After a much needed eight hours of shut – eye, I was awake and raring to go (my dreams tonight had obviously been much more eventful – woke up with both pillows on my face, maybe someone had brought some biscuits into the council planning meeting this time. Maybe Sarah had had enough with my biscuit obsession. Who knows?). Sadly it wasn’t just my head that was keen to “make a movement”…
After four trips to the ladies room before breakfast, it became clear just HOW bad an idea the seven hard-boiled eggs had been and I was worried that I may not be able to get very far in this state. Luckily, I had remembered to pack a “leading brand of diarrhoea treatment” in my day pack, so soon enough (after a couple more trips to the ladies’), I felt much better.
Off I shot and this morning I decided that an apt motivation would be sing the entirety of the Beatles’ White Album (sincere apologies to everyone in earshot, especially for Don’t Make Me Cry, which was accompanied by bobbing perkily up and down in the saddle like a sweaty, deranged Dick Van Dyke).
Luckily for me, this morning we were doing a staggered start, so not everyone had set off at the same time and it didn’t take as long as I thought to catch up with my pals (After a quick photo stop on a bridge with the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus – see below). I think that Sarah, Luke and Simon possess magical powers of some variety, as the morning was pretty much entirely uphill, including some quite steep climbs, but today proved tear free and I managed to stay on the bike (extremely hard as that was at points!)
We did have a touch of rain, but it was a miniscule amount – just enough to make it fun, but not enough to soak you to the skin. I think my constant shouting of “plip-plop splish splash” was possibly a lot more annoying than the actual rain anyway. But it pretty much stopped as abruptly as it started and it took all of about 5 minutes to dry off completely. Result! It also made the road damp, which made an impressive “whooshing” sound and also made everyone in front of you look like they had pooed their pants. In retrospect, maybe I could have got away without the Immodium after all…
Today was also the day for the tractor enthusiast, as we seemed to pass about 30 of them in about an hour. I do enjoy a good tractor, but as I failed to take any actual pictures of any, please make do with this approximation (NB: Model may have had beret and ‘tache added in post-production):
After not that long, (although long enough for the speedy types to have come thundering past us, managing in 40 minutes what had taken us about 2 hours – sigh), we reached the first water stop which was by this lovely church:
More wondrous crisps, oranges, bananas and cereal bars along with some yummy passion fruit cordial helped us muchly. It was all going rather well, we thought. Everyone was feeling a bit jolly and the cooler weather had helped us to feel a bit less groggy (and hallucinatey) than yesterday.
It was time for another toilet stop.
Although the stop was picturesque, it didn’t offer much in the way of cover, so I gingerly hopped into the largest patch of bushes could find, until I found the least exposed bit. It has taken a while and I was feeling a little bit smug. I had my aloe vera paper and hand sanitiser at the ready. I was free! I was at peace! I was…sitting on a nettle!
Now I can’t imagine that lowering one’s bits on to a nettle is pleasant at the very best of times, but I can assure you that having cycled the best part of 200 miles by now, it was deeply traumatic. So much so that I leapt up, emptying much of the content of the hand sanitiser over myself. Awesome. Ah well, at least I was free from harmful bacteria. Everyone else genuinely tried not to laugh, but it was too much. Another comedic medical moment from the Conneff. (You should come to my smear tests, they’re an absolute hoot! Not really; please don’t)
- I just sat on a nettle
However, somehow I survived this deadly nettle strike and soon we were ready for the off. We managed about 20 yards before we noticed a large group of other cyclists taking pictures of a beautiful chateau. We joined them and discussed various means of infiltrating it and getting a cup of tea and some ginger nuts from the owners. Posing as window cleaners and finding a massive coat and sitting on each other’s shoulders were discussed as possible methods, but we soon realised we should probably just get on with it. But not before maturity levels hit a new low. (I was clearly affected by the nettle venom, your honour):
Now the next bit was one of my favourite stretches of the whole thing; lots of lovely, rolling hills, sunny, but not too hot weather and more gorgeous countryside – wonderful! It also provided one of the conundrums of the trip – one of the arrows was at the very top of a motorway bridge – had they stopped on the motorway, risking life and limb to show us the right way – or had they employed the sitting on each other’s shoulders method??? I wonder if they got any ginger nuts?
I was still pondering these pertinent questions when we reached the coffee (or Thé, in my case), stop. I was very happy, as I got to use my ridiculously large bike lock, which had been sitting round my waist for the past two and a half days, doing very little indeed – hoorah! Sarah bought the drinks and some Snickers bars too – I was elated!
One thing which was noticed at this point was the lack of people in the villages we had been through today – true enough there were the proprietors of the Café, but there was also a school (empty) a post office and several offices in this village – all of which seemed to be completely empty. Where had all the people gone? Maybe they knew we were coming. Maybe they had gone to buy some gingernuts. Who can tell?
One thing’s for sure, there was no shortage of cyclists here – with the large rabble squeezed into the café, I half expected the ghost of Norris McWhirter to pop out with his clipboard at any moment and award us with some sort of trophy.
Only a short stop here, for we wanted to get to lunch in some sort of semi-reasonable time, so we soon departed and arrived there a lot quicker than expected. I was pleased as punch – the weather was now gloriously sunny, the food was GORGEOUS (Black pudding and pickled onions? – YES PLEASE!) and everyone was having a bit of a sunbathe on the lawn of this beautiful church:
And enjoying this guy. (I don’t know who this is a statue of, but he’s rather handsome, isn’t he?):
Pretty perfect all round really. Until James got a phone call heralding that the front of the pack had FINISHED and wanted directions to the hotel… Imagine a balloon, a happy, red balloon (I was quite burnt at this point) bobbling around in the sky. Now imagine a hot air balloon going very fast, passing the regular balloon and the little balloon slowly becoming flaccid and falling slowly out of the sky. This was that moment.
I set off.
Although I was having a lovely time, during the course of the afternoon, my left arm started to go mental – It was hurting like crazy and it kept going into this weird spasm thingy, requiring me to wildly flail it about like a derranged harpy. (Shut up, Chris, I said like a deranged harpy), so I cunningly moved my wrist bandage up to the top of my arm and it slightly dulled the pain – good enough for me!
I had fallen quite substantially behind after all this shilly shallying and I felt I was in serious danger of being picked up by the Love Bus (the minibus used to carry the infirm, the injured and the in….in……ummmm……slower people), so I went for it, sometimes riding in excess of TWELVE MILES PER HOUR! (In your face, Barry Sheen!) until I saw what looked very much like a tandem. Wow. Who would ride a tandem up and down these hills? I soon realised it wasn’t a tandem, but rather Sian and Hayley, peddling in PERFECT UNISON. It was really impressive, actually. Sian very kindly offered her ibroprufen gel at the rest stop and this put a big smile on my face.
In fact, I was even happier when I realised that it was just at the top of this “Slight Undulation”. (Ok, I was happy when I got to the summit, there was much grumbling and some choice language when I saw it from the bottom!)
After some painkillers, picnic and a piddle we set off again, up through a gorgeous little village (with people in it!), past some more tractors and on to a massive dual carriage way. This wasn’t great, the road surface seemed to comprise of muesli and glass and was full of people coming home from a busy day of le working. Also the others were following me and after last time, I wasn’t feeling hugely capable of that job!
We eventually got of the dual carriageway, and onto a cycle path (everyone still together, thankfully) the most confusing cycle path in the world (with the exception of Cycle superhighway number 2 and its lane-jumping ways). After about another half-hour of hernia-inducing exertion, we arrived at the hotel, desperate for a shower and some eye drops.
I haven’t had hayfever much this year, but somehow, Sarah and I had contracted MEGA OVERKILL hayfever and were both pretty much looking like this:
There were no pharmacies about, so we made do with RINSING OUR EYES and taking some hayfever tablets. This seemed to have a slight impact. However, our mood was soon elevated by beer and the French version of “Four Weddings” (the TV show, not the film). We were then further delighted by the free flip flops in our room:
It must be said that I had a fair few beers and maybe even some wine this evening and over our (amazing) dinner, and ended up imparting way too much information about “spidermanning” your ladyfriend, (please do not google this if your squeamish or easily offended), discussing what “batmanning” your ladyfriend might involve (sitting and sulking all night, we thought) and revealing my obsession with nerdy computer games, which at this stage was taken as a euphemism for something entirely different.
Oh, how we laughed! (Actually I think I was the only one laughing, but there you go.) Then Sarah’s vegetarian meal arrived. It was a fish. Called Colin, (no, really).
Then we really did laugh.
And then, little miss inappropriate and her friends went to sleep.
My sponsorship page is till open – please feel free to donate to the fabulous charity, Mind.
Miss Tillyflop 
I really enjoyed reading your waffle, keep up the happy memories !!
Regards Andrew