Back in the damp of January when I was researching how to do a Reading to Paris tour, taking the Eurostar for the return trip looked hard to organise for a group of 16. It was definite we'd be on seperate trains, there was the possibilty that we'd had to disassemble some of the bikes and hand them over to Euro Dispatch and to cap it all, the bikes might not be on same train. Oh and as a cap on the cap of it all you have to book the bikes seperately to the train tickets. Faffage gone large.
Which is why I turned to the coach option. I tried three companies in the Reading area and only Horseman took me seriously. It turned out that their sales person was a long time CTC member and he measured up the space available and gave me a quote. From a cost perspective it was marginally more expensive per person than taking first the Eurostar and then a GWR from Paddington to Reading. Time from door-to-door was broadly similar too.
But what got me thinking was the sheer waste of taking an empty coach on the outbound leg. Knowing the Fridays from a few night rides I knew the ethos is similar to our own (cafe to cafe, bar to bar, riding for the sheer fun of it) which is why I offered up the opportunity.
So I'm really grateful that you, Martin B, and the rest of the Fridays who went (and one from CTC Oxfordshire) were able to make use of the transport. Oh, and of course we all appreciate that this lowered the cost for us.
A bit more on this. When I went to pick up the "cargo" from the coach depot yesterday (a cardboard box is now sitting on my drive with a "free second-hand bubble-wrap" sign on it) Neil from Horseman told me they were now looking into a business case for getting a trailer for bikes. If they did we could then use a smaller coach to reduce the costs a bit more.
So, once again, thanks for making your tour help make our tour. Watch this space, we may do another cooperative adventure next year.
And if you are interested in our tour report it's
here.