The night before we had been warned that the following day was going to be exceptionally cold for the time of the year. As well as the cold it was also damp and to make matters far worse the wind had turned around yet again and we were going to have a full on headwind all the 68 miles to Rouen. Donning many layers of clothes as if out for a January ride we set out into the drizzle. Progress was painfully slow into the headwind and after around 20 miles Chris developed a puncture in his front tyre. While waiting for Chris to fix the puncture Ivan kindly provided us with a croissant each that he had purchased from a shop near the F1. In the vilage where we had stopped we found a rather unattractive unfriendly modern café but it did at least warm us up for a while. A few miles later , Chris’s front wheel had gone down again. I found the offending object which turned out to be a sharp piece of flint. We set out once again into the windswept open farmland of Picardy only for Paul’s chain to snap. By now we are all dab hands at fixing chains and had it back together in no time although I mistakenly gave Malcolm a 9 speed one, fortunately apart from the occasional click it seemed to work OK. We were all getting concerned about the mileage, we had been cycling for several hours and had only covered around 25 miles, and there was another 43 to go! We put ourselves into the zone for the next hour or so and thankfully the mileage began to improve. Feeling hungry we decided to stop at the next café we came to. At each little village we encountered we kept our eyes peeled for a café and enjoyed the shelter from the wind only to be disappointed and pass through back out into the open farmland and the cold headwind. Ivan was so cold he was unable to use his hands and change gear properly; Paul was on the verge of bonking and kept saying he had to get something to eat. We pressed on further and further. We never did find a café but at least we found a shop selling cakes and another selling fruit at a small town just outside Rouen. The food gave us the energy boost we needed and the last 8 miles or so to Rouen passed quickly. That evening we decided to treat ourselves and get a taxi into Rouen to spare our legs. We were a bit shocked to discover they charged us 25 euros for a one way trip, so on the way back Dave challenged out taxi driver to get back quick enough to get the cost down below 20 euros. The taxi driver was happy to take up the challenge so we had a ‘interesting’ ride back up to the F1 hotel (he still wasn’t quite quick enough and it cost 21 euros in the end)
Distance 68 miles
Av speed 12.1 mph
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