A Second Once in a Lifetime Experience

Almost exactly a year from my last post, and seven years on from our big Paris to Venice adventure, I have another once in a lifetime experience to recount.

A reunion of the old gang was long overdue, even though we have had a couple of smaller adventures since the Venice trip, and planning for this year's ride started formulating on the road back from Le Tourmalet last year. Frankly, we needed to do more of it!

So, where next? Various ideas were floated before we fixed on a plan to 'connect' the two biggest rides so far - Le Knees (the Pyrenees trip) and L'Express (Paris to Venice) - by starting from Paris and briefly following the Paris to Venice route before heading south and slightly west to hit the Pyrenees somewhere around Pau.

Naturally, we would have to include some extra mountains if we could, and the ride would take in part of the '100 Cols' route to make sure. We would also be unsupported again, meaning we would camp most nights and carry all our equipment and daily rations of food and water.

'Les Cols' was on.

A big ask? Well, it was scary enough to be exciting and to leave us all with a nagging doubt about whether we could do it, especially as we're all seven years older. The perfect challenge, then!

JR duly plotted, replotted and fine-tuned a route that would take us from Notre Dame to Pau or Lourdes, via some interesting geology (mountains, gorges and even a river valley or two), including the Massif Central. He allowed a fairly consistent daily distance of around 100km, and about 1000 metres of climbing, although this would vary greatly depending on the terrain. Generally, the climbs were small to start with and became progressively bigger, until an easier last couple of days before the Pyrenees, where we hoped to spend the last two days.

Not content with riding about 1300km and climbing 14,000 metres, I decided the best way to get to Paris from my home in Jersey would be to get the ferry to St Malo and cycle alone to Notre Dame over three days. That added almost 400km and around 1000 metres to my ride.

For me, that was the scariest part. Not just the distance, fully loaded for the first time in years, and without any rest days, but navigating my way to Paris. Now, Paris is on almost the same latitude as St Malo, so it's hard not to hit it if you just head east, and there are plenty of signs for Paris on the main roads, but I was trying to stay away from the biggest roads (and bikes are banned from motorways, of course), so I had to plan a route that was rather more wiggly. I tried to avoid the biggest hills, too, in case I arrived in Paris completely exhausted before we'd even started the real ride. Worse still was the possibility I might have to get off and push.

That's my excuse for spending many hours poring over maps and replotting my route. That, and the anticipation, plus studying the maps and profiles helped me to stay motivated enough to keep up with my training. It also justified my replacing my bike twice in the ten months leading up to the trip, which in turn partly explains how I arrived in France with almost no brakes.

After I got back from the previous year's Tourmalet trip I was able to unpack my new bike, it having cleared through customs while I was away. It was a good bike, especially for the price - a Specialized Sirrus, which is a hybrid with a good range of gears, the ability to take a pannier rack at the rear, decent 32mm tyres and even 'aero' wheels, which looked pretty sturdy, all for just over £300. It's not light but it's not especially heavy and even though it's not the liveliest performer it can keep up a decent speed once you get it moving. It has flat bars and a fairly tall front end, which makes it more comfortable than aerodynamic. I lowered the bars as much as possible and although it wasn't my dream bike I was quite happy to use it for the trip.

Then I visited my local bike shop. I had mentioned to Jacqui, my wife, that my bike was very nice, but not absolutely ideal and probably wouldn't wear well, with its low-end components, and she encouraged me to get a better bike that might even last me a lifetime, if I saw one.

In the shop was my dream bike of a decade earlier - a lovely Dawes Super Galaxy. Not just a Galaxy, but a Super Galaxy, with its traditional steel frame, Dura-Ace components, touring gears and even a leather saddle. Plus, drop handlebars that would make for more easier high-speed (or into-headwind) cruising. It was my size and this was surely fate. It wasn't a bargain but it didn't occur to me to haggle and I put down £100 deposit there and then, to part exchange my Sirrus the next day. This was early July and my ferry to St Malo was on 24 August.

Having agreed to buy it, I researched Dawes Super Galaxies online that evening and saw the only criticism was with the brakes. One review said they were 'feeble'. They're not great, that's for sure, especially compared with the discs you get with most tourers these days. They were adequate with the bike unloaded, and didn't look very worn, or I would have had the bike shop replace them.

After collecting the bike next day I set off on a 30 mile test ride and the bike very quickly felt like an old friend. 

 I put in over 500 training miles on my new bike, gradually increasing the load

The rear brake was weak, though, and after riding about 500 miles in the next few weeks I intended to at least change the blocks before I set off. I hesitated over this, because cantilever brakes like these are notoriously tricky to get right, and they did still look okay...

 On my way. Leaving the house at 7.am, with working brakes at this point...

Which was how I suddenly had very noisy brakes about 300 metres after leaving the house on my way to the Ferry, and how I had hardly any brakes at all by the time I left St Malo.

Despite not looking badly worn, the front blocks were suddenly down to the metal. At first, I thought I must have some grit trapped in the blocks, because they looked fine. Eventually (somewhere in Normandy), after skimming a little more alloy off the front rim, and using mainly the rear brakes, which still had rubber on them, I had the bright idea of swapping the blocks over, front to rear and vice-versa, just until I could find a bike shop.

Once the blocks bedded in a little on the front brake, they were at least adequate, as long as I was careful, and the wheel rim was now odds-on to last the trip, and the rears were pretty useless anyway. But you don't want to be relying on your front brake only on a steep and possibly slippery descent, so finding a bike shop became a preoccupation, at least every time I had to stop. But now I was in France...



Although I wanted quiet roads, I would also need some food shops, which is a perennial issue in many parts of France, so I had to include some towns on my planned route, as well as locating camp sites for three nights. The first one was fairly easy to choose, a municipal campsite that was a comfortable afternoon's ride east of St Malo, in a reasonable-sized town. Camping de la Sélune, at Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët, was pleasant, quiet, convenient for the town and very cheap. It was even easy to find, even though I approached it from the southwest rather than the north, as I'd planned. 

First lunch stop was by this windmill, in sight of Mont St Michel

Navigating along the north coast of Normandy was predictably easy, once I'd escaped from St Malo, although the minor roads were quite confusing as I approached Mont St Michel, adding a few more kilometres to the day as I meandered among them. Once I turned inland (or the coast turned away to the north), things got more tricky for a time, and I ended up on a bigger and busier road than I'd intended. Still, it was smooth and direct, and the cycle lane meant it wasn't too intimidating. I was trying to conserve my energy for the unknown challenges ahead, but I made good progress during the late afternoon and was quite proud of my intuitive navigating to find the site at the end of the day. I reached my campsite in good time, having covered about 95km at a comfortable pace. 

The office was closed but the site keeper wasn't far away, and I dragged him away from his mower to take my four and a half euro site fee. After setting up camp I walked to the town, where some shops were just closing, the patisseries were still open and doing good business, and a café-bar near the centre promised a faily cheap evening meal a little later. I bought and consumed some food and drink while I waited for it to open (and bought some more later for the morning, although not all of it lasted until then). 

 First camp - now I was really touring.

Life was good. I even identified a bike shop in the town square where I thought I could get some brake blocks next morning.

So far, so (fairly) easy. The next day would be much longer, but how much harder would it be?