The Picos Ride for Cancer Support: How many stars?

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!

Thursday 2 August 2012

How many stars?

As we are now off the Camino it has become hard to find accomodation. Yesterday saw us cycle 95km to Cornellana where we had to pay 50 euros per room in a 2 star hotel for accomodation. Cycling was relatively easy after lunch and we rode 20km, mostly downhill, along a river canyon to get there. Last nights supper was huge and caused us all to feel rather bloated.
This morning saw us climbing instantly back up to 400m. In England that is a mountain. I think in this part of Spain nothing is a mountain unless it has a wind turbine on it! Lunch stop was at a rural casa where our awful spanish caused havoc in the Fawlty Towers of the culinary world. We finally left the owner with a smile on her face. Probably relief I think!
Trickiest navigation was getting through the regional town of Oviedo where we chased a little boy and his big brother out of town. They start them early on very expensive bikes here.
Final resting place tonight is Pola de Siero. Here we are paying the same price for 3 stars! This is the way pilgrims should travel.