Le Bonne Anniversaire Tour

Nikki and Nicole report on their epic journey to Coralie’s 40th birthday party in France.

Nellie and Gateau ready to roll!

Day 1 - London to Dover

When Coralie invited us to her birthday party in Northern France, Nicole and I immediately hatched a plan to ride there. Days off work taken, ferries and hotels booked, multiple pages of Google Maps printed and we were ready. We had given Coralie our glad-rags earlier in the week, but even so, managed to both carry in excess of 6kgs on our backs, with Nellie and Gateau riding shotgun.

Top of Cudham Lane

Quick (and, as it proved, not very accurate) timing calculations done, we rolled out of Clapham at a sociable hour on Friday morning. The journey started well. We made good time out of London, heading through Kent. The sun had graced us with its presence and spirits were high – so much so that when Nicole told me the climb up Cudham Lane was “about 3km”, and it turned out to be 7.5km, there were no toys thrown out of prams!

Ideal photo opportunity!

Just after a sunny lunch, the sky clouded over and it began to rain. This coincided, of course, with us heading 5km in the wrong direction and Nic getting a puncture. On examining her tyre, Nic realised that changing it before setting off would have been a good idea, as it closely resembled a colander. We carried on, praying for good road surfaces (which actually, Kent is very good at!) and bemoaning the fact that we were unlikely to find a bike shop on our route. Just as we said that, we rolled over a hill to see a bike shop straight ahead of us! Having stocked up on energy bars, more gas cannisters and a tyre, we felt much more positive, even when the man in the shop told us we had at least 80km still to go.....and it was now starting to get dark. Feeling confident in our lights, especially Nic’s super-powered front light, we pushed on.

Sad face on calling it quits

The sky got darker, and the rain got heavier, and after a wrong turn found us on a dual carriageway, we started to feel less cheerful. A packet of emergency Percy Pigs (consumed in 2min) soon sorted this out and we felt recharged. However, daylight was not in our favour. Our maps had now disintegrated into soggy masses of lines and indistinguishable words and Nic’s front light decided to be not so super-powered and started to fail. Nicole suddenly seemed uncharacteristically happy to sit behind me on the lanes, often asking “Can you see?” Armed with only a £15 commuter light, I couldn’t see a hand in front of my face. However, I knew this wasn’t the time to admit this, so carried on with a cheery “Yep, no problem”, whilst using the opportunity of every passing car to work out exactly where the road went ahead of us and trying not to ride us into a hedge. We finally reached a little village, where a pub sign shone brightly. The lanes ahead of us were pitch black, and knowing that the terrain between us and Dover was quite lumpy and not relishing a slippery, blind descent, we decided the most sensible option was to call it quits. We were a mere 10km from our hotel after all. We managed to persuade a nice but reluctant taxi man to take us, and finally got to our hotel about 8pm. Luckily, room service was available, so we tucked up in bed with huge bowls of pasta and two puddings, finally dry, warm and in one piece. 

Lessons learnt from Day 1:-
1) Riding to Dover takes quite a long time. And it’s quite clever to include time for getting lost, getting punctures, reading maps, stopping for the loo, stopping for water, stopping to eat, stopping for random photos... just generally stopping.
2) Check your bike before you go. This includes brake pads, tyres, lights...
3) Don’t put on 7 kgs. It makes going up hills much harder.
4) It gets really dark in the Kent countryside in October. Really, really dark. And there are no street lights.
5) If you are meant to be on something called a “Lane”, and you end up doing a 2-up down a dual carriageway, you’ve probably gone wrong somewhere. Unless it’s Seven Mile Lane, because that’s not really a lane, more a lorry super-highway.
6) Kent roads are much nicer than Surrey roads. Kent drivers are much nicer than Surrey drivers.
7) Sometimes, if you pray hard for a bike shop, one will appear.
8) Percy Pigs are a nutritional essential.
9) Riding in the rain means you're hard. Riding in the rain and pitch black means you're mental.
10) People outside the M25 are nice, even to a pair of soggy, dirty, smelly girls in lycra, with pink and furry toys attached to their backpacks.

Day 2 - Dover to Lumbres

Boarding the ferry in Dover

Day 2 started well - it wasn’t raining and all our kit was dry having turned the hotel heater on full blast overnight. We pedalled the remaining 10km or so down to the ferry port in Dover where we met with our other two accomplices for the trip, Helen and Jake, who had got the early train down from London. The ferry ride passed quickly with the help of coffee and second breakfast, and by 1pm, we found ourselves in downtown Calais. 

Once again, I wasn’t entirely sure of the distance or terrain to our destination, but the others were happy to put their blind trust in my route. I estimated it to be “about 50km” and “not too hilly”. The first half or so was along canals, so at least we could assume it was flat. Things went quite well, until we hit some rough surface, which felt like we were riding pave. This pave soon turned to cyclo-cross, and I could hear Nikki cursing me under her breath as she bumped over the rough terrain on her carbon race bike, whilst the rest of us were on our training bikes. Worse still, we had taken a wrong turn and only realised when the terrain became unrideable, meaning we had to trace back over said 2km cyclocross section to get back on track. I was certain that my paper-thin slit-ridden Schwabe Ultremo race tyres were going to puncture again, but miraculously, they held up.

After an hour or so of riding, we hit the town of Ardres, where our route continued along some lovely smooth roads across open fields. Then a large “lump” appeared on the horizon. Nikki, not being a great lover of climbing, asked me “Do we have to get over that lump?”. “I assume so”, was my reply. Having pushed over this lump, we were greeting by quite a steep downhill section into the next town, and we all made mental notes that this was not going to be pretty with a hangover tomorrow.

Lovely view from our hotel in Lumbres

There wasn’t a lot of flat before we found ourselves pushing up another “lump”, this time the road up was long, but less steep, as it meandered through a forest. We left the fresh-legged Helen and Jake to chase each other up the climb, whilst Nikki and I spun up and chatted about Bernie Eisel to keep our spirits high. The road then went down once again, on a more gentle gradient than the previous descent, and we once again noted that this would have to be conquered with a hangover tomorrow. Our hotel was a welcome sight at 3.30pm as we were starving. Helen and Jake still had 10km to go to their B&B, so we waved them goodbye and headed straight for lunch, which involved the inhaling of croque monsieurs and fries.

The girls sans lycra

A post-lunch disco nap was chosen over a visit to the spa and sauna in preparation for the main event - Coralie’s 40th birthday party! It was held in a lovely chateau about 10km (by taxi!) from where we were staying. We arrived looking nothing like the stinking lycra-clad cyclists of a few hours earlier. Quite a lot of the guests acknowleged us with “Oh, you’re her cycling friends who rode here”. Nikki and I worked out we both ate “about” 20 canapes, two servings of hot food, 10 glasses of champagne, a few lumps of cheese, and a serving of each of the 3 spectacular cakes on offer EACH. We also decided to test the theory that if you just drink good quality alcohol, you won’t have a hangover the next day, no matter how much you drink.

Day 3 - Lumbres to London

Nikki and I both woke up with headaches, immediately disproving our alcohol theory from last night. However, with almost 8hrs sleep and the sun finally beaming in through our windows, there was not a trace of grumpiness in the room. We decided to forgo the hotel breakfast in favour of sleep, but instead, had Coralie prepare us a doggy-bag of sandwich canapes from the party. So, breakfast consisted of salmon and parsley, cheese and quince, and cured meat canapes washed down with a coffee from the bar, to fuel our ride.

The French countryside

We met Helen and Jake outside our hotel at 11am, Helen already having been for a 6 mile run to drop her party clothes at the chateau earlier in the morning, and riding the 10km of not very flat road to get to us. Almost immediately we were heading up the first long draggy climb, then down through the forest, then straight into the steeper climb, which turned out to be way less evil than we had built up in our heads. The fresh morning air and sunshine seemed to do wonders for our hangovers, as we marvelled how wonderful France was to cycle in, and started hatching plans for a return.

We hit the canal paths soon after, and carefully chose which side to ride on after yesterday’s observations. We (or more accurately I) am clearly not very good at route planning, as we ended up on another stretch of cyclocross terrain, this one with grassy banks and deep puddles. I pushed out a big gear and weaved in and out of the obstacles (is this how you’re meant to ride cross?), hearing squeals from behind as Nikki misjudged the odd pothole and ended up covered in mud. Despite flatly refusing to ever do a cross race (or ride pave), I quite enjoyed the small sections that we encountered.

Well-deserved lunch in Calais

We arrived in Calais at 1pm, leaving us plenty of time for a long lunch in the sun, followed by (to my excitement) cake from the local patisserie. Our ferry wasn’t until 3.30pm, but we wanted to leave plenty of time for headaches, headwinds, misdirection and mechanicals. The ferry ride was a lot quieter on the way home, with a couple of weary cyclists asleep in the corner, and the other two stretching out their tired limbs. The weekend ended with a speedy team time-trial straight off the ferry to the train station to catch our trains back to London. After 300km of cycling, we were in no mood to spend an hour waiting around Dover Priory station!

Lessons learnt from Day 2 & 3:-
1) A road marked on Google maps along a canal is not necessarily a road. It could be a towpath, or just grass, rocks and gravel.
2) Northern France is NOT flat.
3) If you are going to go to a lavish party in France, you might as well ride there, because not riding there doesn’t necessarily mean you will eat less food or drink less champagne.
4) The size of your hangover is proportional to the amount of champagne you drink.
5) Cycling is better in France. Club run on the Continent anyone?