CLICK ON ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGEMENT

Bright eyed and busy-tailed at breakfast this morning, after a fair night’s sleep at least for most of the Team. Either that or they were trying to bolster their own resolve to continue after what had been a very tiring first day.  I was pretty tired just watching them at it.  There was mention of “stiff quads” and such like over breakfast, which gave the game away.

The Hotel in Calais, the Holiday Inn, was a success.  Easy to find, decent rooms and garaging for the bikes and the car – which was quite a surprise given its height with the roof box on and its length with the bike rack.

By the way I’ve been asked to correct an error in yesterday’s report.  Franchesca was not kissing her Daddy farewell in the photo as in reported, she was having a bit on the side with another Team member called Uncle Tom.  Apparently he shaves better than Daddy and he’s a flashier dresser, as you’ll read below, so that’s the basis of his appeal.  It’s amazing how quickly children pick up on these things.

More or less everyone was down for breakfast as I got down there and there was conversation, again, about fast carbs and slow carbs.  I did however see the odd one eat some of the fry-up breakfast which was on offer.  Not a proper fry-up of course, the place is run by foreigners so what can you expect.  No black pudding for a start, it wouldn’t have rated as a Full Yorkshire that’s for sure.  Just as well really, apparently it’s slow carbs that they need and lots of them.  I had a sausage sandwich.

The Hotel staff couldn’t have been more helpful, especially the young lady on Reception when we arrived, who also doubled as garage-door opener (no simple task, it was a very old and troublesome door) barmaid and waitress.  It was different lady the following morning, much more of a Rosa Kleb, probably so that no one argued the toss about their bill.

The process of getting ready to ride is taking shape as a familiar routine with a few extras thrown in, like re-fitting a tyre (for some unknown reason) and pumping the tyres up in case they’ve gone down overnight, which they do a bit.  Oiling of the chain too – and David Pears went the whole hog and changed to the spare bike because his chain kept jumping off, so this meant out with the spanners to change to his personal seat.

The seats on the bikes all look equally uncomfortable to me but apparently Dave’s is specially shaped to fit an ex-rugby players bottom.  Apparently there a certain type of tenderness you develop by spending so much time being pushed hard from the rear on the rugby field.  He’s even got his own plastic ring to hold everything in place underneath too; the mind boggles. You just wouldn’t believe the extent to which some people will customise their bikes, it’s worse than us GoldWing riders sticking shiny bits on.

I’m typing this in the Town Square of a place called Divion, a few miles short of the lunch stop.

I’m pretty sure I got ahead of them after my morning round of dogsbody activities by using the motorway so I’m parked up for a change.  My first call was to a cycle shop to buy some more inner tubes.

We set of with 28 spare inner tubes yesterday and used about ten so Ben’s gone large, so that we don’t run out.  They’re apparently cheap enough not to bother patching these days, at least not when your on a Ride like this.  I bought a whole box of 20.

You should have seen the  man’s face.  He’s obviously not used to fat elderly , obviously non-cycling Englishmen walking in off the street and using sign language to buy more inner tubes than he usually sells in a whole week.

The two guys in the cycle shop in Calais could not have been more helpful, although I suspect that might have had something to do with being their best customer for consumables in ages.  I managed communicate that I also needed a  wheel spindle nut, or whatever it’s called, to replace the one Paul lost – although we’re all still a bit suspicious  that he threw it away as an excuse for his ride in a Builder’s van for the last few miles into Dover.  Anyway he won’t be able to use that excuse again because I bought a spare as well.

Or at least I think I bought it; the shop man was so pleased with everything else he’d sold me (I’d bought two spare tyres for Ben as well, he’s obviously into rubber in a big way) that I think he threw that in free.

The major expense was getting Dave’s bike fixed, which turned out to have a bent large driving sprocket.  I’m inventing these technical terms as I go along by the way, because as you would guess from my shape I haven’t ridden a push bike for years so I’m way out of date with the terminology.

Anyway Dave’s bike needed one of these, which comes attached to the pedal arm, and since the pedals were seized on to the old ones we needed a new pair of pedals too.  There was some sensible reason why we also needed a new chain; I don’t know what it was but it was expressed with a lot of very convincing shrugs of shoulders and he-haw, he-haw sounds, only in French.  I didn’t argue.

It cost rather a lot of money and since Dave is now an honorary Yorkshireman (he lives in Grassington, in the Yorkshire Dales) I’ll have to find a way of breaking it to him gently.  A Yorkshireman grieving at the loss of money unexpectedly can be a pitiful sight to behold.

Maybe I’ll tell him over dinner this evening then we can all have a laugh as his “How much?” reaction.  He’s lived in Yorkshire for long enough to have got that phrase off pat by now.

Then it was off to the supermarket to get in supplies for lunch and on to the motorway to try to catch up.  No sign of them yet but I’m still reasonably confident I’m both ahead of them and on route.

There have just been a few loud explosions here in Divion.  Never a dull moment when you’re support car driver.  It was ’s someone’s wedding procession; cars with ribbons and balloons, sounding their horns.  A group of local teenagers have also turned up and the bike rack and the (repaired) spare bike on the roof rack must have caught their attention.

I did my bit for international relations by passing round my Liquorice Alsorts.    One of them then felt sufficiently emboldened to ask for a cigarette.  They must have been all of eleven years  old but their English was better than my French.

It was shortly after this that the Team rode up.  The town square wasn’t particularly inviting as a picnicking site so they rode on towards the planned lunch stop, a golf club just outside town.  Fortune then shined upon us and one of those very pleasant roadside picnic sites which the French do so well.  Sods Law usually states that there’s always one within half a mile further on when you’ve decided to settle for something much less attractive but this time it was the other way around.

We spent a very pleasant 40 minutes or so picnicking  on the baguettes, sliced ham, sliced cheese and vine tomatoes I’d bought.  I’m not normally trusted to roam a supermarket unsupervised of course so it was quite liberating – although of course French supermarkets don’t stock Cornish pasties, pork pies and similar contraband food.  I would normally have gone for the full fat cheese too, of which there is plenty on the shelves, but the practicalities of picnicking dictated otherwise, so they got sliced Dutch cheese instead.

I also introduced the Team to a lunch snack which was popular with our children years ago which my ex-wife dreamt up or at least I think she did; I can’t imagine that they had baguettes in Darwen in her childhood days even if they had bananas, so it was probably an original idea.

So here is the recipe for what we should probably refer to as Hazel’s Banana Butty.  Take one torn off piece of baguette, the length of your banana, then stick your thumb (unless you’ve been doing something grubby with it -in which case suck it clean first or even better get someone else to suck it clean) into the hole as far as it will go.  Then peel your banana and stick it in the hole, also  as far as it will go.  If it won’t go in all the way you simply break it off and stick the stub in the other end, then consume with relish.  Not Branston’s relish of course, just a smile on your face.  No butter or other lubricant is required, the banana does that all by itself.

Then it was onwards and Southwards, or rather slightly East of South, on smooth roads, or rather they were smooth until Ben’s Satnav decided to take a rural short cut to break his clean sheet so far for the day.  Rough roads are not really compatible with the silly little tyre they have on these road bikes and the puncture rate goes up steeply.  They probably had another half dozen today.

I went off on my own to do some more shopping after lunch because tomorrow is Sunday and the shops shut here in France apart from the Boulangerie (bakers) in the mornings.  I took the hints which Liz keeps dropping about what to buy and bought some cucumber and a bag of lettuce, as well as cheese and ham.  It will be warm lettuce, ham and cheese of course, because we have no fridge in the car.

I’m quite used to taking hints from women called Liz of course because I’m married to one.  It’s easier to do as you’re told in the first place, as we married men all learn sooner or later.

The Team all did incredibly well today – 100 miles altogether, a remarkable achievement for people who earn their living in an office and are not real athletes, even if they do seem to have taken their training for this Ride quite seriously.  The Team is bonding well and the humour associated with being on tour as a team is emerging.  They all started off being nice and respectful to me, saying thank scrupulously but they’ve started pulling me leg just as much as they do each other’s.  If it wasn’t for the gruelling ordeal they are undergoing as well, you’d think they were enjoying themselves.

We have invented some silly daily awards and over dinner this evening which was al fresco in Peronne, the talloy of awards grew a bit.  We now have the Yellow Shirt Award, although of course it doesn’t involve an actual yellow shirt because that mind wind up the Frogs and anyway we haven’t got one, but conceptually someone gets the Yellow Shirt as the star rider.  Today it was Doug, who forged on relentlessly throughout.

Tom won the new Award as Poser of the Day for his striking red and white lycra top and shorts. They are apparently a replica of one of the real Tour de France teams of riders and they were in this part of the world today, so Tom was a bit bothered that someone would suss him out as a wannabe.  Anyway he looked the part, as they all do riding along in their outfits on their racing bikes, or what I take to be racing bikes.

Except perhaps Paul, when he’s having a cigarette, although of course they don’t stop often so he doesn’t get much of a chance.  He won an award today too for the Sticker-at-It because he’s carrying a knee injury and really struggling.  I had to collect him in the car for the last 15 miles today but he’s already declared he’ll be on the road tomorrow when we leave at 0830.

Liz also has a painful knee and quite how she managed all 100 miles beats me.  She’s giving her husband PK some earache from time to time so that probably helps.  She has been fixing his punctures for him up till now but I think the other men, or possible me, have put paid to that by praising him for his fecklessness and commenting how successful he’s been for someone who’s been married for only a year for training his wife so well.  He mended his own slow puncture at the drinks stop this afternoon.

They were all in by just after 6pm so there was time for a proper warm down, led by Dave Pears, which seems to a ritual act akin to mixture of ballet dancing and Yoga, to stretch the muscles to reduce tightening up.  It’s very good spectator value and attracted quite a following  through the Hotel windows from the bar.

We’re in a Campanile this time, so not quite so smart as a Holiday Inn.  It’s got proper beds and an en site bathroom but hot or even warm water is not available.  Liz had a cold bath, proving to me that’s she is indeed barking mad as well as physically courageous to take this Ride on.

So, a good day today.  A very hard grind for the riders but no one expected this adventure to be remotely easy.  They’ve each ridden 100 miles on a push bike over countryside which is far from flat and sometimes on roads which are far from smooth.  They’re drinking huge volumes of fluids to  keep hydrated and consuming lots of special energy bars as they ride to keep their energy levels sufficient to keep going.  Their families may be justifiably proud of what all of them are doing.  It’s not a holiday they are working their sock off.

Actually it’s not their sock which are beginning to show signs of wear and tear, it’s somewhere else they’re starting to feel tender.  And that’s despite rubbing in surprising amounts of cream.  There’s a distinctly comical side to each refreshment stop as more lubrication is discretely applied.

Apparently the traditional approach to avoiding what might be described as saddle burns was to use a banana skin inside your riding shorts, slimy side in.  We have a supply of bananas in the car (slow carbs!) so perhaps they’ll start serving another purpose when the cream starts running out.

If you’re enjoying reading these reports and feeling a bit of guilt that you never did anything for charity quite like these office boys and girls are doing for cancer charities,  then don’t feel inhibited about visiting their Virgin Money Giving website; it’s all in a very good cause.

Dawn has broken, breakfast starts in 10 minutes so it’s time for the Team to get ready to go again.  This is not a holiday jaunt, it’s a gruelling challenge.  They’re a great bunch so please do your bit back home to support them and get some friends to read this Blog and consider making a donation.