Advertisement
Published: April 7th 2008
Edit Blog Post
12
12 countries representatives 150308 Friday 14 March was the first day of the great adventure - up very early to finish off packing my enormous red bag and take care of some domestic things, then after breakfast Karine drove me to Ashford to catch the Eurostar to Paris. There I was met at the Gare du Nord by Liliane and Andre; Andre loaded the big red bag into the car and took it to the official start at the Trocadero, and Liliane went with me to collect my bike from the luggage office - to which I had sent it in advance the day before - then we cycled together to the Trocadero. There there were some big tents set up and all the official vehicles were parked round. We had to put our participant numbers on our luggage (I am No. 44 on the red team, which is why I have a red bag.) We were given the last bits of equipment - a crash helmet in expedition colours, a sleeping bag liner, a road book with each day’s route, etc - rather a lot when our bags were already packed to capacity with what we thought we would need for five months. Our
bikes were checked in and lined up by teams. Of course we had to take a few pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background. I met Paul Bacho, the sole American rider, and helped him with checking in as he doesn’t speak much French. In five months he should be fluent! Paul is on the red team too; we also have Michel Bedard, Andre Arpin and Andre Giroux from Canada, Marcel Lefebvre from Belgium, and Marc Wuyts who is Belgian but lives in France. There are only two women in the reds - only about 20 women in the whole group - Marie Meyer and me. We are a very friendly group and are looking forward to traveling together. Our leader is James Mara. Paul and I were both staying at the D’Artagnan Youth Hostel and we went out for dinner at a Greek restaurant. Oddly enough I found I was sharing a room with a Chinese girl who will be working at the Beijing Olympics as a volunteer.
Saturday I went to the local Decathlon store to buy a couple of bits; we had to be at the Trocadero by 2 pm for speeches and introductions. Representatives
were there from the governments of the 12 countries we will be traversing, plus from the schools that are linked with the trip and will be following our progress closely. There was an official dinner at the Youth Hostel - just normal Youth Hostel food, pretty boring. This night I was sharing with two other ladies who are doing the Paris-Pekin.
Sunday 16 March - Le Grand Depart
The two ladies I was sharing a room with decided to get up at 6, so as breakfast wasn’t till 7.30 there was a long wait. Everyone staying at the Youth Hostel got on the Metro to the Trocadero, where after surprisingly little ceremony we set off almost on time. Lots of tearful farewells and well-wishers and photos, of course.
There are five teams: black, red, blue, green and yellow, representing the Olympic colours. There is a certain amount of rivalry between the groups but it’s all good-humoured. We were helped on our way out of Paris by the police who held up all the traffic, then we were on our way. A lot of local cycle clubs escorted us for parts of the journey.
Lunch was a picnic
organized by a local cycle club in Fontenay-Tresigny in a hall - a good thing because we had some rain in the morning, one very heavy shower. In the afternoon it cleared up and even got quite warm. Alas, we lost our way a bit in the afternoon and did some extra kilometers. I was in a very bad temper because I wanted to stop for a cup of coffee and there hadn’t been any at the lunch stop. However, as we arrived at Provins, our stop for the night, there was a beautiful rainbow which made me cheer up. Tonight I shared a hotel room with Marie, who is very nice and whom I knew already from the meetings in October and February.
We had to get back on our bikes and cycle into the old town for dinner, which did not please anyone especially as it was drizzling rain again.
We have these rather heavy waterproof white panniers we are supposed to carry on the front of our bikes. They are a bit excessive for the amount of materials we need to carry each day and I found they tended to catch the crosswinds rather a
lot so I plan to stuff all my bits into the rackpack and my little barbag that I got at Decathlon and not use the panniers tomorrow.
Monday 17 March - Provins to Troyes
Quite a late start; after breakfast put bags in trucks then waited around in the cold for about half an hour, had a minute’s silence for the funeral of the last French soldier who had fought in the 1914-18 war, and finally got away towards 10 am. A nice day’s cycling, a couple of long climbs but nothing too difficult. We did have a couple of mishaps today - two falls and a couple of punctures - but no-one hurt. The weather is turning colder, though thankfully it was dry, but snow is forecast in the next couple of days. Another picnic lunch in a hall at Mery-sur-Seine, but this time there was a local café open and quite a lot of us took advantage of that for a coffee or a beer.
We were accompanied for the latter part of the day by the local cycle club who guided us to the Youth Hostel at Rosieres-pres-Troyes. I managed to get to a local supermarket to buy some cheese to supplement my so far largely protein-free diet (as usual in France, even if they do some meat-free food they don’t have much idea of nutrition). I realised when I got to the shop that I didn’t have a bike lock so I put my bike inside the door. When I got back with my purchases it was gone! Consternation! Was my trip over already? I asked round frantically and found that the store security had squirreled it away - they told me off for leaving it there. I pedaled gratefully back to the Youth Hostel.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.259s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0672s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb