FNRttC 2017 (that's next year, folks) thinking ride thread

[Flying Dodo]

I'd be more in favour of that sort of thing.

Although I'm just back from a little charity ride to the Somme ending up at the Thriepval Memorial and I'd been thinking you could do a very nice historical tour from Calais, down to Thriepval, looping back up around Arras, Douai, Vimy, perhaps to Roubaix, Ypres and then back to Calais.

 

[AKA Bob]

Very happy to do and help with anything. We just need to ensure it social cycling and with those Fridays peeps that's almost a certainty....

There's so much history around which is not just first WW1 such as Agincourt, Waterloo, Normandy Beaches, Dunkirk and Operation Market Garden that Adam's suggestion is a good starting point.

 

[srw]

Reflecting on the last few years, the constraints for a Fridays' journey are roughly:

• Easy to get to from the South-East of England, preferably without reliance on a single train or ferry line.
• Enough largish towns that there are enough places for everyone to stay, preferably with a good spread from campsites to 4* hotels.
• Towns close enough together that we can leave after breakfast and arrive in time to look around - which means a maximum distance of 50-odd miles on the flat, or a bit less with hills.
• Countryside that is reasonably picturesque and towns that are reasonably interesting.
• Bail-out options for injuries, malfunctions, hangovers, tiredness or people who just fancy doing something else for a day.

If you can lay on a bus and a van to carry people and bikes and particularly luggage you can relax some of the constraints - in particularly the distance constraint - if the journey is interesting or meaningful enough (see Bordeaux and LonJoG).

Sadly, I suspect Britanny is just too difficult for a typical Fridays-sized group without that vehicle support. The only way I can see to make it happen would be to start and end from St-Malo, because Portsmouth is reasonably approachable - but you're still constrained by basically one ferry per day and one route. Either that, or have a much smaller tour (?8 people) - which is exclusionary.

I like the idea of a history-themed tour - but you'd need to leave time to look around places (and heretically I think one battlefield or memorial is much like the next). One other vague thought I had was a border-themed tour - roughly follow, rather than cross, land borders. In the low countries you could combine that idea with a visit to Baarle-Hartog or the Vennbahn (look them up - relics of history). On the way to Dunkirk ferry I was idly musing that Dunkirk town to De Panne would be a good short morning - lunch by the seaside to start the holiday, followed by a trip to somewhere like Bruges in the afternoon. You could also pick themes like breweries or belfries with carillons or historical churches (though I recognise some of those are minority interests).

 

[Aperitif]

You could also pick themes like breweries or belfries with carillons or historical churches

A Tour with bells on - appealing for some.

 

[StuartG]

The Fridays is surely about encouraging ordinary cyclists to do extraordinary rides. Whilst reprising past successes is bound to repeat them - it doesn't extend the envelope. To misquote:

"We choose to ride and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ..."

 

[srw]

One other vague thought I had was a border-themed tour - roughly follow, rather than cross, land borders.

It might be worth saying what led me to that thought. Venlo is a Dutch town that nestles up against the German border. In Venlo I saw three German-registered cars, all parked in the same drive. Once across the border I saw no Dutch-registered cars. In Aachen, a German town whose town centre is within two miles of both Belgium and the Netherlands, all the cars were German registered - most with Aachen (AC) numberplates. Aachen's neighbouring towns are the French Plombieres (Belgium), the German Walhorn (Belgium) and the Dutch Welkenraedt (Belgium). The bus east from Dunkirk in France stops at Frontiere, where French police and soldiers carrying machine-guns patrol and stop cars at random.

All the countries we rode through are part of the Schengen agreement and the EU. Yet those invisible and theoretically open land borders appear in practice less permeable than the very solid sea border we crossed to get home. DFDS, a Danish company, operates ferries between France and the UK where Polish is the third language on board. A Dutch or German or Belgian or French or Polish or Slovakian car or lorry is an everyday sight on the streets of London or on the M25.

 

[mmmmartin]

I think one battlefield or memorial is much like the next

Agreed. All commonwealth war graves are the same, for a good reason. And there is only so much rusty metal you can look at without rapidly being bored by it.

 

[swansonj]

Agreed. All commonwealth war graves are the same, for a good reason. And there is only so much rusty metal you can look at without rapidly being bored by it.

Blimey, I expect you're the sort of man who thinks one electricity pylon looks much like another too...

 

[mmmmartin]

All gravestones are the same. (We're all equal in death, see.) I could design a tour of graveyards and sites where battles took place 100 years ago, through tedious French landscape on roads with fast traffic. I reckon it would attract a peloton of about half a dozen.

 

[User482]

Blimey, I expect you're the sort of man who thinks one electricity pylon looks much like another too...

French pylons shrug, which seems apposite.

 

[srw]

I saw Dutch registered cars in Belgium.

I didn't do that part of Belgium. And there are good linguistic reasons why there's more permeability over that border.

 

[srw]

All gravestones are the same. (We're all equal in death, see.) I could design a tour of graveyards and sites where battles took place 100 years ago, through tedious French landscape on roads with fast traffic. I reckon it would attract a peloton of about half a dozen.

...unless you set it up as a charity ride for [insert Forces charity of choice] with two support vans and cars with orange flashy lights on their roofs.

(Many of the other cyclists on the Hoek ferry were doing exactly that)

 

[mmmmartin]

Very true, and I stand corrected. But isn't the issue whether members of The Fridays would sign up for something like that?

 

[velovoice]

Well @Flying Dodo spent last weekend leading a charity ride exactly like that and frankly I could wish I was fit enough for something like that. But I'm not. And it's pretty heads-down, no sightseeing really, which is not what I want to use a serious chunk of my annual leave on.

 

[rvw]

Just to throw something else into the mix - what might be the appetite for a Chateau-type holiday based in one spot, with excursions (of different lengths and difficulties) out from that? Like @velovoice I would like to have time to look round places, rather than just riding through them. The idea of having enough clothes, not having to wash stuff every day and pack every morning, is also something which appeals to me!

This could potentially be a second event in the spirit of post #82. Of course, by definition it isn't a journey, but it might have different benefits instead.