First 'Tour' (London to Paris), First Century

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James Ots

Senior Member
Location
Coventry
A week and a bit ago I did my first 'tour' — I cycled from London to Paris, via the Dover/Calais ferry, in three days. I started cycling last summer after many years off, and I got hooked, so I arranged with my brother and brother-in-law to do a London to Paris ride, and then my brother-in-law's dad joined us too.

Over the last year I'd been cycling to and from work every day (only 2.5 km each way) and often went out for a 30 or 40 km ride on a Saturday morning, and I'd managed one 100 km ride, but I hadn't done anything further than that. As I got closer to the ride I started doing 20-25 km a day, as well as 50-70 km rides at the weekend, and went out on a 90 km ride with the other guys in the New Forest as well. I tried to get as many hills into my lunchtime rides as I could, but it's not incredibly hilly round here.

The first day of the trip started at 5.30 am as we had to drive from the place we were staying in the north of London down to Tower Bridge for the start at about 7.30. We did 145 km that day, with food stops around 50 and 100 km. I was navigating, using the Ride With GPS app on my phone, which bongs at you to let you know whether you should turn left or right. It’s not so good at roundabouts, as you have to listen to it telling you which exit to take, so it was a bit annoying as we made our way out of London. But once we were in the country it was much better. There were, according to Strava, 1360 m of climbing on the first day, including a long slog up a nasty hill in Gillingham and a several really steep short hills in the Kent Downs. At one point I was a little worried that if we had too many more of them then I might not manage to get to the ferry, but then either the hills got easier, or I got extra motivation when I started seeing signs for Dover, and the final kilometres weren’t particularly taxing. (As I write this I’m watching someone cycle up Hardknott Pass on TV, and those hills suddenly seem rather insignificant).

We made it to the ferry with an hour to spare, despite three punctures between us (one for me, two for the brother-in-law). When we arrived in Calais it was just a quick 27 minute ride to the F1 hotel where we were staying for the night. Alas, I didn’t get a lot of sleep, as my shoulders and arms were rather achey. Oh, I forgot to mention that my sister and brother-in-law’s mum were in a car, so we didn’t have to carry anything except for the essentials during the ride, which made things much easier.

On day two we did almost exactly 100 miles — my first century — with 1429 m of climbing. This was a reasonably relaxing day of riding, as we didn’t have to rush to catch a ferry, the sun was shining, we didn’t get any punctures and Ride with GPS was giving clear directions. Also, the roads were all really smooth, the countryside was beautiful and the French drivers were brilliant — they nearly all passed on the opposite side of the road, and were quite happy to hold back at a good distance on blind corners. There was one particularly challenging hill. We could see it looming, and as we got close I saw a sign saying ‘Le pied du mont’ — the foot of the mountain. It probably wouldn’t be much of a hill for some people, but it took four minutes of hard grind to get up it, and it was really satisfying to get to the top. The last part of the ride in Amiens was alongside the canal, which was a very picturesque ride. We ate at a place called Buffalo Grill. Not a very French place, but a great place to refuel! Again I didn’t sleep well, but this time it was because there was so much to think about — the aches of the previous night had gone away.

Day three started off wet and windy. The rain eased off after a while, and we got a bit of sun just before our first food stop, before it started again. The rain then gradually got worse until it was completely bucketing it down on the way into Paris, before stopping just as we arrived. Ride with GPS also decided not to work on that day, so we had to navigate just by looking at maps. Fortunately, because of the weather forecast we’d reworked our route the previous night to make it more direct with fewer turns, so until we got close to Paris it wasn’t much of a problem. After about 20 km I was reasonably confident that I could make it to Paris — if my legs were still going after two days of cycling, they’d probably manage another. We just kept slogging away in the rain. It’s the longest I’ve ever been out in the rain in my life, and it wasn’t particularly enjoyable, but knowing that we were getting closer to Paris kept us going. I had two more punctures, and then about 30 km outside Paris, while we were stopped to check directions, my front tube blew out. It was on the inside of the tube, and I couldn’t see any reason for it, so we put a new tube in and carried on.

Navigating into Paris was slow work. When I’d planned the route it had been difficult to get in without going on any really major roads, so doing it without directions in a deluge didn’t really help! We managed it eventually though, and got onto the main road by the Seine (though I’m not sure the road was much drier than the river). What surprised me at this point was that the Paris drivers, who everyone had told me were much worse than the drivers in the rest of France, were still quite courteous, and would still give us plenty of space most of the time.

Just a few kilometres away from the finish, while we were stopped at a red light, my front inner tube blew out again. This time it was in the side of the tube, and it blew a hole in the side of the tyre. We patched up the tyre with adhesive patches and put a new inner tube in. It was our last inner tube, and we were out of CO2 so we had to inflate the tyre manually, with the result that my front tyre was a lot softer for the last part of the trip. However, this was probably a good thing, as it gave me better grip and handling on the wet Paris cobbles.

Eventually we turned away from the Seine and started cycling into Paris for real, amongst all the properly crazy Parisian traffic. Which turned out to be the best city centre traffic I’ve ridden in, with the drivers still giving us plenty of room — in fact, it felt like we could have cycled where we’d wanted and a space would have just opened up around us! Our final destination was the Eiffel Tower, but on the way we cycled up to the Arc de Triomphe. It was quite surreal, riding up one of the long avenues (not the Champs Elysees, unfortunately) towards the Arc de Triomphe, and realising that we’d got there completely on our own steam (if you ignore the ferry). We stopped for some photos, and then cycled on to the Tower, on pretty much exclusively cobbled roads. Rounding that last corner and seeing that famous landmark towering over you was pretty cool.

We then took the RER train back to our F1 hotel in Stains, which lived up to its name, and was a pretty grotty part of Paris. However, we got a good night’s sleep, and the next day I drove for nearly nine hours to get back home.

I thought I wouldn’t want to see a bike again for some time, but a couple of days later I put new Gatorskins on my bike (replacing the Vittoria Rubino Pros which had been damaged in the blowout) and then rode round the block to test them out, and found that I wanted to just keep riding.

So over the last two and a half years I’ve gone from pretty much doing no exercise, to learning to run, doing a 10 km race, getting hooked on cycling and riding 285 miles from London to Paris. Now I need another challenge. So I’ve decided it’s time to learn to swim (properly, instead of just about managing to splash from one end of the pool to the other), and I’m going to try to do a Triathlon next year. Which might be the biggest challenge yet, as I kind of hate swimming. But I hope I might be able to learn to love it as much as running and cycling.
 

raleighnut

Legendary Member
Nice one, :biggrin:
 

steveindenmark

Legendary Member
Thanks for the write up and video James. Congratulations on your first century.

Just Asa viewers perspective. Staring at fellas arxes for 7 minutes, whist having breakfast on a Sunday morning is not fun :0). Some different angles would have been good. But I understand this was more about the ride than the film.

F1 hotels are quite strange. I wake up in the mørnings and get confused as to where I am because all the rooms in all the F1 hotels are the same.

Steve
 

StuartG

slower but no further
Location
SE London
Congrats from me too. France is a great place to ride. The approaches to Paris less so but by then adrenalin just takes over. Sorry to hear you had so many fairy visits. You were either very, very unlucky - or, hopefully, you have found a root cause in the choice or setting up of your tyres and tubes for long distance riding.

Your only real problem now is - where next?
(Clue: the further south the more sun)
 

Bexs

New Member
Do you have the route from Calais, I'm attempting to do the same thing although from Norwich to Dover, then Calais to Paris. I don't want to go on main roads though really.
 
OP
OP
James Ots

James Ots

Senior Member
Location
Coventry
Here are the rides on Ride With GPS:
London to Dover: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/5136462
Calais to Amiens: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/5136422
Amiens to Paris: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/5136446

I'd fully recommend day 2's route. Due to the rain I don't really remember whether day 3 was a good route or not, although I do know that it was difficult to find any other route into Paris from that direction which looked at all safe for the last 30 km or so.

Although you won't be using day 1's route, it was good ride and avoided most of the main roads, except for one point where we had to run across a dual carriageway, but it did include a lot of turns, so it took a lot of effort navigating.
 
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