Fboab's words, not mine - confronted with the prospect of the Brevet Cymru with weapons grade weather predicted, and our legs still only fettled for fens.
To be honest, I thought this was a bit harsh, even by fboab's non-judgemental standards - we'd entered the Brevet Cymru voluntarily, after all - but we're really not hill fit, and the weather forecast was pretty dire.
We've found it quite hard work getting back into audax ways after my enforced break last year, so we're having to do the whole range-extension pain-denial thing, and it's proving tough. We really want to do PBP on the tandem - so that means qualification, and this weekend was 400 weekend.
I'm not entirely sure whose idea it was to travel to France for a 400 as an alternative to the BC400; probably fboab's - but it was certainly a spur of the moment arrangement. It came down to two rides - one from Orchies, the other from Boulogne-sur-Mer. The idea of France in the Springtime, quiet roads, (hopefully) better weather, and crucially - a start nearer to where we live than Chepstow, was compelling, and after some juggling of various options, the Orchies ride won the day.
I've never ridden audax rides in France - least of all in PBP years - fboab has, so knows roughly how it works, and given that France has something of a rep for tedious bureaucracy, it's a surprise to find that there's no entering in advance, no panic about rides being full - you just turn up (along with a clutch of leathery French wheelmen), pay your 6 Euros (yes, really!) and you're in. Awesome!
Being a bit under the cosh at work recently, it fell to fboab to sort out logistics, which included pandering to my anti-ferry ways. This was finally sorted out on the Wednesday - we'd be travelling Friday afternoon, and riding Saturday. There's nothing quite like spur-of-the-moment mind changes!
The journey was plain sailing (well, tunnelling really, I guess), as was the drive down to our hotel in Seclin. We arrived in time for a local KFC visit, and early to bed.
Up bright and early, we drove over to Orchies in plenty of time for the 6am start (5am as far as we were concerned). Fboab undertook the whole startline admin
language barrier thing - my French was definitely not up to that!
It was soon time for us to roll out, just as it was getting light. We took up a position near the back of the pack of flourescently yellow Frenchmen (and one woman - fboab wasn't quite the only gurl on the ride) and just did what the locals did. "Compulsory route, don't forget" fboab reminded me, and right on cue - we all peeled off away from the published GPS track. This just seemed to be some local knowledge at work from our lead-out as we soon rejoined the route, and headed into the forest at Beuvry-la-Forêt - about as close to the border as it's possible to be without actually being in Belgium.
As I mentioned, this was my first French audax. The group seemed to be staying tightly together - none of this "Racing snakes off the front" stuff you get in the UK - we all kept together at a (frankly, rather pedestrian) 25kph pace. "Maybe we're being led out? God - maybe we stay together all day!?" speculated fboab. Suddenly, we were back to being n00bs!
Then, exactly an hour after we started - there were shouts from the front of the pack - and seemingly in an instant, there were dozens of Frenchmen stopping for a pee - lined up on both verges. We didn't think it appropriate to take a picture, but it WAS something of a spectacle. We managed to find an English speaker amongst the few still riding who didn't seem to have lost all bladder control. "Can we ride ahead on our own?" asked fboab. "Oh sure! Have a good day!!" came the reply; so we politely and sociably buggered off up the road
.
This ride was clearly designed for PBP preparation. The first two controls were almost exactly 90km apart. The first section took us over some tremendous rolling Nord-pas-de-Calais and Picardy terrain. It was occasionally flat, but most of the time climbing gradually in a gently undulating way. The fields were yellow with oil-seed rape, or green with early spring shoots (Identification of these would later prove vexing for fboab). The sun shone and it was looking like it was shaping up to be a cracking day, but we soon rode under a veil of cloud as we rode across endless vistas of rolling prarie to the first control at Bray-sur-Somme.
With the French having a wee bit of a commie tendency (
"That's enough of that - we'll have none of that stereotyping here. Ed") the whole place had been shut when we arrived on Friday 1st May. It was like we'd been spat out of the tunnel, and told "You're on your own now - bye!". I'd needed to buy a flouro gilet for night riding, but Decathlon was, like everywhere else, locked up and dark. And so it was in Bray-sur-Somme when we arrived on 2nd May - all the Boulangeries were closed! Everyone was controlling at a Tabac by the village square - so we joined in, and had a quick coffee having collected our stamps from the nice lady's tampon
1, but we needed food by this time. We pressed on, and found an open Boulangerie a couple of villages later. Word had clearly spread regarding our heroic boulanger - prepared to open and offer baked goods on a public holiday weekend - the place looked like it had been sacked by the Revolution, and we had the last two pain-au-chocs in the place. As we tucked in to our late breakfast at the roadside, the peloton rode through, with much shouting, and (I dare say) general taunting from the passing riders. Thankfully, I couldn't understand a word - and if fboab did, she didn't mention what they'd said. (
ETA: Apparently, they shouted "Eating is Cheating", or words to that effect).
We continued and soon espied the back end of the peloton up ahead, so dug a little deeper to catch them up.
It's worth mentioning at this juncture, the French Roads. They aren't potholed in the same way ours are - probably thanks to the lower traffic volumes and milder climate. They also favour tarmac, though we did during the ride manage to find some heavy top-dressing, but it was mostly smooth going. Which revealed something of a problem - a bulge in the front tyre, not noticable on rougher roads, but on the smoother tarmac, most definitely so. I ignored it for as long as I could, but eventually thought it only fair to mention it to fboab. She spent some time working out the French for "Are there any bike shops on the route ahead, do you know?" and tried it out on some of our ride companions. A few looked at her blankly, or replied in incomprehensible French, but a couple of guys answered clearly enough (ie - like we were four-year olds) and suggested there might be one at Formerie, a few km after the next control, which was coming up fast.
We were, by this time - starving! We'd covered 180km in a little over seven hours, on one pain-au-choc and a coffee each - and we were in dire need of food (as well as a new front tyre).
Fboab spied a bike shop next to the bank, so put me in charge of ordering lunch at a Pizza/Snack type cafe on the village square.
As previously mentioned, my French is really poor. I battled away valiantly, ordering pizza with extra Fromage. Sadly, I didn't know the French for "Goat" so we got rather more Fromage than either of us would have liked, but I also managed to order Frites, and it was generally OK. The bike shop turned out to be not a bike shop, so we placed our hopes in the next village.
There was some gentle climbing after the control, to get back up onto the plateau, and we soon rolled into Formerie and spied the bike shop, fromage de chèvre burps still rumbling away. Fboab managed to score an excellent value Michelin tyre - which looked much rounder than the Schwalbe we took off. The old tyre looked a lot like the sidewall was coming away from the beading, so it was as well we changed it - nobody wants a blowout at 80kph on a descent, and there had been some cracking descents so far - long, smooth, great sight-lines. French roads are brill.
Proudly sporting our new Pee Wee Herman-esque front tyre, we carried on through the afternoon, now with a gentle tailwind, and headed NW toward the next control, rolling through picturesque villages with lovely Churches; a notable exception being the church at Foucarmont - WTF?!
Thankfully, what followed meant we were able to purge the concrete ugliness from our brains - an absolutely cracking climb through kilometer after kilometer of bluebell woods. We may have seen one or two cars, but it was mostly deserted, silent but for the usual background cacophany of small birds, and gentle sighing of the breeze in the tree-tops. It was absolutely tremendous. Another long, sweeping descent followed and we arrived at the last control of Gamaches.
I indulged in a Beer at a bar where we got our cards stamped - one wall of the place given up to a vast TV showing PMU chariot racing from a very wet looking Bordeaux.
We'd just completed the shortest leg of the ride - a mere 78km between Songeons and Gamaches, but that was it until the finish - leaving a whopping 158km last leg. We'd known this was coming; we planned to stop at Abbeville at 280km to stock up on supplies for the evening/night section - about 30km on from Gamaches.
The section from Gamaches to Abbeville was somewhat choppy, and we were certainly slower. Also, we'd turned NE, so we were across the SE breeze which was strengthening, and which made the more exposed sections more and more of a slog. I'd done a little research ahead of time and knew where to find a McDs in Abbeville - only slightly off route. Needless to say, I forgot all this and managed to get us lost in town, which was busy with early evening traffic. Combine this with fboab having something of a low thanks to being Very Very Hungry; we had some fractious moments before finally arriving at McDs. My punishment for getting us lost was to order tea whilst fboab went shopping for supplies at the neighbouring Hyper-U.
McDs is easier - most of the items are English - so "Happy Meal" is "Happy Meal" in French. The problem I had was, I'd order something and there would be a battery of options in French that I just didn't understand (Peanut M&Ms being an option on a McFlurry for example), but somehow we managed to get everything I intended to order - more thanks to the patience of the staff I suspect, than to my French.
This was a profligate stop, timewise - we were there for almost an hour. We assumed that most, if not all, of the ride had passed us at this point, and we would be Lanterne's Rouge.
The rolling nature of the landscape continued away from Abbeville, and I was starting to tire. We kept moving at a decent enough pace, but eventually, as it started to get dark, I brought us to a halt at a bus stop, in the middle of nowhere. Well... OK... At Estree-Wamin (330km).
My guts were starting to protest which was a sure sign I was getting tired. I made an attempt at eating some biscuits, but they just churned round my mouth. We had about 80km to go, and it was time for Mind Games. Fboab seemed happy enough, but to me - the finish seemed a Very Long Way away. This is where your head needs to be managed - it's a psyche game with yourself, one that I was losing. Generally when this happens, I start to break the ride into pieces. I can ride 25km, no problem. Well - 75km is just three of those. Get on with it. That kind of thing.
We got back on the road, to find it was raining. This was always on the cards - we'd come to France to escape the worst of the Weather Demon that would be all over the Brevet Cymru, but the same weather system was here En France aussi. We stopped so I could put a waterproof top on. The next several 10s of kilometers were a painful countdown in the cross-windy rain. We seemed to be riding along with the leading edge of the rain-band, so while it was raining quite a lot out of the sky, the roads didn't seem that wet. We had to stop a couple of times for me to have slumped-over-the-bars moments, and I was really sweary at some roadworks, and a particularly bumpy level crossing. Fboab was great - she raided my stash of Pro-Plus and seemed to come alive - and tried valiantly to keep me of cheer.
"Those lights over there - they're the A23 roundabout, and then we're into Orchies".
Those lights took AGES to arrive, but of course eventually they did, and after wrangling once more with the One Way system in Orchies, we reached the Arrivee. I was cold, wet and nauseous, but fboab was ready for soup, bread, and a good old chat with the lovely folks at the finish. We were fussed over, plied with beer and soup, and it was great. I was done in - the lack of miles once again showing - but we'd finished in 19 hours; there's no chance on earth we'd have finished the Brevet Cymru at all - let alone in 19 hours, and we'd had a lot of fun en France.
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1 Yeah, I know... but it's a stamp; loads of places have them and they're great for PoP on a Brevet.
