I woke up early, looking forward to a nice heartly athlete's breakfast...So I, along with everyone else, was a little bit disappointed with the luke-warm lumpy porridge and runny scrambled eggs on offer. Disappointed, but not suprised, given the standard of the hotel.
Breakfast was a good opportunity to see everyone together for the first time and make introductions. I found that I was not the only one riding alone so that made me feel a lot better. After breakfast, we headed off to briefing in the near by carpark.
6am - Briefing
The first casualty of the trip occured around 6am and was a poor bike that was runover in the car park. There were 122 cyclists and bikes, plus support vans and crew dotted around but even despite all this...some idiot still decided to race through the middle of everyone and smash a bike! Luckily, the crew managed to change the saddle (which was bent and completely unuseable) so the guy could carry on with the ride.
After the briefing, we were given tags for our bikes and sett off on our merry way out of Crystal Palace.
12pm - Lunch stop - somewhere in Kent
We made quite good progress to the lunch stop, at around 55 miles, so I was suprised when we got there that we only had around 30 miles to go. I cycled most of the way with Graham, Lizzy and Sarah as we seemed to keep the same pace. At the start everyone was together but it only took around 30 minutes for the whole group so be so widely spaced that we didn't see some people until lunch.
4.46pm - Dover!! (Only 1 minute late!)
When we arrived in Dover, we met in a carpark and waited for the whole group to re-assemble before cycling in convoy around to the ferry port. We were at around 86 miles by the time we arrived and the stopping to wait was when I think the tiredness hit everyone. When we got onto the ferry, we had dinner and then everyone just found a place to sit/lie down to rest their legs.
9.30pm (ish) - Calais!
We landed in Calais and then had a few miles left to cycle to our hotels. Everyone was incredibley tired but we all made it. We stayed in the Holiday in at Coquelles which was world's apart from The Lodge. It was probably the comfiest bed I have ever slept in! My head barely hit the pillow before I was fast asleep! The day was hard but getting to the hotel felt like such an amazing achievement for everyone that the pain was definitely worth it!
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