Day one

DAY ONE

London (Blackheath) to Calais, France. 95 miles.

The alarm call went off at 5am - it didn't wake me up as I was ALREADY awake!! Far too nervous to sleep, i think i managed about an hour.

Mum and I dragged ourselves down to breakfast and forced ourselves to eat a bowl of cereal, then we dragged the bags out to the trucks, collected our bikes and waited on the heath for the off!! We were briefed (follow the orange arrows, when the water stops were etc) and then we were off!!

Cycled out through London and off into the countryside. Our first water stop was at 25 miles, where we filled our bottles up, grabbed a cereal bar, a banana and a handful of American hard gums and then we were off again. With our sight firmly set on lunch at 45 (ish) miles. However you have to earn your lunch...and earn it we did...the biggest hill I have seen rose up in front of us and try as we might to get up it, it just wasn't happening, so we got off and walked, which was just as hard! I was considering calling the air ambulance, when I spotted the peak - thank god!! Only some one 'up there' obviously thought mum hadn't quite earned her lunch so she got a puncture 1K out!! The stop was closer to 50 miles than 45! After stopping for her to change her tube we carried on and finally made it to a little village hall, where there was TEA!!! So happy to have a nice hot cuppa and a fantastic lunch of breads, hams, cheeses, pasta, salads, fruit, cake - it was lovely! We filled our tummies, but some silly sod had decided to put a hill just after lunch so no sooner had we got on our bikes than we were getting off again for a bit of a stroll!!

We pulled over after a while to buy a bottle of water from a shop, where we got chatting to a lovely older lady about waht we were doing. She had flown out to Rome and then cycled back over 3 weeks! She thought what we were doing was great and so she gave us £10 sponsorship!! Thank you!!!

The next water stop was at 75 miles so not too far to go. More water, more cereal bars and more sweeties and then we were off again with only 15 miles to go to Dover!!

We arrived at Dover, grateful that the worst of the trip was over, only to have a ferry delay and have to stand outside at the port for 1 hr and 45 minutes, getting very cold and miserable!! When we got on the ferry we headed straight to the canteen, where we ate lasagne and chips - don't ask me what it tasted like, it didn't even touch the sides, I was so cold and hungry by this point!

We arrived at Calais, in darkness and we still had another 5 miles to cycle to the hotel. So we fixed our lights to our bikes, put on our high viz jackets and rode in convoy to a lovely Holiday Inn. Where we collected our bags, had a bath and fell in to bed exhausted but very proud of ourselves!!