Early Skirmishes

A Set Piece, in which we meet, greet and gambol in Hyde Park

(A late night, short summary of day 1)

And so, after all the anticipation, we are finally starting our epic cycling journey from London to Rome. Fittingly, we commence our journey at the Caesar Hotel ...

The purpose of today was to get together, make sure everyone's bike is working okay and set some parameters: in general for riding as a large group - coming together and splitting apart at various intervals - and, in particular, getting out of London safely.

Tomorrow we have one of our biggest days on the bike first up, with a 160 kilometre journey to Dover, so it was necessary to take the time today to really make sure all the gear is functioning properly.

After dissemination of tour materials, including battle dress of jersey and bib shorts, we headed off to the park for a late lunch. Here are our bikes neatly assembled and patiently waiting while we came to grips with victuals provided by the local populace ...

Supernumerarii Bruno and Richie making sure the transport is ready to go 
while we gregralis gregaris get refuelled.

Pretty organised, eh! Well moments before this is what how the scene actually looked ...

Order restored, we moved inside. By all accounts, Caesar's fighting forces were well looked after by various attendants, but I doubt they had this sort of service ...

As indicated at the beginning, this is just a short post to kick off the action but it is important to establish the origins of our multinational force. Here is a map showing where we all have come from over the past few days to gather for this expedition ...

 Mostly Australia, but six countries in total! (right click for a larger view)

Tomorrow I'll give more details of our group's make up, but for now please be content with this graphic showing the Six Nations of Caesar ..

We did just meander about today, getting a feel for moving together as a group. Quite pleasant as this  very short video will demonstrate ...

Let's hope, as Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody say,  from little things big things grow ...

I had hoped to share some photos of our first dinner together but things haven't quite gone according to plan in that regard. Here is one photo of Centurion Sam telling us about the significance of Caesar and why he and Dylan thought it worthwhile to add this journey to their repertoire ...

That's about it for today as there are a lot of kilometres to cover tomorrow.