It's been terrific reading all the other versions, here is another one from near the back, trying to right the wrong of my dismal 2015 experience and getting it (mostly) about right.
https://audaxery.wordpress.com/2019/09/19/pbp-2019-ride-report/
Very nice. I read the first third, and skimmed the rest, so it would make a nice three part article. The spelling of the place names is a bit variable. Spell-check always has trouble with stuff like coup and coop. I especially liked this bit.
There are the priceless moments. Walking into the Villanes control I am behind an epically tall, tanned and buff cyclist, one of those guys who could have been a part time model. A middle aged french woman behind the barrier issues an appreciative ‘oh la la!’. I look back at her and she smiles and gives a dirty cackle, poking her friend in the ribs. So that’s one of the reasons towns come out to watch cyclists… pure filth.
In 1999 I saw some local ladies hosing down a couple of fit-looking naked Danish riders in the bike park at Loudeac. They looked very happy. It was one of the vignettes that reminded me of 'Apocalypse Now'.
This section interested me.
A minute later I heard the woosh of a solid bank of riders coming up behind me and the unmistakeable lilt of Irish accents. Soon I was engulfed in a sea of Audex Eire riders, maybe close to twenty of them, and a good few hangers on at the back.
They were steaming along, near 30kph. Getting a jolt of energy from god only knows where, I jumped on the back and held on for grim death. The adrenelin kick was great, it felt like I was back in a race as a junior many many years ago doing that racing thing of pulsing hot and cold, measuring the effort needed to keep in the slip stream.
At the first sign of a hill someone near the back called out ‘Steady up’ and the pace instantly dropped to 20kph, then, when the road flattened again, someone would call something else out and off they would fly again.
They were working a system. A couple of monsters on the front who look like they could have ridden the whole thing at 40kph with some more ‘mature’ road captains making the calls at the back and between them a whole crew of young, old, men and women riding together.
It was kind of mental and wonderful all at once. I shamelessly took advantage and overheated massively in my down jacket, but the buzz was terrific. Perhaps it was just the sheer difference of it, after days now of plodding along at my pace, to be suddenly on a high pace.
I've got a series of interviews over three events with one of the key 'locomotives' in that group. He'd decided to have a 'sociable' ride, and really enjoyed it. I can see how the Celtic imagery on the shirt suggested 'Eire', but it's Audax Ireland, and they operate throughout the island of Ireland.
I boiled down my impressions of 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 into this article.
http://www.damonpeacock.com/paris-brest-paris.htmlThe 2015 film was more of an overview of the event, without the technical difficulties of filming on the bike.
In 2011 I wrote this.
I was making a film again this year, which is what a lot of this metaphysical musing is about. I don’t know what the film is about until I know what PBP is about. For a grumpy 52 year old like me it’s about faith in humanity redeemed. That might strike a chord with that big section of riders who are much like me. But it’s also about a communion with a rising generation of new riders, one which is as likely to come from China, Taiwan, Russia, Brazil or India as from anywhere nearer my home. This game is about long distances after all.
I wonder what the next PBP will be like? I’ll be a 56 year old bloke, will that be the biggest group?
I'm actually interested in PBP as a symptom of globalisation, the interaction between the image of cycling as 'eco friendly', the act of middle-class people flying in for a specific event, and the changing nature of rural France. I did evolve a short explanation of that for the ex-pat Brits we met en-route.