Marshfield to Marseille
My thought was maybe the Coast to Coast ride in England would be a good challenge. From the Irish to the North Sea would be a tough undulating ride, typically undertaken in three days. The idea then came to ride the length of the UK – Lands End to John O’Groats, or the LEJOG as it is most commonly called. However, the thought of arriving in John O’Groats on a misty and potentially wet summer day didn’t appeal to me or anyone in the group I was in discussion with and the whole idea eventually fell a bit flat.
Then somehow, someone, and I don’t remember who came up with the idea of cycling from our home near Marshfield South Gloucestershire to the French Mediterranean city of Marseille. So that was that.
From Channel To Med
From the French port of Ouisterham on the English Channel to Marseille was approximately 630 miles, just over 1,000 kilometres. Adding the extra miles from our home to the ferry terminal in Portsmouth was another 95 miles, and the plan was to undertake the whole trip in eight days with an average mileage of about 90 (145 km) per day. Yikes!
The first part of the trip went entirely to plan from a route planning and hotel accommodation point of view, but the weather could not have been more unhelpful. Despite a promising start in England, we cycled the first few days in France through lashing rain and strong winds. I would like to be optimistic and say the views and the French scenery were everything that we hoped for, but the truth is that there were very few stand-out highlights beyond the moments we walked in and then out of a local boulangerie. Don’t get me wrong, this was, in a way, a fun experience with many highlights, but I am not sure it had the picture postcard romance of Normandy that we had perhaps conjured up in our minds.
More importantly, I had in my preparation thought about almost every possible event and none more than ensuring my body and bike were prepared for the challenge ahead. What I could not prepare for, or perhaps even train for, was the saw buttocks I was rapidly incurring after hours in wet shorts on flat roads with very little opportunity to reposition myself.
The miles ticked along quite quicky, and to aid it, we adopted almost professional team trial antics that included taking turns in the front and rotating through the chain to the rear. However, we lacked anything like the speed or bike form, and if you watch the video linked at the bottom of this post, you will realise we lacked plenty of cycle chic, too.
Le Coq du Jour
Oh le coq du jour. Why oh why was this even a thing, and how the hell did six months planning a 10-person ride across France suddenly come down to me having a large squeezy and noisy cheap rubber Coq-shaped toy in my already crowded jersey pocket. FFS! Douglas will not only own the idea but also take responsibility for his own decision, and I am pleased to say that it wasn’t long before he was rewarded with the prize for ‘Coq of the day’ for his infamous failed attempts to simply screw a valve onto his CO2 cartridge. I took great pleasure in handing over the trophy to him, and I am pretty confident that the next eight hours of cycling for him gave him plenty of opportunity to reflect whilst equal satisfaction in the knowledge he would now be the master of its fete the next day and some poor mug was going to be doing the same.
Sancerre
For me, the turning point of the trip was our arrival after a long slog of a ride into the beautiful hilltop city of Sancerre, home to some quite fantastic tasting and famous French wines. It was our first opportunity to enjoy a feast of a lunch that would send a horse to sleep and to wash it down with plenty of Rosé for good measure. As we sat barely sheltered from the hot midday sun, it was safe to say that we had all enjoyed our first true taste of France, both emotionallly and literally and perhaps as importantly, as we rode through the stunning vine tree landscape, it was the first time that we all silently reflected upon the progress we were making crossing the regions of France.
Canals
On paper, the opportunity to make significant progress on our journey in what would be the flattest ride I had perhaps ever undertaken seemed like a welcome relief for the legs. It turned out that way, too. The Canal latéral à la Loire is an extremely long waterway that is flanked, as expected, by a towpath that lent itself as the perfect gateway for anyone on a bicycle travelling through France. It was a cycle tourers dream as practically anyone of even mixed ability could take their time to progress through the region with minimal of effort, even if assisted by motors, as was often the case for many that we waved at. It was, though if I were honest, a tad too long for our busy minds and with our normal weekend rides, never too far from a tight bend, sprint like tarmac straight, and, of course, an out-of-the-saddle climb, way too flat and straight. It served its purpose and delivered some scenic and enjoyable moments along the way, even if Adrian’s tyre issues created an unscheduled separation in the group for a few hours.
Up
Our desire to for a hill came back to haunt us pretty quickly, and the next day presented us with a whopper. Strava says the Barrage à Croix Chaubouret is a mere 6.21 miles, but I would call a Stewards Enquiry on that figure and seek out a proper measure from the actual base of the climb. As I pressed towards the second half of the climb, surrounded by large flies that enjoyed landing on every sun-sensitive piece of skin in sight, the sweat dripped from my helmet into my eyes and became a distraction only to the burning pain in my feet from constantly pushing down hard on the pedals. So determined was I to keep a constant pace and do justice to my climb, I turned my body and my mind inside out to find ways to overcome the deafening voice of doubt that visited so frequently. As I reflect on that now, I have absolutely no idea why I did that and what I gained from doing it, and in many ways, it defies all logic and purpose of the trip. But, at the same time, it is precisely why these things happen in the first place as it is the very epitome of a challenge; the ability to find out what you can do and where your limits are that got me on the bicycle in the first place and took me to this moment where I was now cycling the length of France.
Mont Ventoux
This was a stupid idea whichever way you looked at it. We were riding across France, the weather had once again turned pretty nasty, and there I was leaving the hotel reception in the pouring rain with Archie in the knowledge that we had a 120 mile journey to complete, and the little matter of cycling over the infamous and Mont Ventoux. We started our climb in Malaucène and set off towards the summit which was an ascent of 1,570 m (5,150 ft) and a distance of 21.5 km (13.4 mi) away. Oh and, as per the very French word the mountain was named after, it was incredibly windy. Of course it was.
I could write chapter after chapter of what that was like and I intended to be waxing lyrical about the huge sense of achievement that would be matched only by the quite incredible views that one can only find and enjoy if you have cycled this lone mountain in the normally flat lavendar field Provence region it reigns over. The reality is, it wasn’t fun, there were no highlights beyond the meal breaks on route and it was a gruelling and frankly unrewarding process. As we arrived at the hotel at just after 9.00pm, nothing was on our mind more than a hot shower and the largest plate of food that someone could muster. For entirely practical reasons, my colleagues had ordered me a tasty salad and a cold beer, and for entirely survival reasons both were destroyed in about five minutes. Ultimately though, now I was clean, fed and basquing in the glow of the ride and the glory, I felt good.
Marseille
This was our most rewarding day as it brought the group back together in our matching club cycle jerseys as we rode as a peleton through beautiful countryside under the watch of a glorious sun that reminded us all of the Mediterenanean that would greet us now hours instead of days away. THIS is what it was all about, why we had done it and what we hoped it would be like. As a single day on the bike it would have been a great day. As the closing chapter on a week of such hugely varying conditions, challenges and moments opened in front of us, we were pushed through the villages and countryside towards Marseille by the warm and firm hand of success and there wasn’t a single rider that didn’t feel fresher than the legs that walked our bikes off the ferry just one week ago.
Marseille was the perfect host. As we free wheeled through the pedestrians people watching around around the marina, we shared a couple of cold beers and raised our voices as the excitement rushed through our veins as quickly as the alcohol would take it. Our legs now brown, firmer and free of aches and pains, we soaked up the loud and vibrant party city and enjoyed a huge meal, a loud DJ and way more alchohol than our dehydrated bodies were asking for.
We had ridden over 700 miles from Marshfield to Marseille and we had never been more ready for our next adventure.