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Day 1 - London to Dover The day started quite cool, setting off from Blackheath, and riding southeast out of London. The route took us to Rochester, across the river Medway and then down narrow country lanes all the way to Dover. After the initial coolness in the morning, the weather warmed up and the day turned out to be a scorcher, not necessarily the best thing for a long distance cyclist, but welcome nonetheless. Some of us, me included, missed a turning and ended up doing about 30 miles extra. Day 2 - Calais to Abbeville After getting the ferry across the channel, we set off for Abbeville. Today was another hot one, and the tarmac actually felt to be sticky, making the going very tough indeed in some places. Day 3 - Abbeville to Beauvais Pretty much the same as the ride from Calais, but a little cooler. Day 4 - Beauvais to Paris From Beauvais we cycle to the lunch rendez-vous, from there we cycled into Paris in groups of around 20-30 cyclists, working on the principle of safety in numbers. There was some question whether it would be possible to cycle round the Arc de Triomphe, as it happed we needn't have worried. It's certainly an experience I will never forget, riding round the Arc and then down the Champs Elysees. I attempted to video this last bit, but the cobbles made the video extremely shakey so it's not the easiest video to watch. |
Event Calendar 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Had a year off.
2010 Questars Series < Next Event
2011 Grant's Philosophy Life is for living, and when my time is up my body will be completely worn out. To me there is no point in doing nothing, saving yourself for your old age in the hope that you may prolong your life, what an incredibly dull life that would be. I have a need to experience as much as possible as soon as I can. What a waste it would be if I waited until I was 65 and retired to start living my life, only to get knocked down by a bus or hit by a meteorite. I push myself mentally and physically as hard as I can, sometimes at the same time. I consider it to be very selfish to do events like these, if you are only doing it for yourself. In an ideal world, every challenge I do would be raising money for some charity or other. I don't think it's fair to keep asking the same private individuals to sponsor me over and over again. Major sports equipment and clothing manufacturers would benefit from sponsoring someone like me, an ordinary (well relatively) member of the public, to do these extraordinary challenges and give that money to charity. |
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London to Paris
This was my first charity bike ride, 300 miles in 4 days arriving in Paris in time to see Lance Armstrong win his 7th and final Tour de France. I did the ride for Action Medical Research after my mother's partner found their advert in the Sunday paper, and raised £2,739 to help them fund more research programmes.
