbs in the rain, looking at maps which we had produced and had been published, but very definitely had, erm, occasional technical errors on them. Field work is an important part of my job, and ensuring other people know what they are doing is critical. I have long suspected that for certain colleagues, “field work” consists almost entirely of travelling somewhere and then sitting in a pub for the remainder of the day. And events were more or less bearing that out, as it became blatantly obvious that neither of them had the faintest idea about what the bl**dy heck they were supposed to be doing. As a result, we took in some, erm, interesting parts of the city which we should have gone nowhere near, discovered several missing and wrong issues, and got soaked. Work is fun, isn't it?

None of that is strictly relevant to, well, more or less anything, with the exception that the upshot of choosing those two days to be doing such things in London mean't that I was treated to the kind of journey that is instantly forgettable and irrelevant for most people, but for a non flyer on a schedule becomes the kind of undertaking that would be considered unworkable to anybody else. Thus it was that at 7pm on Tuesday evening, i left London heading for Hell.

Thus, i spent an interesting 3 hours talking to a woman about why a helicopter project had come in so late and over budget (sadly, she didn't know where our submarine was, though), then led a motley group of 8 random folks in sprinting across Hamburg the following morning in a surprisingly not futile attempt to make a connection after we'd been somewhat delayed. I couldn't help but laugh at the poor American getting seasick on the perfectly calm Puttgarden – Rødby ferry, and decided that as i had three hours to kill somewhere, I may as well do it at home (barely 15km off my route) so nipped into the office, had a shower, and left the large map tube I was carrying (HA! No rocket launcher arrest this time), went and sat on Hässleholm for a while before sneaking on to an earlier train than my reservation allowed (nobody noticed, despite the fact i was bleedin' obvious and they had about 5hours to work it out), wandered at random around Stockholm for a couple of hours, then sat bored out of my skull waiting for the second night train of the journey which was over an hour late. Woke up the next morning (it was May 17th) in the middle of a blizzard and with a metre of snow all around me, and, erm, slightly chilly with no prospect of getting anything even vaguely resembling a coffee (or a woolly hat) before rolling past Hell and finally into Trondheim at midday.

Passing Hell, yet again.

It was Norwegian National Day, and the journey there had consumed over 40hours of my life, and involved 9 trains and a ferry. A 2hour flight would have made much more sense, and been significantly cheaper, but I couldn't help that. It should be obvious by now that I don't always (ever?) take the most logical option.

The Norwegians have long made a big deal about their National Day, but I had never previously managed to be here for it. However, a combination of factors had all fallen into place and I had made the effort. I couldn't help but be impressed by the numbers of people wearing National dress. A good 80%+ of women were fully dolled up in traditional outfits, whilst a similar proportion of the men were in their best suits, which was great to see. They were taking it seriously.
A very happy couple of days followed, catching up with some old friends (include Morten, a Danish guy who I had first met through the old www.landy-rtw.com project and was now living in Norway, as you do, with his stunning Portuguese girlfriend). We wandered around the city, went up to the fort, and explored the Trondheim version of Christiania, Svartlemond, watched a rally in support of poor old Eugene Obiora, a Nigerian killed by police in the Social Security office, got in terrible trouble with the lovely Tina (who probably appears in these annals several times in past locations) for arriving an hour or so late for dinner after getting hopelessly lost (we had got within about 150m before turning around and walking all the way back thinking we had gone wrong), then had a technological mishap which mean't that Brunch was buggered up as well.
Oh, and also got wet, but then again, this is Norway.

Traditional parade on Norwegian National Day in Trondheim, including the traditional, erm, Chinese dragon

I had made the curious discovery that for some reason, there are no night buses or trains in Norway on a Saturday night (every other night, there are both – If anybody knows why they don't run on a Saturday, please let me know), and th mean't that I witnessed my second large Norwegian fire, as on entering Dombås, it became obvious that the twisting smoke we had seen for several kilometres was not pre planned, and was a major fire in the town (I had arrived in Trondheim just as a large fire by the water front was finally being extinguished after raging through the previous night), a sad state of affairs which seems to be not uncommon in Norway. Trondheim city had suffered at least 6 major fires in the last 10years alone.

Aftermath of the Trondheim fire (above) and Dombås burning (from a mobile phone on a moving train)

And all of this simply in order to be able to get to Göteborg early enough on Sunday evening [somewhere I had to be, solely because somebody decided it would be fun to get me bored out of my skull for many hours, the *********s], I was forced to leave to Oslo on Saturday afternoon. On the plus point, i got to meet a couple of cool Couchsurfers, Jeff and Miriam, and also catch up with glorious leader Sam for a few beers, so couldn't complain too much.

But that's the least of my current concerns.

A few months ago, Stefan (who, obviously, is known to everybody as Emil) came up with the idea of a a bike tour across France. It started as a couple of week trip from Paris to Nice, and swifly metamorphosied into a leisurely tour of vineyards. At that point, i was signed up. After all, a couple of hours easy cycling through French countryside in the sun, followed by a few hours wine tasting sounds like a perfectly agreeable time to me.

Somehow, between the time I was signed up and the time we started (in, erm, 2 days time), it had been turned from such a leisurely trip to a 6 day bash from Paris to Cassis (just East of Marseille), involving days of up to 180km, mountain passes, Mt. fricking Ventoux and no less than 13 people, some of whom are customers, and all of whom are much, much fitter than me.

Even meeting Kiki again is currently filling me with less dread. That should speak volumes.

It starts in a week.

Cr*p.

I'm in big trouble now.

Trondheim