Bloody hell, not another Cyclefrance biking holiday!!

[Cyclefrance]

Afraid so.

Calais to Paris this year - pure madness - 220 miles in three and a half days. Website to come (god knows how long it will take this year!) but some photos to give you a flavour of what was on offer.... starting with....

Well, it was a puzzling start for some - I don't think he was reckoning on his bike having so much on the back - let alone the hills that followed( Ok so it's a downer I'm showing - but we had to get up there first!):

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[Cyclefrance]

BUt the views from on top made it all worthwhile

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[Cyclefrance]

...and when we did get donw to river level, there was an intersting bridge on view. We arrived just as the barrier came down.

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[Cyclefrance]

Then the guy on the left started pumping up and down with a lever, while the one on the right inserted this 'key' into a socket in the middle of the bridge...

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[Cyclefrance]

Seems the first guy was jacking up the central column of the bridge - just enough to break the contact and remove the frictioneffect, which then allowed the second guy to turn the key....

... and the bridge started moving:

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[Cyclefrance]

...and in no time at all the bridge was open so the boat could pass by.

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[Cyclefrance]

That's your lot for now - for all the grit and gristle of the trip in it's bare entirety, you'll have to wait for the website - but I'll keep you posted on progress.

[Undertoad]

Just one word.... awesome

[Sundae]

Great pics as usual CF.
No mention of the spooky craft materialising over gay Paree in your comments though...?

Nice idea re the garden gates. I have nothing even of that size, but am moved to maybe gild my desk fan.

[zippyt]

Looks like a fun time CF

[Clodfobble]

Man, I bet when the sun hits that gold in the morning it's blinding.

[Cyclefrance]

For those interested in such things, the route we took (one map per day, and approximately - we changed day 3 to follow the Somme between Abbeville and Amiens rather than go mountain climbing again):

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[Cyclefrance]

Days 3 & 4

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[HungLikeJesus]

Looks like a good time. Was there much car traffic on the roads?

[Cyclefrance]

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus

Looks like a good time. Was there much car traffic on the roads?

Keep off the Routes Nationales and the major 'D' roads and you don't get to see much traffic at all - even going into Paris using side roads was fine until we crossed the Seine - then it did pick up dramatically.

Having done the trip back in 2005 and been given a Garmin eTrek Legend satnav by my sons then as a birthday present, I had recorded on it the route I planned and followed on that occasion both in and out of Paris as far as Froissy.

The eTrek isn't so good that it tells you where to go straight off (like car satnavs) - really it just plots/pinpoints your actual position in relation to major roads and cities - but it does track your route, and once you have this recorded, then you just have to follow it yard-by-yard and can forget about using maps completely. Hence the route into Paris from as far away as Froissy (all the 4th day) was accomplished in very good time.

Actually it was quite weird to do this, as I had forgotten, but soon discovered, that I had found some unusual methods of cutting out unwanted roads and detours, including at one stage cycling over a footbridge to cross a railway line, and through a foot tunnel another time to achieve the same result.

If we had needed to map-read as well we would probably have extended into another day to get where we were going.