Once we'd finished dressing, greasing, packed & thrown our bags at the vehicle, we were ready to collect our trusty steeds, cringing at the sight of the saddle and the thought of another 8 hours in it. It was also drizzling, cold & windy!! Great, it didn’t say it would be like this in the DA brochure! All the pictures are of sunny days, people in vests, laughing & joking with each other, not snarling and wrapped up in several layers! But I’ll tell you more about the DA brochure as we go along!
Jim gave us our morning brief, just a gentle 80 odd miles today!! Water stop at 23 ‘ish’ miles, I say ‘ish’ because we think they were moving them to suit themselves! So off we jolly well. Em & I got to the entrance to the hotel & no orange marker! Damo (the Goat) came up behind us and went out into the road and announced that it was ‘Right’, to which I replied (much to the amusement of the assembled throng, who were now backed up behind us scratching their heads too), ‘Not on that side of the road though!!’ I doubled back to the hotel entrance to be told it was left out the hotel and once the ‘pack’ was informed, it was all systems go. Abbeville, here we come!
The weather was miserable, and cold, it really takes all your efforts to try and motivate yourself when it’s like that and your goal still seems so far away. Em was at the front of the pack with Ox, & I finally caught up with them and we settled into the mornings work. Pretty uneventful through to the water stop, a few ‘gentle’ hills, one in particular that was a bit like a roller coaster, very undulating!, the water stop was just outside a small town where we saw our first signpost for Paris!! But we headed in the opposite direction?
Fully refreshed and carb’d up (courtesy of bananas etc) we set off towards lunch at 46 miles (hmm?) I mentioned previously, it seemed that refreshment stops were surrounded by hills, and this water stop was no exception, another ‘nice’ climb away from the town. However, the weather had started to brighten up and we were soon passing through some really stunning countryside. We kept doing impersonations of Meg Ryan in French Kiss (sorry if you haven’t seen it because the next bit will be lost on you!) and waving our arms around generally pointing at the views saying ‘Oh! Beautiful! Wish you were here!’ There were streams running by the roadside, lakes, and a stunning watermill, which every one of the group must have a picture of (see above).
Em was busting to go to the loo & needed to put some cream on her sore 'bits' (the only thing she had on her was Carmex, for chapped lips & cold sores!) so we stopped at a cafe in a village. Em went in and asked a woman if she could use the bathroom to which she replied 'NON'! Her friend who was sat with her looked at her and then at Em & said 'For money!' but the old witch wasn't having any of it and still said 'NON!' so Em had to wait until the lunch stop, which because we were checking our mileage, we knew that it was fast approaching, also, there was a bleeding great hill in front of us. So it was head down arse up and just get stuck into it!! We ‘flew’ up it, actually it wasn’t as bad as it first looked, OR we were getting used to the hills! (No, it wasn’t that bad!) Anyway we came to a crossroads only to be met by Stan the man and the lady that was riding with him, I can’t remember her name, they couldn’t find any arrows? They’d been in every direction and nothing, so whilst they were consulting the map, I called Jim to see where we were. You know what’s coming don’t you? Correct, we didn’t have to go up that bloody hill!!! Just under the railway bridge at the bottom of the hill there was a small, dirt track, with a couple of orange arrows pointing along it. We’d taken one look at the hill as we approached the railway bridge and simply dropped our heads to get up it! That’ll teach us, BUT, we weren’t the only four that did it! This made me feel much better. Lunch was literally, ½ a mile along this road!!
I must admit, I’d now worked up a real appetite, so tucked into a real feast of pasta, rice, etc AND CHOCOLATE cake!! It was gorgeous. We sat for about 30 mins then braced ourselves for the remainder of the day in the saddle. Em was feeling very sore by now and luckily I heard the magic word uttered by Dave, SUDOCREM!!! He had a pot on him so she had a dollop and toddled off to the ladies, (a clump of trees!) heeding Dave’s advice! DON’T DROP IT! Or fall over! What would be worse, saddle sores or Sudocrem with grit in it!!! OOER!!!
We set off with full tum tums & soothed bits (Em’s at least) for the afternoon section of our ride. It was lovely; we rode past some beautiful chateaus, through some gorgeous villages, exclaiming ‘Oh! Beautiful!’ very few miles!! We went past a sign in one village that had us rolling around (think we were a bit delirious by then). It actually said ‘Coq en pate’ but I said ‘Cock on pate’ with a Yorkshire accent! Why? Don’t know, it doesn’t sound so funny reading it now, you had to be there!! There was a short water stop in the afternoon, which we nearly missed. We didn’t really need to stop, but did anyway, and then pushed on to Abbeville, and the hotel only 15 miles away.
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