Day 3 - Abbeville to Beauvais

8.30am - Briefing and set off!
Another amazing breakfast to get us ready for our day. I slept very poorly the night before, only getting a few hours, so was feeling pretty wiped out before we started. Everyone on the ride was so much fun and so enthusiastic that I didn't really think too much about feeling tired or achey.

The route

Today's route was one of the most scenic of the whole trip, lovely winding roads and picturesque churches everywhere. I suffered my first physcial injury of the trip when some twigs grabbed hold of my ankle and had a good old claw. Luckily, 2 days of cycling had turned me into quite the athlete, so I struggled on regardless of the pain ;-) In keeping with the previous days, there were a lot of hills but we had all started to become pretty pro at them by this time and (even though we stopped a few times) no one actually got off and pushed.

Lunch stop
Between the water stop and lunch, we had become separated again - with the faster group members speeding off into the distance so myself, Tracy and Matt all cycled together for the second leg of the day, keeping to pretty much the same pace. We took a lot more stops today, as again there was less distance to cover and was far more relaxed. There was also more of an opportunity to take pictures as the scenery was a lot better. We stopped for lunch but also made a fair few unscheduled stops.

One of the stops towards the end, a few miles before the hotel was instigated by the blue team. A group of rugby players who had stopped at a pub and called out to everypne passing to make them stop too. There were around 45 people there when we arrived, all rehydrating with a pint. The pub owner looked like he had never seen so many people in his pub before (and probably hadn't). He was so excited that he came out and took videos of everyone.  

The Campanile Hotel

When we got to the hotel, everyone was in really high spirits and not showing any effects of having cycled for 3 days. The trip was such good fun and everyone was laughing so much that any pain or tiredness was secondary to everything else.