Although I could probably do a half decent job of summarising each day of the ride, I think it would be a bit more interesting to go through some of the many questions that I've been asked since getting back. There's enough summarising and visuals in each of the daily vlogs, so if you want to see our thoughts on each day you can check those out on YouTube below.
James interviews himself
How much did you raise for charity?
It's fair to say that the fundraising has been hugely successful for both of us. The event we put on at The Old Bookshop added a great boost to our totals - that whole event turned out better than we could have hoped for - and getting Bristol legend Roni Size to do a DJ set for us (for free!) was just on another level. That all came about because Ryan, our driver for the trip, has known Roni Size for years after helping him out with some IT issues. Fun fact: when the three of us played together as Stone Ships we used a Fender Rhodes piano which was borrowed from Roni. Rock 'n' roll eh?
The totals as of today stand at £3,220 for Thyorid Cancer Support West and £1,370 for World Bicycle Relief. Having raised over £4,500 in total for charity seems pretty impressive to me and I think we were both very happy with what we achieved, so thanks to everyone who donated!
What was the weather really like? You seemed to moan a fair bit in your vlogs!
It might have looked from the vlogs that we moaned a lot about the weather, which is very true, but it really wasn't that great in terms of the conditions for cycling. Most people we spoke to along the way commented on how it was unseasonably cold and "it never usually rains this much in September". However, despite this I think that there were only a couple of times we felt really ground down by the weather.
The first one that I remember was during day three on the D147 heading to a town called Loudun, which you could see from quite a distance away, perched on the top of a small hill. There was a church spire, standard for every French town, which poked up above everything else and the road itself was perfectly straight for miles, stretching out through the fields to the town. This probably doesn't sound too bad but we had a pretty strong headwind that day and, even though the weather was bright, I swear the church spire just kept moving further away as we peddled towards it! It was only 15 km of straight road, but it felt like twice that and we were both happy to see the back of that place as soon as possible.
I also remember getting very cold during the morning of day five riding from L'Isle Jourdain to Brantome. I think by the time we met Ryan at the coffee stop, sometime around 11am, I was pretty chilly and had to change half my clothes as I was soaked right through and really bloody cold! A coffee and an almond croissant helped though.
We had the occasional bit of good weather, but as I mentioned (multiple times) in our vides, I only took off my arm warmers for about two hours on the entire trip!
Where did you stay each night?
Almost entirely campsites in France. Obviously on the ferry we had a cabin which was nice and cosy, although probably not for Gareth as he gets a bit claustrophobic and the cabin had no windows. With it being slightly out of season nearly all of the campsites were pretty empty, but aside from staying in the bell tent we did upgrade a few times to a cabin because of the overnight weather forecast. Basically our tent had a few holes so we ended up getting wet a couple of times and had to strategically position plastic bags and buckets to try and prevent any flooding. In Souillac we stayed in a guest house as both campsites in the area were shut and, once we reached Montpellier, we stayed in an amazing AirBnB place just near Nimes.
Did you have many mechanicals?
The only significant thing to happen was my rear wheel puncture on the first day just outside of Portsmouth. When we pulled over to change it I committed the typical, "well, at least it's not raining" faux pas, which then cursed the situation! So in the pouring rain I replaced the inner tube pretty quickly, but then the CO2 canister for my inflator blew up in my hand as I was adjusting it. It all meant that Ryan had to drive back from Pompey with the track pump so that we could continue. Of course, just to complete the experience, when we headed off again we cycled past a bike shop within about 500 metres of where we had stopped. I'm not sure if we ever told Ryan about that...
Gareth had a couple of issues later on in the trip... his handlebar tapes started unraveling at one point and he was having trouble with his gears, although this all got sorted quickly with a trip to a bike shop. He later ended up having to replace his pedal cleats as they were worn down to point where he couldn't actually clip in. He still maintains that his weight has nothing to do with the cleats wearing down so quickly...
Were there any hard climbs?
I think we'd both agree that the hardest climb was the Col du Goudard. Its toughness was undoubtedly increased because we'd only just had lunch shortly before starting the climb, and annoyingly it was also one of the few moments during the trip when the weather was actually hot.
According to my Strava file for the climb we only ascended 324 metres and, at only 4 km long, it definitely wasn't the longest of climbs that we did, but the average gradient of 8% quite didn't tell the whole story! The climb seemed to fluctuate between about 4% and 12% most of the way, topping out at 16%, so it made it quite hard to find an even rhythm. The intensity was a bit too much for Gareth in the end and he had to walk up part of the climb, but there wasn't any shame in that, it was very tough!
Did your bodies cope ok? More specifically, how was your bottom?
We both stayed in one piece thankfully! Before the trip Gareth was worried about his knee which he'd been having some issues with, but fortunately he identified this early and the physio that he went to sorted him out so it wasn't a problem at all. My main concern was always my neck and shoulders, which often start to hurt towards the end of a long ride. Sure enough this was a bit of an issue on the trip but I just kept trying to stretch them regularly, which helped me to manage the pain.
Interestingly I was watching a recent Q&A with Mark Beaumont (who has recently broken the world record for cycling around the world) and he said that it's never the legs that give you problems on a long trip, but it's the other bits of your body that don't play as much of a part in propelling you forward. That's certainly how I felt! My legs felt fine every day and didn't seem to get that tired, but it was definitely my poor neck and shoulders that took the biggest pounding.
Finally, both our bums survived unscathed! Plenty of chamois cream helped I'm sure, plus I started doubling up on my shorts from about day three. I basically have no natural ass-padding, so my boney posterior definitely needed something extra to help it cope with the seven to eight hours a day in the saddle.
Any close calls with French drivers?
I think it's fair to say that neither of us were that impressed by the French drivers that we came across. They would quite often try to give you room when they passed, but they always seemed to misjudge when to pull back in and continued out into the other side of the road once they were well beyond you.
The only hairy moment was when we were doing the long climb up to the Col des Tribes. A guy in a white Peugeot was driving down the mountain and decided to take the racing line around a blind corner, which meant he was heading straight towards us on our side of the road at around 50 miles an hour. Fortunately he spotted us at the very last minute and swerved back to his side of the road, but it was definitely a squeaky bum moment.
How did you choose the route?
Although the choice of starting point and destination for the trip (Montpelier to Montpellier) was something that was personal to us, having lived in Bristol for a number of years now, the vast majority of the route in France was already taken care of. Gareth had come across an excellent book called France en Velo that covers a route across France from St Malo to Nice. With the ferry to St Malo leaving from Portsmouth, Gareth's home town, it was obvious that the first leg would be Bristol to Pompey. Once in France we followed the route laid out in the book, stopping at places that were appropriate for us. Then once we reached Chateuneuf-du-pape I used Strava to plot our final day from there onto Montpellier.
The book was incredibly useful, especially when it came to finding a bike shop half way through the trip for Gareth to fix his bike. I'd 100% recommend it for anyone thinking of doing something similar.
What sort of things did you eat whilst cycling?
During the day we ate a lot of bananas! I think I was getting through about five a day, six including the one in my porridge at breakfast. We would also eat three or four energy bars a day, a couple of energy gels, flapjacks, rice crispy cakes, nuts, plenty of Haribo, baguettes for lunch and the odd delight from a patisserie every now and then. Ryan was on dinner duty and every night he made us an amuse bouche of bruschetta with garlic oil and chorizo, followed by something amazing like a cassoulet for our main meal. On top of this we would also get through around eight bottles of energy and hydration drinks a day (about 4 litres each) plus a few coffees.
We certainly didn't go hungry! In fact, by the end we were both pretty bored of constantly eating. Trying to keep on top of your energy by eating all the time was quite hard work and it didn't take long for us to get bored of the things that we were eating regularly. However, it definitely worked as there was only one day when Gareth got his nutrition wrong and had a bit of a hunger crash. Otherwise it was pretty good and Ryan did a brilliant job of looking after us. Having the support of someone else preparing your food was a massive time saver and we could not have done it without him!
How did you find the time to make videos each day?
It wasn't easy, that's for sure. I'm glad I did a bit of thinking in advance about how the videos would look each day as this made things easier and we slotted into our routine pretty quickly, for example doing things like the morning interviews. I couldn't have made any of the videos without having some GoPros to capture the footage and I can't thank Paul and Eldred enough for lending me their cameras. The rest of it was shot on iPhones and Ryan had a DJI Osmo gimble which was brilliant for tracking shots. Ryan would often shoot ahead of us in the van in order to capture some footage as we'd cycle by up a hill or down a descent.
The editing was all done through iMovie on my wife's MacBook Air, which she was kind enough to lend me for the trip - thanks Emma! It's amazing for a free piece of software and it was actually pretty quick and easy to cut all the footage into something coherent. It still took probably an hour and a half each evening to do on average, which I was normally able to get done in time for bed. However, our dinner at a restaurant in Souillac went on a bit (I blame Gareth's four courses) and that night I was sat in bed editing whilst Ryan and Gareth were snoring away.
How did you choose the music for each video?
Some of the time Gareth and I would come up with songs during the day whilst cycling, sometimes it was just tracks that we'd had stuck in our head since listening to tunes the previous night. The Moby track that we used on day two was chosen because Gareth changed the lyrics from the chorus to "Beef bourguignon!" He never did get that bourguignon though.
The track of the whole trip was definitely Soulwax's 'Much Against Everyone's Advice' which we used for the day 9 video - it's an absolute banger!
I'm sure you had plenty of highlights, can you tell us about a couple?
We covered a few of them in the final vlog, but one of the highlights for me was seeing how the geography slowly changed as we made our way across the country. I've never cycled across a country before and it was fascinating to see everything unfold in front of us from our bikes. One small moment that sticks in my mind was in northern France when we were cycling down a small country lane and a falcon was stood on a fence post, about an arms width from the edge of the road, and just watched us intently as we cycled by before taking flight. It probably lasted less than a few seconds, but it was just a cool moment that definitely stood out.
From a purely selfish perspective I'm really happy that people have enjoyed the videos and that they turned out ok. I almost didn't bother doing the whole video thing, but I'm so glad that I did. I've already watched back all of the films at least once since getting home and having that record is something that I know Gareth, Ryan and myself will cherish for years to come.
Finally, I'd say it was an amazing chance to spend some time with two great friends doing an interesting challenge. It was difficult for all of us in different ways at times, but we all had a really good laugh and it's something that I'll never forget. That we had the chance to do this and also raise money for two great charities has made it even more worthwhile, and I'm sure that the donations from everyone will give our charities that opportunity to make a difference to the people that need them.
And finally, what was the 'cheval' all about?
That's entirely Gareth's fault! I was doing some stretching at the end of the first day on my yoga mat and Gareth kept shouting over at me to, "do the cheval pose!" After I asked him what this was he promptly showed the horse kick move, complete with sound effects and it just went from there really, he kept doing whenever I got the camera out! We did manage to do some chevals whilst cycling, but I never got those on film, the reverse cheval on the final video was another good one - most of the time I'm just trying to not shake the camera from laughing so much!
So that's the end of the road for this adventure and closes a chapter on a challenge that we've spoken about for a long time and finally got around to completing. Thanks once again to everyone who sponsored us and supported us along the way, it really meant a great deal to hear from friends and family whilst we were on the road.
Finally, thanks to our our lovely wives, partners and loved ones who put up with us through all the training and let us go on this trip in the first place. Hopefully we made you all proud and we gave you a few laughs along the way!
Chapeau!
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