Another early alarm. My Blackberry starts singing "Chasing Cars" at the usual 6:45am and I stagger up for a Lemsip, pack my bag and get ready for breakfast. Surprisingly I feel OK, but that might be the paracetamol kicking in. Breakfast is in the street level dining room overlooking the paving that leads to the market square and the train station. At 7:30 am on a Friday morning it's surprising to see people hurrying across the brick work towards the station, some even breaking into a little jog.
Another great breakfast with plenty of fresh croissants, baguettes and boiled eggs. A dodgy orange juicer for use with whole oranges seemed to make more noise than was warranted, given the amount of juice it was producing. Lots of people milling around, some looking a little lost or just stunned; breakfast with Dave was quiet by my standards. This was due to the fact that I could barely talk, a fact that may have related to the bug I was carrying rather than the small amount of Stella I'd consumed the night before.
Finish breakfast, clear out my room, bags in the hall for delivery to DA and the Hotel Ibis in Compiegne and then off to the balcony to find my bike. A little tricky due to the sheer number of bikes squashed together. I carried out a few bikes before mine could be retrieved. Lots of bikes on the ramp outside the hotel, and strangely not too many owners to claim them. Interesting to be leaving from the side of a reasonably busy city road where local buses would come round the corner and charge up the hill while avoiding the milling cyclists and DA vans that were hogging their lane.
Another lovely cool morning, not too cold, but just right for another day of cycling. I wasn't too keen to get started and watched two waves of people leave for the top of the hill. Then I noticed that both lots I'd seen depart were just sitting at the lights waiting to turn left. After a short pause, I decided I might as well join up. Quick sprint to the lights. And stop. We seemed to wait for ages, in reality not more than a couple of minutes; even pressing the button for the pedestrian light didn't facilitate a change. Finally the lights went green and we were able to get underway for the day.
Long straight road heading south out of Arras with a few lights at junctions but not much traffic along the way. I was tailing Alex and Matt when a Porsche overtook me, separating me from them. The driver was clearly frustrated by having to keep to the 30 km/h speed limit and started revving his engine and threatening to overtake them but was thwarted by the nasty bumpy separator in the middle of the road. Eventually he managed to whiz round and head off for his very important appointment.
At this point I realised I couldn't keep up with Alex and Matt; they were too far ahead of me to chase as we turned onto a track with a sign saying that only farm machinery could use the path ahead. As this was our signed route, we just followed it through the fields; it was quite rough and not great for cycling. Here I was cycling along with Olivia and Claire and again it was the pleasant chitter chatter along the way that helped keep our minds off the distance in front of us and just enjoy the moment cycling. Claire insisted in cycling in 8th gear, which is really hard work on the legs. Apparently a friend she cycled with used to call the higher, easier, gears "Granny Gear" and taunt here about cycling in granny gear when they were going to work. Olivia on the other hand had joined a cycling group and was really quick up the hills and zipped along at great speed. We passed through some small towns and at one point over took a group who were watching one of their number get up from the road side; apparently one of them had touched some scree at high speed and suddenly found themselves lying on the road.
We continued on to the water stop at Thiepval which is located at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, a massive monument containing the names of over 75,000 French and British soldiers whose bodies were never recovered. Alex found his grandfather's name on one of the plaques, which was quite humbling as it's hard to appreciate just what those soldiers went through in the name of a very stupid war.
Back on the bikes and Claire, Olivia and I headed off for the next stop and continued through the side roads before getting onto a more main road and then heading up a hill to stop at a panoramic view looking over the marshy expanse of the Somme. At this point the weather, which had slowly been getting colder and grayer, finally decided it was time to rain. Fortunately this was the only time on the whole trip we had any precipitation whilst cycling, but it was a little tricky heading down the hill to the river as the water on the road made for wet brake pads and almost no stopping power. There was another climb to a ridge above Eclusier Vaux and as we cycled along the wet road, Olivia reached for her water bottle, clipped the soft verge of the road and fell off her bike, hitting her elbow on the tarmac and giving her shin a good scrape. I stopped and looked back to see her lying under her bike, which is a very unusual way to crash. This was also quite worrying as the shock caused Olivia to get cold and start shivering; we were a long way from lunch and hadn't seen the DA team since the water stop. Turns out Olivia was OK, some antiseptic wipes and the application of a plaster and then back on the bikes again.
Down hill into the transcendently beautiful Eclusier Vaux; a series of lakes and trees with the road passing between them into the village. Local people fishing and canoing in the still, mirror like waters that ran past the village. I could have stopped here for the day. We passed through the village and saw the orange arrows pointing left up a hill and as we headed out of the village we met a group of school students heading down the hill back where we'd been. Later we found out that others who reached the same village saw the orange arrows pointing right and had managed to get totally lost. No prizes for guessing who changed the direction of these arrows!
Karen caught up with us at this village and a number of us continued towards our luncheon prize. Along the way we swapped our stories of why we were raising money for Alzheimer's. My grandmother had suffered from dementia and it was just the gradual loss of her that seemed so sad. When my father moved his mother from her him, she spent 8 months living with us before my father could find her a bed in a nursing home. I just remember my father having a really tough time with the challenges of my Grandma's mental state and the difficulties he went through trying to find her a decent place to live.
We managed to get over a major motorway and over a busy crossroad without further incident, passing Stan with a flat tire on onr really dodgy side ride and past Jo who was mending puncture 72 for the day. Then it was onto the final stretch to find the lunch stop. And no food.
Apparently the lunch crew thought they were supposed to wait for Jo to arrive before they could serve up lunch. According to Jo when we were having dinner, lunch was supposed to be ready for 11:30 am. Net results, 20 or so damp, very hungry and very cold cyclists waiting to get something to eat whose patience was wearing quite thin. One of the DA vans showed up and the food magically appeared. By this time though, 75 year old John with one eye had decided he'd prefer to head off and keep warm rather than hanging around freezing to death and was arguing the point with the DA crew member. Matt was shaking at the picnic table with a plate of food and starting to turn an alarming color of purple. Our very sensible DA rep quickly took out blankets for the colder ones and old John was sat in the passenger seat of the van with the heater running to warm him up. I've a great photo of a motley mob of refugees in the back of the DA van scarfing down their lunch and trying to warm up by sharing body heat like penguins. While we were there, the sun came out and for me it was refreshingly warm just to stand in the shelter of the DA van and warm up in the glorious sunshine.
This was a long stop; the DA team didn't want us to head off until Jo had caught up (lots of punctures on some of the more scrappy roads we'd been on) as they needed to have one of the DA vans ahead of us for the second water stop. We ended up hanging around for a quite a while until everyone had eaten and sorted themselves out. This was quite a low point for some people as it was just chaotic and unpleasant to be so cold and hungry
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