'Entre Deux Mers'

In seven days. 

With no support.

For charity; with a little bit of enjoyment thrown in. 

Years ago, I read a book called 'Fat man on a bike' which was serialised on Radio 4. It told of the author, who was admittedly overweight, and his journey across France on a fairly ordinary bike, and his experiences thereof. It inspired me to attempt the journey, but I had less time than the umpteen days that he had at his disposal. 

The idea gestated in my mind for a year or two, but this year I decided that it had to be done. Spring or late summer were the obvious timings for an attempt; work precluded May, so September was in my sights. 

So, what were my reasons for actually going ahead with the 'dream'.

1) I enjoy cycling and saw this as a challenge that I would like to do before I got too old! It's my personal 'Everest'.

2) Recently I lost a colleague and friend to lung cancer. He was just two years older than me. In his last few weeks of life, he had benefited from the expertise and support of the Macmillan nurses of that area.  

3) My wife, Jean, is a Macmillan Nurse who works as part of a specialist Lung Cancer team. I wanted to do my bit by improving the resources available to her and her colleagues.

Richard has a demanding full time job and was not able to spend the amount of time training that I could do. He also had a weeks holiday booked in Egypt at Sharm el-Sheikh scuba diving, immediately before our trip. 

We begged and borrowed panniers and frames from Simon's Cycles in Cowbridge (who was very supportive to both of us) and did a couple of training runs together locally a couple of weeks before D-day. 

D-day was Tuesday September 3rd. 2002