Date: Friday 5th Sept - Day Three

Ring ring, ring ring, what the f$*k!!! Ah, alarm call. 7.00a.m., this is beginning to wear a little thin!! I'm fast becoming 'not' a morning person!! We are both a little slower than yesterday morning, and a there are a lot more groans!! We were warned by Paul Wales, who did this ride in June that Day 3 was the worst and it was looking like we weren't going to prove him wrong. As with the first two days, we threw on our shorts, under vest & sweatshirt and shuffled out to breakfast, which was a really nice spread of cereal, juices, fruit, bread, cake, meat, cheese, hang on a mo, back up a bit, CAKE? Yep, cake! Strange people the froggies! We had learnt from yesterday's breakfast that the tea was like piss so I nicked some t-bags from the caterers at lunchtime. That was the one saving grace about breakfast, a decent cup of tea. Again, neither of us could eat much, I looked around the room and there were people with their plates piled high!! We simply had some juice, cereal croissant & tea and that was that. Back to the room, slap on the old Vaseline, brush our teeth, throw on the rest of our clothes & drag the bags out to the van. We then got our bikes and reluctantly got on our way. I say reluctantly, because we were both knackered! The shine was wearing off (temporarily)! Anyway, we set off in the general direction of Beauvais, just a short 65 miles today....

Just outside Abbeville we turned of the main road to ride over the River Somme & through the battlefields which was lovely. I suddenly heard a strange rubbing noise and realised my saddle bag had come unclipped and was dragging on my wheel, in fact it melted a hole in my saddle bag!!! I should have seen the omen! Read on! It was quite windy, but dry and the group were very spread out. We got to this humongous climb, a real long slow slog! But I did it in one which really pleased me, but as I got to the top, I realised that I’d got a puncture, SHIT! What did I say about omens? Anyway as luck would have it, Jim, the team support who was I must admit very conspicuous in his absence most of the time, came driving up the hill. He changed my tube for me, not that I couldn’t have done it myself (see Day One) and with that we set of on our way.

In true DA fashion, the water stop was on a hill this time… Actually halfway down it! Mike Foley sat meditating, bless him. I was thinking how nice it would be to switch off like that when it started spitting, only lightly but spitting none the less. Anyway we didn’t sit for too long as it was cold and we didn’t want to stiffen up. We could see that at the bottom of the hill was a rather large climb too, so I asked Jim if he could give us a lift to save us from cycling up it!! He said NO?! Aw, spoil sport! So we set off again.

The clouds were looking mighty ominous now and soon we were cycling in cold rain & a head wind which turned every way we did. The only respite from the wind seemed to be when we cycled through the maize fields. I rang Izzy whilst we were riding through them and told him that we’d seen something horrible in them and we couldn’t drink the water because it was contaminated, but we did have our silver foil hats on!! Those of you who haven’t seen the film ‘Signs’, with Mel Gibson, won’t have a clue what I’m going on about. I wanted Em to go into one of the fields & I was going to video her jumping out and me screaming, then we were going to send it o John, but it was too muddy!

The rain & wind were really going for it now!! Em had a ‘hysterical’ moment, where she simply laughed! There was no point in crying! We were completely wet through, not a dry bit in sight!! But we knew that lunch wasn’t too far away, and then we only had a short ride (about 13 miles) until Beauvais. Mike caught up with us at one stage and we ‘slip streamed’ him for around a mile or so which was actually quite good fun, but we couldn’t keep up his pace or stand the constant spray from his bike hitting us it the face!

Lunch was in what would have been, had the weather been nicer, a very nice picturesque little square, but the elements kept up their relentless battering. There was nowhere dry to sit and eat, so we sat on the wet grass under a tree. The food was really welcome! Unfortunately a nice warming bowl of soup was not on the menu, but the curried pasta was once again, yummy. Everyone seemed a little flat, but that’s hardly surprising
Given the hammering we were all taking.

We set off once again on the ‘run home’ (field gun term). My god was it dismal!!! The rain & wind were relentless; we really couldn’t get any wetter or colder. Then disaster struck for the second time that day, yep another puncture! A bloody industrial staple of all things! Ah well, I was getting quite adept at changing them out now, so in no time at all we were offski. We gave the 2nd water stop a miss as there were only a few miles to do on this afternoon stretch allowing us to get to the hotel in plenty of time to have a chill out.

We had quite a ‘hairy’ ride into Beauvais. As with Abbeville, the hotel was on the opposite side of town so we had to run the gauntlet of all the French drivers, who are not the most tolerant, especially of a ‘Roast Beef’ on a pushbike!! Anyway, there were several of us in convoy, being lead by Em & I. We finally arrived at the hotel Camponile, were allocated our rooms, found our bags and headed off for a well earned bath and relax or so we thought!!