Over a couple of ciders last Sunday Gareth and I sat in the pub with our laptops and started to discuss the finer details of our cycling challenge. Neither of us has done a cycling trip of this distance before and even though I've been cycling regularly for 4 or 5 years, I've never done a proper multi-day trip. I'm sure that Gareth would freely admit he's not done much cycling in the past, but at least he's cycled to Paris before!
So far our bible has been the excellent book 'France en Velo', written by Hannah Reynold and John Walsh, as it goes into a good amount of detail for cycling from St Malo to Nice. Now we're not going quite as far as we'll be turning right a bit before Nice, but the information in the book is fantastic and it's been a real time saver so far when planning which roads to take. I especially like the way the trip is broken into short stages to let you customise each day to your own desire and that it gives some recommendations for accommodation depending on what you're after and how much you want to spend. You can read more about the book and order a copy yourself at the France en Velo website.
With the idea being that we'd raise money for charity we don't want to make the journey too easy, plus we've only got a short amount of time available to us - mainly from work - to allow us to complete the trip. Looking over the book and our availability we've decided to cover the entire route in 10 days of cycling, which is broken down as 1 day in the UK cycling from Bristol to Portsmouth, and then 9 days cycling in France from St Malo to Montpellier. I'm pretty sure that this makes it a decent challenge! We've also put some though into rewarding ourselves a little so we've got a couple of days in Montpellier at the end to enjoy the beach and show off our cycling tans.
We've sketched out our first draft parcours, which is what you'll see in the Google Map on the right hand side of this blog, but subject to change (and I'm sure there'll be a few) these are the stages of our tour:
- Stage 1 - Montpelier to Portsmouth, 159km/99 miles
- Stage 2 - St Malo to Vitre, 128km/80 miles
- Stage 3 - Vitre to Fontevraud l'Abbeye, 195km/121 miles
- Stage 4 - Fontevraud l'Abbeye to L'Isle-Jourdain, 180km/111 miles
- Stage 5 - L'Isles-Jourdain to Brantôme, 128km/80 miles
- Stage 6 - Brantôme to Souillac, 162km/102 miles
- Stage 7 - Souillac to Entraygues-sur-Truyère, 148km/92 miles
- Stage 8 - Entraygues-sur-Truyère to Villefort, 176km/109 miles
- Stage 9 - Villefort to Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 149km/93 miles
- Stage 10 - Châteauneuf-du-Pape to Montpellier, 130km/80 miles
At the moment I'm trying not to look at the numbers in one go as they are pretty daunting, but it's also incredibly exciting. The prospect of revisiting a few places on the route that I've been to before when I was travelling through Europe around 12 years ago with some friends in a van, will also be a bit of trip down nostalgia lane. Stage 8 is going to be a particular highlight for me as I'm hoping that we'll have the chance to visit the monkey forest near Rocamadour. Feeding monkeys popcorn was an odd experience so I'm eager to go back, although I'm wondering if the angry monkey that tried to attack me last time is still there. I don't want a monkey related injury ending my ride!
Finally, those eagle eyed among you might have realised that that we're taking a slight detour at stage 9 rather than heading straight for Montpellier. Our penultimate stop will be at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, well known for its wine and we couldn't really cycle by it when it doesn't demand a huge detour. I've not mentioned yet that we'll have a support driver for our journey, our very good friend Ryan, and knowing that he's a lover of wine we thought it would be best to keep him happy as well! The final reason is that Gareth and I love this video about how to pronounce Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Yes it's silly and ridiculous, but it makes us laugh and I'm sure we'll be mimicking it many times when we're on our tour in September.
