An Epic First Day on the Roads of southeast England

Preamble

This post is dedicated to Bob. He was scheduled to join us but his plans were derailed just before leaving home. Here's to you Bob. Get well soon. We're sorry you're not with us ...

Bob Berg

Everything about today, our first day of real riding (as opposed to our little wander yesterday), was epic. Breakfast, the departure, stops at two famous places along the way, the change in the weather, the terrain; but most of all, on what could have been a difficult sort of day, the wonderful support from our brilliant crew.

Setting off

Even though it was Sunday, I was a bit skeptical about our chances of getting out of London without some sort of delay or drama. I needn't have bothered; these guys know what they are about. Our departure was perfectly organised and we got away as planned at 8:30 on the dot.

Here's a photo showing the van and trailer just about ready to go, with Bruno, one of our four guides, wondering why this bag is still sitting outside the trailer ...

Moments later we were rolling through Hyde Park, but unlike yesterday, it was clear and sunny ...

Next stop was Buckingham Palace.  For those of us here for the first time, this grand statue in the square out front demanded attention ...

There were some timely adjustments made to Sarah's saddle while the rest of us offered advice from the cheap seats before we gathered for our obligatory photo call in front of palace on the inaugural Hail Caesar: London to Rome cycling epic. 

Queen Elizabeth must have forgotten we were coming.  We could see from the undermanned guard stations that she clearly wasn't home, so she missed out on our photo shoot. She'll be sorry she wasn't in this picture when word gets around about our visit. 

Note: please right click to see the photo full size. It's a real beauty because Sam took it rather than me.) Oh, and with the names: don't be concerned. There  are actually two Richies and two Jos.

Richie, Aaron, Doug, Dianne, Ian, Chris, Roberta, Richie, Harold, Don, Kay, John, Emily, Patrick, Sara, Jo, Tony, Jo, Sharon, José

Here are some random photos from Morning Tea stop #1 which came after about 48 kilometres of riding ...

How do these Garmin things work?

Attention right!

Having fun yet?

Au réponse dans le café

Richie and Harold sharing a moment

Morning tea done and dusted, the next point of interest was Rochester, with its seriously olde worlde castle ...

Grey skies in Rochester

At least as impressive for me was the cathedral with the beautiful tree ...

Rochester Cathedral with an impressive tree out front

There was a bit of pinchy climb out of Rochester where we all regrouped and then were let off the leash to travel at our own pace for the rest of the journey. 

Surprisingly, or maybe not, some of us - led by the exuberant Sarah - got a bit over-excited and missed a sharp right-hand bend about halfway down the wonderful, swooping descent off the top of that pinchy little climb. Thinking I ought have a quick look at the route on the Garmin I discovered that we were indeed off course. Bugger! 

After we turned around and found the correct exit - and Richie, one of our wonderful guides, coming to get us back on track (with a small admonishment to  pay attention to where we were going - in the nicest way possible of course - we'd added about an extra kilometre and a half to the day's travels. (Sarah used this extra gain in distance as an incentive at the end of the day to complete her imperial ton and claim the Strava kudos points for the day.)

The corner we missed was a great vantage point where Federica, the sole female member of the Fantastic Four (that's our team of guides), took the opportunity to  grab some great photos,  including this one ...

Another way to get off route?

Chasing hard, I eventually managed to catch Richie from Queensland and Aaron from Sydney. (Further up the road this hard chasing would come at a cost as I struggled with cramp for the last sixty or so kilometres of the ride.) Somehow we managed to miss the second morning tea stop and rode through to our late lunch rendezvous at the whimsically named Tickled Trout Hotel in Wye on the River Stour. It was a brilliant place to stop, but we didn't linger long as the roads were wet by now and more rain looked possible, if not likely.

As it turned out, the last forty kilometres after lunch proved to hold the steepest and longest climbs for the day. With my legs fading, Aaron and Richie kindly nursed me home - which was fortunate as my Garmin died about twenty kilometres from the finish line. This rookie will be getting a tutorial from Richie over breakfast on how to minimise power usage on long days when following a route). Aaron - whose Garmin also died on the journey - earns the KOM points for the day, and Richie is the route-finding king for keeping us on course.

Upon arrival at the White Cliffs Hotel we found Bruno, today's point man for the Fantastic Four, waiting. He had already loaded all the luggage into the hotel and set out a spread of nibbles for us to tuck into. He then proceeded to wash down our bikes for us, which were covered in mud and organic matter (it appears there are lots of horses on these narrow twisty Kent country laneways). The three of us were also covered in mud and organic matter so we quickly made our way to the showers. I can't wait to get back on the bike tomorrow and do it all again!

This photo doesn't show the mud and "organic matter" very well, but trust me, the bottom half was pretty well coated. It was great to get it cleaned up.

It looks like dinner each day is going to be one of the great things about this long journey. The chance to sit down with a bunch of mad cyclists and rehash the day's adventures over a good meal and a glass of wine every night for a month, hearing about different folks' life journeys through cycling ... if the first two nights are anything to go by, it's going to be brilliant. Here's a couple of snaps of part of our merry band resting between courses ...

Di, who is prone to cramp after a hard day's exercise, suddenly gut up from the table to stretch out her muscles as she was on the verge of knotting up. Lucky for her, Bruno's talents extend past ministering to the bikes, and he kindly helped her with her stretching ...

 Apparently my Garmin, though dead at the end of the day, should have saved our route for me to share with you, but it's not there. For the record, we rode about 155 kilometres and enjoyed 1500 metres of elevation gain. This graphic showing our starting and finishing point will have to do for the moment to show where we started and finished our first day ...

Start and finish of Day 1

And finally it's time for today's Featured Face(s) section. In conversation over dinner on day one, I found out that Kay was from Wollongong. She was sitting with John, whom I'd previously discovered was from Wollongong. When I asked them if they were together, their answer was mixed. They ride together in "The Gong" as their home town is affectionately named, and have some great bike tours together, including Hannibal twice, but they are not together, so to speak ...

The Gong Squad

We are, together ...

... but not together! 

Kay and John from Woollongong