Updated
24 May 2016
The French
Club Run. Saturday 14 May 2016.
This club run to France is very
popular with our members, considering that you have got to get up and out of
your house by 5.00 in the morning to catch the ferry at 7.35 am. We have
only about 15 members riding bikes in the club we had 9 on the trip.
The format of the run is to
leave your car in Dover and ride your bike on to the ferry. I was told of a
very safe place to leave your car about 2 miles from the ferry. This was
safe but on the way back you had to climb to a little cluster of houses at
the top of the cliffs. I was knackered
This club run was combined with
the San Fairy Ann club but only 3 turned up. One was a lady called Heather,
who had not ridden her bike for 6 weeks. We had Charles who is a tourist and
we had a vet world champion, Roly Crayford.
I said to the guys to keep the
pace steady as we have a mixture of riders with an old boy of 81 with us
me! I noticed that Steve Carter Smith and Roy Savery where getting into
racing mode up the front so I let him go off course and then told them to
come back.
Our first stop was the village
of Guines for refreshments or a few beers.
The ride to the restaurant at
Ardres for lunch was a steady run and no one fell into the canal.
The restaurant we use is the Le
Fregate. We have been using this restaurant for a few years now. They are
used to a noisy lot of cyclists especially as we are drinking a lot of their
wine.
As far as the weather goes, we
had a dry run and the best bit was a strong tail wind going out and no wind
on the return. When our so-called racing section had a sniff of the way back
we did not see them until we got back to the ferry. Our lady, Heather was
finding a bit hard at the end and she said, It felt like someone had pulled
the plug out! She had a world champion to push her back.
Back in Dover, to get out of the
docks you have to follow a blue-painted line for cyclists. They must have
had a lot of blue paint left over as the line went on forever!
A good day was had by all. Total
mileage was about (if you did the hill climb) 35 miles.
Photos from Kav
