Picos Original Riders

Picos Original Riders
Highlights of 2010

Last of the Picos Riders - to Rome Alone!

Our first two charity rides were a huge success - raising over £20,000 for the South East Cancer Help Centre.

The Centre does a fantastic job of supporting patients and carers at the most difficult times of their lives. They make a real difference and you could help them in their work by contributing to our fundraising. Donations can be made via JustGiving.comhttps://www.justgiving.com/Tom-Vaz/ or directly into the Centre. For more details of the Centre and their work see their website at http://www.sechc.org.uk/

After 3 years of rest it seemed time to dust off the old muscles, bones and sinews and do one more spectacular ride in aid of this fabulous charity.

This time I will travel alone for 25 days, mainly following the ancient pilgrimage route to Rome, the Via Francigene, covering a distance of around 1,400 miles.

The route travels through Newhaven - Dieppe - Paris before I eventually reach the Via Francigene in Eastern France. From then on it is pretty simple apart from having to cross the Alps without an elephant!

Saturday 21 July 2012

There are no hills in Spain!

Or so we protested as we climbed our first ridiculous gradient for 5km this morning. This was followed by another one and another one. The whole exercise took twice as long as planned and so we are a little behind schedule today.
So far we have cycled 330km from home and are nearly fit now! Three of us had an enormous lunch for 11 euros. Three courses, each the size of a normal lunch. In the end even Christopher had to pass on the dessert.
At the end of our ride we encountered a couple of German girls who thought it was ok to ride on the motorway because there was a red circle with a picture of a bicycle inside. READ THE HIGHWAY CODE was my first thought but we relented and showed them the error of their ways.
Tonight we are going back to basics. The hostel is full and offered us 3 li-los. Being generous I have agreed to sleep on the concrete floor. One toilet between 50 men. What a life.
Free entertainnent at the moment. We have been watching a group of youngsters attempt to fix a punctured mountain bike tyre. One broken tyre lever, three ruined tubes and 6 wasted man hours later they have given up. I suggest they pray to Saint Iago or whoever is the patron saint for cycling.

A very hilly shortcut thanks to Des
Downhill to Gijon



Either pointing out where we are or looking for another shortcut

1 comment:

  1. Dread to think what the toilets must have been like; hope the ratio is better for women!!?? Enjoy all the lovely Spanish food...! You will only be missing the Olympic torch tomorrow passing through town.

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