T minus 1

Am I ready? Probably not, I mean I haven’t tried packing anything up yet and it would probably be sensible to take a fully loaded test cycle before leaving, but then again whatever I bring is what I will need so I may as well just get on with it.

However, one more day does mean time for more stuff. I have come across a fantastic collapsible frying pan / saucepan / kettle set which looks awesome. It all folds down to the width of a tube of toothpaste but the pans are pretty big when everything expanded; I just hope that all my meals won’t taste of the silicon/rubbery material that the pots are made of. I shoot down to good old Cotswold Outdoors and get it along with a pair of lightweight trekking trainers as I’ll need something in addition to my mountain bike shoes. I flirt with the idea of getting some maps, old school paper style rather than just relying on google maps but decide to just work that out on the way.

Truth be told, I should probably be spending more time on looking at the actual route rather than just buying stuff for it but over the years I have come to the realise that the best approach is to have a general idea of where I want to go, but not plan more than a couple of days in advance. It rarely works out as planned and anyway and the EuroVelo route system does look pretty comprehensive so all I am going to think about is getting onto the EV6 for the moment, and for that I need to get to Besançon, which hold the accolades of being both the watchmaking capital of France and its greenest city.

One thing I discovered was a great website for planning cycle routes in France, called France Velo Tourisme . You just put in the start and end point and it calculates the route for you. I decided to take the ferry from Dover to Calais, partly because that was the route taken by Lauren Pears in the blog that had originally prompted me to take this trip and partly because I was used to taking that route over the years when on holidays to France and school trips etc. I had wanted to take the EuroVelo 15 from Rotterdam and follow the Rhine down through the Netherlands and Germany but at the time, restrictions due to Covid made that impractical. With hindsight, it may have been preferable to go from Newhaven to Dieppe following the Avenue Verte to Paris and on from there which would be more scenic.

I would be taking my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt as I could load up my routes and use that. Simple, right? Wrong, it just doesn’t work out like that when you are en route but at least I could use it to record stats on my actual route and upload that to Strava to impress and astound my mates. And if it isn’t on Strava, then it didn’t happen.

I had also heard of a great app called Polar Steps which used minimal battery, records your route as you cycle along and you could upload phots to it as you went, sharing the journey with anyone who was interested. Turns out this was one of the best decisions and I would thoroughly recommend downloading it. You can even turn your final trip into a book, which I never did but it sounds neat. Oh, and another recommendation would be to get yourself a Revolut card, load it up with cash and use that to pay for stuff. It doesn’t have any charges on it, which makes a big deal when you are out on the road.

So that was pretty much it. All I needed to do was go get my PCR test, pack up my bike and go enjoy my last evening with my partner and neighbours.