[QUOTE 4717624, member: 21629"]My report.
First uphill was few seconds after we leave the train - slope at Waterloo East to get out of it.
ok ok, no more complaints about hills and mountains (but
I was born in a country as flat as Belgium and my first ever seen hills were Surrey ones 7 years ago).
Easy (even for me!) ride to J31 and the best part of this part - wc !!!
food and drink then and a relax watching others trying to sleep
(I've got some photo evidence, haha
).
Left J31 and got into different ride. Dark and bye-bye-flats (it's not a complaint...not yet).
Light bollocking from
@mmmmartin IIRC him coz we left some of us on our way.
Brainless lorry driver nearly hitting few of us. One of those "we don't have a phrase "to overtake cyclists" in our vocabulary".
Poor fox. Didn't dare to take a photo of it.
Good morning the morning.
My bottom screaming of pain (wrong cycling shorts...)
Last on-way meeting somewhere about 8 miles from Southend. My ears caught some Titus words "..... 8 miles" oh no no no, I'm gonna die. No, my ass will die first.
8 miles to go, hang on, I've got 85 km now according to Garmin ... hmmm, let's die but I will have beautiful looking numbers "100km".
Cycling - walking - speed record achieved - walking - bottom crying
- CAFE !!!!!
Best part of this part - wc !!!
Food, drink, chat, more chat, time to go home.
Train Southend to Tilbury, ferry Tilbury - Gravesend (I didn't stand a chance to resist that), train Gravesend - Ashford.
A lesson learnt - always use my usual cycling shorts. New ones may surprise in bad way. Won't be able to sit on my bike for a week. At least.
This ride was the first time in my life when I wasn't freezing at every stop which is an absolute wooooooow for me.
It's always nice to ride in a large group of cyclists.
So despite of all my complaints and tears and more complaints I give 10 points out of 10 for this ride. Looking forward to the other ones.
100 km done.
[/QUOTE]
Large parts of Belgium are emphatically not flat. Plenty of nasty climbs in Flanders, average height of 1500ft in the Ardennes...
Well done. It won't get easier, but you will get faster