PBP 2007 – the wet one

Paris Brest Paris

Introduction

How do you start to describe the Paris Brest Paris?

It is like no other ride I had ever done before, an Olympics, an Everest, something that every long distance cyclist wants to do.  Consider that the London-Edinburgh-London gets about 250 entries, Boston-Montreal-Boston about a 100, and other 1200km randonées much the same.  PBP got 5300 in 2007.  Other Audax events start with an “off you go then”, PBP starts with fireworks, street displays, and huge crowds lining the streets.  Even on an event like the Bryan Chapman the people you pass have no interest in what you are doing.  On the PBP everyone seems to know and they shout encouragement: “Bonne route”, “Bon courage”, “Allez”.

For a week it is was if time was frozen and I was part of the history of cycling, transported back to the early races where the first hard riders proved the effectiveness of the bicycle as a form of transport, all the way back to 1891 when PBP was first held and someone took just under three days to ride from Paris to Brest and back.

There are other differences with the PBP.  Firstly, it only happens once every four years.  That means that if you miss it there is a long time before you can do it again.  Secondly, you need to qualify with specific rides at specific times.  In combination this builds up the pressure, particularly for the longer qualifying rides of 300km, 400km, and 600km.  Some people I knew had failed to qualify because of an untimely injury.  But there are other worries.  A mechanical problem with the bike on another Audax ride would be annoying but ultimately little more than that.  A major mechanical on the PBP could be the end of four years planning and training, aspirations dashed for another four years.  Afraid of this, between April and July the yellow Roberts had new rims and rebuilt wheels, a new bottom bracket, a new left hand crank, new pedals, new cassette, new chain, new gear and brake cables and new brakes.  It was also supposed to have a new saddle (to replace the one broken on the Severn Across, the 400km qualifier) but Campagnolo’s wonderful supply chain meant that the bike was only ready three weeks before the PBP and the saddle wasn’t sufficiently broken in; so I swapped the new saddle with the comfortable one from my race bike as I had done to ride the Bryan Chapman.

Preparation

I had chosen to travel with Graham Baxter as this simplified the logistics and allowed me to concentrate on riding.  It also meant one day less holiday than joining the Peter Marshall camping trip.  (Given the weather over the week this turned out to be a very good choice.)  They had found a hotel just a mile from the start.  There was a strong contingent of VC167 riders on our coach, which turned out to be an opportunity to make new friends such as Bob Johnson, Andy Clarkson, Graham Panicca, and Gordon Wanless.  There were also some old acquaintances in David Johnston, Ian Weatherill, Judith Swallow, and Chris Rutter.  Finally there was Clive Collier, from South Africa and Dave Bradshaw, who was to be my room-mate.

Friday was a travelling day, lugging a bike bag, rucksack, and travel bag down to the station, up to Waterloo, an early lunch in the station and another taxi to Victoria where, thankfully, there was a small crowd of people and a large crowd of bike bags.  The coach turned up on time and we were off for the long journey.  The conversations were predictable, “have you done this before”, “what were your qualifying rides”, but in such a company these conversations were easy and helped to create a common bond.  It helped ease the nerves, which were increased by the fact that I had picked up a minor cold and was not 100%.

Saturday was a day to put the bikes together and, in warm sunshine we rode out to Gambais and back to Montfort d’Amaury for lunch.  I was feeling my cold but seemed to get better as the day went on.  It also showed how strong some of the VC167 riders were.

Sunday was registration day.  One of the advantages of Graham Baxter Tours was that there were many old acquaintances and some old PBP hands.  Dave, my room-mate came up with the great suggestion of going up to the supermarket to buy some stuff for lunch.  As he had a fairly early registration time I volunteered to buy the food.  I didn’t fancy navigating my way through registration on my own, but Chris Rutter had the same registration time for me so after getting the baguettes, ham, cheese, and some bonk rations, Chris and I rode up to the Gymnase for registration.  As predicted it was a bit of melee, especially as all the Brits had turned up in the morning irrespective of their registration time.  The bike check had been abandoned because of the rain!  So all our kitting up with lights and reflective jackets was a waste of time.  One advantage of the British queue was that everyone met up with old friends.  It was nice to see Sean Quigley again; I only saw him once during the ride, on the way out at Fougeres.  He was just leaving as I arrived, true to our usual placing.  At the end I checked his finish time, which was after me, so I can only presume that I passed him during one of the nights.  I must remember to ask him how he got on.

Eventually I got to the front of the queue and collected my documents.  This included a medal.  The PBP must be one of the few events where you get a medal before you start!  It was totally unexpected but surprisingly rational.  In order to qualify you have to do a super-randonneur series of events, all of which are BRM (Brevet Randonneur Mondial) registered, ie they are also registered with the Audax Club Parisien which organises Paris Brest Paris.  So by qualifying for PBP you also qualify for an ACP Super-Randonneur medal.  To save on postage they give them to you at the start.

We looked at a few of the bikes.  Most were ordinary but the most notable was Drew Buck’s.  He has made a speciality of riding PBP on special bikes having completed it in 1999 on a Petersen sit up and beg Danish street cycle and in 2003 on a triplet with his son and Steve Abraham.  This year he had excelled himself with a 1913 French cycle with a unique double chain arrangement that allowed him a 76 inch gear pedalling forwards and a 48 inch gear pedalling backwards.  Complete with a string of onions the whole contraption weighed 21 kilos according to his neat notice.  Rather him than me.

Then there was a separate queue for the shirts which I had ordered.  Chris then informed me that you qualified for a free PBP bidon.  So there was a separate queue for that.  In between we caught up with the Pilbeams and one or two others.  PBP is like an Audax reunion.  After this I rolled back to the hotel for lunch in our room.  Then there was a degree of waiting about, reading, going down to the bike room and checking over the bike once again.  Dave worked for Research in Motion, the company that invented and markets the Blackberry, so he was checking various weather forecasts on his Blackberry.  This made me think about what I would wear and there was a degree of packing and unpacking, deciding on what layers I should wear.  Having read various reports of the weather (and considered the UK weather in the previous week where the night-time temperature was 13 degrees my initial plan was to leave the bib tights behind and ride in shorts with Ronhills on top as leg warmers.  However, the threat of rain made me think that the bib tights might be a better formula.   After all this had worked on the wet and cold Bryan Chapman the year before.  Another worry and pleasant surprise was the rain jacket.  As we were debating clothing I could not recall ever putting my rain jacket in the bag.  (I have two rain jackets, the one I bought before the Bryan Chapman in 2006 which saved my life, being winter weight but the sort of thing that can poach a rider unless it is cold and another one bought a few months later when I realised that it did poach a rider unless the weather was as wet and cold as on the Bryan Chapman 2006).  It was the lighter weight one that I had intended to pack.  As I was sorting out clothing I realised why I hadn’t packed it.  By some strange reason it was hung on the same hanger as my high-visibility jacket and inadvertently I had folded the two up together.  As I was unpacking the high-viz jacket prior to registration out popped the rain jacket.  This was probably the luckiest thing that happened to me on the whole trip for that rain jacket turned out to be an almost constant companion.  The weather forecast was for rain, but possibly brightening up and winds from the north or north-west but perhaps turning to a westerly later on.  So it might rain, but optimistically we hoped for a tailwind on the return.

The sun came out a little in the afternoon and we had a beer as on the previous day.  Then we had a dinner and a nervous kind of question and answer session.  There was a lot of discussion about being quick through the controls and how to make the time limit.  I started to feel nervous and then had to have a quick reality check.  I had done the Bryan Chapman in 35 hours and 20 minutes.  I ought to be faster than that out to Brest which meant I had 55 hours to get back, not much more than 10k per hour.  It was unlikely that I was going to be scraping around unless I had some horrendous mechanical failure.  And I had done my best to avoid that.  The bike had new brakes, new headset, new gear cables, new pedals, a new left crank, a new bottom bracket, a new chain and rear cassette and both the wheels had been rebuilt with new rims within the last 1000 miles.  At the same time I refused to commit to any plans.  I was too uncertain of how I would cope with a 10pm start time.  A month or two back I had tossed up between reaching Loudeac and Carhaix on the Tuesday night.  I knew, from the experience of two holidays in Brittany that this section was likely to be the hardest on the ride.  True, everyone mentions Roc Trezevel in their articles, as the feature hill, but from the look of the map this was long but a steady gradient, so ideally suited to a CC Basingstoke rouleur.  On the other hand the Loudeac – Carhaix section looked like it would have many more shorter and steeper hills which would be hard, especially as this could easily be a night section with consequent slowing of pace.  However, doing the calculations suggested that an overnight in Loudeac would make it difficult to get back to Paris on Thursday night.  The perfect schedule would be stops in Carhaix on the way out and Fougeres on the way back.  This coincided with where Graham Baxter Tours were leaving their coaches – giving the option of two drop bags.  Before the ride I had never considered having more than one drop bag, so did not have a second.  However, the option of drop bags (which I had never used before) allowed me to reconsider how much I was going to carry on the bike.  I decided to dispense with the bar bag, therefore being only the second Audax ride where I had dispensed with the bar bag (the other was the South Hams Imperial, where I used my race bike because the Audax bike was being repaired.  Actually this is not quite true.  I also entered the Faccombe 100 on the race bike but packed after a mile when I slashed a tyre.)   Normally the bar bag serves as a route sheet holder as well as carrying some bonk rations and the lights during the day time. So the bar bag became the second drop bag and my trusty rucksack, bought in Ireland in 1990 became the first.  Bonk rations and dry clothes went in both (well a dry pair of gloves and clean pair of shorts and clean jersey).  At this time I was still working on the theory that PBP is mostly dry and hot.

There were some useful pieces of information that came out of the Q&A session.  The first was that at the Villaines Control, although there was food at the control the main feed station was across the road (even though the description led me to think of a medieval street similar to Totnes) and the second was that you did not need to stop at the Mortagne food control on the way out, as there was no need to stamp the card.  It was time for a nervous sleep.

Monday was the strangest day, a day of waiting around and doing nothing.  They organised a lunch at the hotel which I signed up for just to give the day some structure.  Chris, Dave and I went up to Guyancourt and wandered around the shops.  It was something to do, but at the end of the walk my legs felt tired and I wondered why I had spent so much time standing around rather than resting.  In the afternoon I managed to doze for a while and actually get an hour or so of useful sleep, despite not thinking that I would do so.  There was some last minute bike checking.  Someone noticed that my headset was slightly loose, which was very helpful (they often need tightening after a few rides from new).  Some people fiddled with their bikes perpetually.  I worked on the principle that nothing had fallen off during the training ride therefore nothing was going to, although the fear of mechanical failure ruining the event hovered in the back of my mind.  It is easy to be driven to paranoia by the thought that the next opportunity is four years away.  There was a lot of debate about getting in the front group of the tourists.  (They start the tourists in bunches of 500 every 20 minutes or so, and the previous time there had been 4 batches, so the last batch had not left until after 11pm).  In the end I decided I didn’t care too much, but I was more interested in going up to the start with people I knew.  In the end I left with Dave Johnston and Ian Weatherill at 5.45pm and we were in the queue for the restaurant and our €10 pasta meal.  There were a couple of other Brits there comparing all the different national audax strips, partly because the UK one is so embarrassing.  I had CC Basingstoke’s bright pink outfit, so was decorously excused from any adverse criticism.  This selection was based on sensible advice.  It was highly recognisably and marked me out as a UK rider.  Also, as the only rider wearing the strip (and a highly distinctive and cool strip) meant that everybody else I bumped to on the ride knew who I was.  This meant that I got more camaraderie on the ride that I would have done in an anonymous national strip or, heaven forbid, the official PBP jersey.  (2003 or older jerseys didn’t help, for the same reason).  All the Australians had a jersey warning of kangaroos for the next 1200k, so I made a mental note to half-wheel any of them.  Actually, I didn’t inflict such cruelty on the Aussies but I am not aware of any of them passing me on a hill!  The Italians had by far the coolest strip, but I guess that is to be expected of the nation that spends the highest proportion of their GDP on clothes.

I didn’t think I would be hungry, but in the company of such trenchermen as Ian and Dave, who appear to be able to inhale a three course meal in ten minutes flat, it was no problem.  The restaurant, which normally served lunches to the surrounding offices was heaving and in total chaos, but somehow we managed to find seats and get out the other side to recover our bikes.  Dave had carefully locked the three together and we had stacked them three abreast which was a good idea since it meant we didn’t have to extract them from a pile of bikes placed by subsequent riders.  Then it was off to queue on the roundabout, waiting to get to the underpass and the start control in the Gymnase.  We arrived in the queue about 7pm and it did not move for an hour and a half, during which time we stood and held on to our bikes.  There was a big crowd and street entertainers but for me the time dragged endlessly.  All I wanted to do was get on a ride the bike and yet the start was still hours away.  There was plenty of time for a prayer and reflection on why I was doing this.  The opening words from Ecclesiastes rang in my head “Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity”.  Why was I doing this?  If it was all for my own self-gratification and for personal pride then wasn’t that the wrong thing?  But why else would I be cycling such a long arduous but famous event?  Should I not be spending my energies and talents on something more spiritually rewarding or charitable efforts for others?  I had not even set up a Just Giving website and looked to raise money from charity.  This doubt remained after prayer; I felt a guidance to resist the temptation to brag about the event once it was completed.  But there was something I could do, which was to ride considerately, to help those who needed help, to do at least my turn on the front, and to be selfless and optimistic in conversation.  Thus fortified, I continued to wait in the queue.

Eventually there was a cheer as the first group of vedettes lined up and then a count down to their start, which was marked by a huge rocket.  These were the guys who had to complete the route within 80 hours and some of these would be seeded riders, hoping to win the race.  Then there was a second group of vedettes; then we started to funnel our way into the underpass.  It was getting dark and it was claustrophobic.  The third group of vedettes were on their way.  Now we knew the next group was the special cycles and a few tandems were ushered through the queue.  In the gymnase we took turns for nervous pit stops and wondered when we would be set off.  The first group was due at 9.30.  We were clearly not in that one.  As we inched forward there was a very precursory bike check which consisted of looking at our lights and checking we had reflective jackets.  In the shuffling forward and back I lost contact with Ian and Dave and ended up talking to a German called Ulli.  There were more fireworks as the special bikes (tandems, recumbents, etc) set off at 9.00, by which time it was almost fully dark.  There seemed to be two batches of riders heading towards the control and it was not clear which one was going first.

9.30 arrived with more fireworks and cheers and then we were summoned forward.  It seemed like my hopes would be fulfilled and we would be in the second group.  But as peoples’ cards were stamped we heard that we would be off at ten past ten, the third group.  My card was stamped; they did not ask to swipe the magnetic card and there was a funnelling as we left the Gymnase to queue on one of its access roads.  I had a nervous check of my pannier to see that I had carefully placed the plastic wallet which meant that I lost contact with Dave and Ian again, not to see them until after the start.  I was on my own.

More fireworks for the second batch at 9:50 and then we inched out onto the road, a half-pedal onto the roundabout, fearing that we would all come to a halt in a heap, closely confined as we were.  Several times the rain had started spitting at us and after putting on and taking off my rain jacket decided to keep it on after I had put it back on for the second time.  After much deliberation I was now wearing bib tights, short jersey, long-sleeved jersey, rain jacket and high visibility jacket.  If I got hot I could always stop and take a layer off but standing still in the damp early night I was still quite cool.

I phoned home in the crowd, which probably wasn’t a good thing to do and then said a final prayer as my watch ticked down the time to the off.  I had been queuing for three hours and just wanted to ride my bike, to do what I had come here to do, after all the waiting, not only on the Monday but the days of packing, preparation, travel, and registration before.

Day 1 (Monday night and Tuesday)

The next firework launched and there was a cheer and wobbling away we were off.  It must have been fifteen seconds before I could start and then it was a case of carefully rolling along in a mass of cyclists, wondering what it would be like along the narrow section through Elancourt.  Along the road and then over each overpass the local people had turned out to watch us.  There must have been 5000 at least cheering us on over the first few miles.  It showed something of the enormity of the event and the different relationship between the citizen and the cyclist that remains in France.  We were towed along at about 16mph by a motorbike escort, being able to ignore the red lights on the closed road.  Within a few minutes the spattering rain turned heavy.  Soon there were people peeling off to the right to pull on their rain jackets.  Since I already had mine on I didn’t need the emergency stop but their actions made the bunch pull up on the already wet roads and led to a few nervous moments.  It was impossible to comprehend what I was trying to do so I settled for following the wheels in front and keeping an eye out for trouble.

[There were two PBP parties at our hotel, the Graham Baxter coach and one from Audax Sweden.  Each had a conference room in which to store our bikes.  On our return there was one object of attention in the Swedish room, a Trek Madone carbon fibre framed bike that had collided with a piece of street furniture in the first 10 kilometres.  It had shattered in two places: between the head tube and the top tube and the head tube and the down tube.  One cyclist’s dreams had been shattered along with his expensive frame.]

As we entered Trappes, with the first narrow section and the funny bridge, the rain began to sheet down and even more cyclists pulled over.  This was not pleasant but there was nothing I could do about it so I continued to turn the pedals and see what happened, passing a few riders as I did so.  We were almost to the slip road and the dreaded narrow section through Elancourt.  The rain eased and the section passed without event, many people pointing out the dangers.  At Jouars the police bikes pulled over and we were on our own.

In the briefing they said that there was no need to have a route sheet, on the first night all you did was follow the tail lights and that was the case.  It really helped to know the first 30k of the route, as it featured a lot of street furniture and a steep descent to traffic lights (the first set that had to be obeyed now that we had lost our police escort) a little before Montfort d’Amaury.  Fortunately the rain had eased.  As usual I found myself keeping pace on the flat sections and moving up on the ascents.  In Montfort we had the first proper climb which put me to the head of a small group and then we were out into open country heading for Gambais.  There was a nasty descent in Gambais with two bands of broad cobbles (purely for decorative purposes) lying across the road at the foot of the descent, perfectly designed to unseat the unwary cyclist.  Fortunately I knew they were there and the organisers had a team of people warning the riders.  Soon we were in Gambais and after a couple of turns I was covering new ground on the road to Nogent le Roi.  From memory the rain stopped and it was a humid night.  The road was straight and there was a long line of lights ahead to indicate the way and to mark out the little hills, perhaps not as bad as the A30 between Sutton Scotney and Stockbridge but a similar feel of a long straight road riding up and over every contour rather than cutting through the landscape.  I found myself riding next to an American, I think from San Francisco and we got talking for a while.  He had flown over on Wednesday but was with a group of friends.  They kept calling out to each other so that they didn’t lose contact.  Apparently one of their qualifying rides had been very wet.  After a slight hill I drew away from them as they dropped back; one of their people had been slowed by the rise.  It was going to be a long journey for them if that hill had slowed them and I was glad that I was riding to my own pace without anyone else to concern me.  It was a very strange experience riding from one group to the next; clumps of people were riding at different paces as if some of the slow riders from the group that started ahead had been already caught up.  There were also a couple of fast pace groups and I wondered if they were from the 10:30 start.  Probably it was just a factor of 500 riders starting together but from this moment on it was impossible to tell which start group a person belonged to (until we started mixing it with the slow vedettes – but that was still some time in the future).  I passed Ian Weatherill along this stretch; we greeted each other and did not see each other again until the dinner at the finish on Friday.  There was a descent into Nogent-le-Roi.  People were waiting in the town to direct the riders along the route.  It was the same in each subsequent town: people warning of hazards, shouts of ‘bon courage’, people applauding as we reached the summit of little climbs out of the towns.  And always there was the endless string of tail-lights ahead.

As far as Nogent-le-Roi it felt as if there was a slight tailwind, but as we continued westwards the breeze was felt on the right shoulder.  There was no moon but a slight indication of lightness in the sky.  It was quite pleasant night-time riding.  The ride through Tremblay-les-Villages, Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais, Jaudrias, and Senonches was undistinguished, an eternal rhythm of riding through the dark, landmarks invisible, no sense of progress.  Apart from modern clothing we might have been creatures of the past, riding for ever like Michael Moorcock’s veterans of the psychic wars, called out every four years to haunt these quiet roads.  Every now and again a figure would ride off to the left for a quick pit stop.  I kept to a routine of drinking water and eating bananas.  It was 140 kilometres to Mortagne-au-Perche, which I expected would take six hours, so I was worried about running out of fuel.  The frequent intake of liquid had its inevitable consequences and I made a quick pit-stop myself, getting back into a group that I had left behind a few minutes before.  A few faster groups went past but generally I found myself rolling along a little quicker than the crowds.  A few times I found myself in a semi-organised group, which would take me five or ten kilometres along the road before this split up at a junction.  I talked to Australians, Americans and Canadians mostly, picking up their voices in the dark.  After Neuilly-sur-Eure the road became more undulating.  Out of the dark a voice called out my name.  It was the German, Ulli, who I had met at the start.  He was in a group that was riding quite fast on the descent to Longny-au-Perche.  I just about managed to get onto his train on the descent.  The road rose up steeply out of the village but I got into a good rhythm in 40-24 and started to pull away from them.  Ulli said that I was going well as he caught up with me on the next flat section.  Then there was another hill and I dropped him to his encouragement of “You are a mountain goat, Colin”.  That kept me going up the next hill and the climb into Mortagne-au-Perche, which I reached after about five hours and fourty minutes.

There were bikes and people everywhere.  There was a stall selling food and water as we came into the town square.  Someone was shouting that this was not the official control but I didn’t care as the queue was short and the official control was only a food stop.  The stall was selling spicy merguez sausages, which is not what I would normally choose to have at four in the morning but somehow I fancied something with taste after the blandness of bananas.  I seemed to arrive at the wrong time, just as they were waiting for a few more sausages to grill, but once in the queue it didn’t seem sensible to quit.  I must have suffered from some mis-communication behind the counter as they wanted me to pay twice but fortunately the person behind me, who was from Portsmouth had much more fluent French than mine and sorted them out.  The sausage was really tasty and hit the spot.  Washed down with three quarters of a litre of water, it got me ready to go, fit for the next eighty kilometres to Villaines-la-Juhel.

As I passed the official control (it was a strange feeling to go past a control but it was a feed station only with no need for the brevet card to be stamped) a few spits of rain came down.  There was a narrow road and then a down hill section with a steep bank to the right.  The rain got strong and started lashing down.  I was glad I was still wearing my rain jacket.  The roads seemed quite undulating, with some rough surfaces but in pitch blackness it was impossible to get bearings.  There seemed to be a lot less people on the road, or perhaps they were more scattered.  There were no real groups forming.  I played hare and tortoise with a tandem but there were too many hills to ride with them.  It was totally unpleasant.  The next big town was Mamers, which I entered in company with a recumbent rider.  There was a sharp turn and traffic lights in the centre of the town and in heavy rain the roads were treacherous.  There was a hill out of the town and I dropped the recumbent.  A while afterwards I was on a long straight road with undulations.  The rain had eased but it was still unpleasant.  By now I had hoped that it would be getting light but the dark continued.  Then I realised the impact of the hour time difference between France and the UK.  It would not get light until seven am.  After another pit-stop and a little prayer I put aside my troubles.  At La Hutte, which I knew from the route sheet was a road junction (marked danger) it began to lighten.  (Before the ride I had remarked that on any of my long rides I was yet to have a magical dawn where there was a good sunrise.  People said that I would not be disappointed on the Paris-Brest-Paris.  This was the sort of dawn that would have the average mortal pull the duvet over their head and consider calling the office to phone in sick.)  There were a couple of sections on this road where I felt drowsy; after a while I took my glasses off to get fresh air on my face and that seemed to help.

Eventually we reached Fresnay-sur-Sarthe and the end of the long straight road.  The rain eased but was replaced by a strong northerly wind.  The PBP route dips to the south of Alencon and Fresnay is at the point where the route turns to the north-west to reach Villaines so the wind was ahead and across.  The groups formed echelons to try and counter the wind.  Fortunately, riding on the right hand side of the road with the wind from the right meant that the echelons formed naturally.  This section of road was surprisingly hilly.  The sky was grey and black.  Over to the west it looked wet.  There was a line of higher hills to the north.  We seemed to skirt around the edge of this hill, gradually rising.  It looked like it was going to rain heavily and I hoped that it would hold off until I got to the control.   I switched the cycle computer to distance.  I’d already passed one milestone that once would have been a great achievement, 100 miles, though this was no consolation as it meant I still had more than 650 to do.  However, I did realise that I was going to set a personal best for 200km.  The 125 mile mark passed in 8 hours and 17 minutes.  This was a slightly illusory personal best as I had only one 30 minute stop and was riding in company for the whole distance, whereas on a normal 200k ride I would have had at least an hour’s worth of stops and typically would have done several sections solo.  However, it was an encouragement to achieve a personal best for the distance.  Just before Villaine my spirits were dampened by more rain.

The town had set up a whole series of racks for bikes, but when I put my front wheel in, it jammed.  Then I worried that I would not be able to get the bike out.  All the racks were intended for 23mm tyres, not my 28mm front.  So I put the bike up against the wall, pulled out my wallet and headed for the control.  There was a queue of about five people in front of me, so there was virtually no delay.  There was a long queue for coffee and pastries in the building.  I joined this and then realised I needed a comfort break.  I didn’t want to waste time but then remembered the advice given before the ride that the main feed station at Villaines was across the road, so went to the toilet and then crossed the road.  There was a lot of walking about but I got a plate of pasta and some rice pudding.  I met up with Dave Johnston at the feed station.  He did his usual of vanishing three plates of food in about 10 minutes.  I struggled eating my large ration of pasta and left a little food behind.  I did take a Gavilast tablet to see if I could avoid acid indigestion.

At least the rain had eased.  It was still spitting as I set off, through a whole series of hills.  These helped to warm me up, as my clothes were still damp.  I was still in my full night time gear of two jerseys (short and long), rain jacket, and high visibility jackets, shorts and bib tights.  There was a particularly long hill before le Ribay with photographers at the top.  I did my best to act cool, though the photograph shows me with rain jacket, high-viz jacket and clear night-glasses so about as uncool as I could possibly look.  I felt tired.  I passed Dave Johnston.  Later I passed Shiela Simpson.  But the headwinds were tiring me out.  The route stretched endlessly ahead.  With these weather conditions it didn’t seem likely that I would make Carhaix.  I stopped for another pit stop.  As I started a group of riders, with several Italians marked by their very elegant national audax kit, passed.  I caught up with them, calling out Buon Giorno and had a conversation with a tall lady rider with reasonably good English.  They were going at a reasonable pace so I took my turns on the front.  The road was much straighter now, we were heading for Fougeres.  As we continued I could see another group, about the same size as ours, a few hundred metres ahead.  There were probably six or eight of our group who were making the pace, but if we could combine the two groups then there would be at least a dozen and we could get long periods of shelter from the half-head half-cross winds.  On my next turn on the front I inched up the pace a little and stayed on a little longer.  I did the same time and this time another big Italian rider who I took to be the leader of the group stayed with me and turned up the wick a little higher.  After another couple of iterations we joined the two groups together.  We turned to each other as we reached the back of the group in front and exchanged a quiet nod to each other as if to say “job well done”.  Now we had thirty in the group and we swept along the road to Fougeres gathering up waifs and strays as we went.  This was much more like what I had read about Paris-Brest-Paris and my spirits rose as we rolled along the gentle undulations.  I could count down the distance on my cycle computer to 300km which passed in thirteen hours and fifteen minutes.  This was about an hour quicker than my previous best for the distance.  This was partly a construct of the small number of breaks and the fact that nearly all my previous 300k rides had been hilly, but it was still a good milestone.

Then I began to think about what would happen at a control when a huge wedge of fifty riders arrived all at once.  As we reached the outskirts of Fougeres I made it to the front and upped the pace.  It was almost like a sprint for a café on a club run as a group of us hammered through the streets from one traffic light or roundabout to the next.  We seemed to turn back on ourselves several times over.  I had been to Fougeres on a family holiday two years before but we had come in from the other side.  Even so I couldn’t believe how far it seemed to be and I was worried that I was overcooking it.  Just as with Villaines the weather decided that it could rain stair rods just before we got to the control.  I parked the bike at a rack, just as Sean Quigly was leaving.  He told me that this wasn’t the control; that it was best to ride up to the control.  He also told me that the food was excellent, only ten Euros.  He was right on both counts.

I sat down and munched my way through a huge plate of pasta, rice pudding, fruit, bread, water.  I was most of the way through when the Italian lady passed me, my brisk ride into the control must have saved me close on fifteen minutes.  I also phoned home to say that I was going well despite the weather.  The temperature on my cycle computer had not risen above 14 degrees and it was now lunchtime.  At Villaines I had felt dispirited.  At Fougeres I was much happier.  It might have been the good run in with the group, or meeting the familiar face of Sean Quigly at the control.  (Strangely, when I checked the finish times, although Sean left before me he finished several hours later yet I did not see him again on the ride.  However, the controls are large enough that it is easy to miss someone, or to pass when they are sleeping.  For all I know he could have had a major mechanical.  I’m sure I’ll see him again and find out.  That is one of the longer term joys of the PBP – the meeting of people you once met before and hearing their tale).  Fougeres set the routine for the rest of the ride.  I was back on the road about 35 minutes after arriving at the control, with the usual nervous check to ensure that the plastic wallet that contained the magnetic swipe card, the brevet card, my wallet and my phone was safely stowed in the pannier.

It was still raining heavily as I threaded my way through the lanes out of Fougeres.  It was almost like finding a way out of a Devon village with a steep ascent.  I caught a couple of UK riders on this.  They said they had been to the control but were now looking for a café as they did not want to waste any time.  I tried to tell them that it had only taken 35 minutes and that the food was great but they were intent on living off the land and avoiding delays at the controls (even when there weren’t any).  From my memories of Fougeres, most of the cafés were tourist traps used to providing a French lunching experience to the tourists.  Most of the tourists would be trapped inside the town in such foul weather, taking as long as possible over their lunch.  I mentally wished them luck.  One of the surprises of the ride was how quick and efficient the controls were.  None of the horror stories of spending over an hour to get the card stamped and get food applied to me.  Although I did not realise it at Fougeres, my swift pace on the ride had got me ahead of the main bulge of riders and I was getting to the controls when they were relatively quiet.  For anyone else riding with the tourists but riding at a fast pace the controls would be highly recommended in comparison to living off the land.

Although the weather was vile, one consoling feature was that it was only 54km to the next control at Tinteniac, the shortest section between controls on the ride.

I caught one glimpse of the old town and the fortifications; they looked bleak and grey and diminished in the bad weather.  Then it was a case of follow the signs out of the town.  For the first time I was on my own on the ride, reliant on my own navigation.  I knew that the route out of Fougeres had a short section of a new main road (from previous study of the route on the French 1:100000 maps) so at a roundabout I plodded along a new straight road, gently up hill and into the wind and rain, with my head down, switching off the suffering.  A car slowed down and the driver called out to me, telling me I was on the wrong route.  This was obviously why I could not see anyone else ahead of me.  What kindness!  It was just one example of my prayers being answered on the ride; I asked to be looked after and I was.  He’d helped me to notice my error after only a few hundred metres off route and it was not much hardship to turn round and roll down hill with the wind and back to the roundabout to get back on route.  I made a mental note to be more careful, especially at roundabouts, in the future.  (This was to have mildly humorous consequences later that evening as I shall relate).  Back, following the yellow outward “Aller” arrows, I kept a steady pace, as I felt a little tired and the weather was foul.  Another rider passed me, going at a fair lick, and I did not hold his wheel.  Then one of the VC167 riders from the Graham Baxter coach caught up with me.  We had a chat together, then a bunch of Italians (different from those who I had ridden with towards Fougeres) went passed, a formation of four and we decided to join up with them.  They were a bit suspicious towards us at first and when I went to the front they left me there for a long time.  Then when they took the pace up, one of the two girls did a very hard turn, followed by a big hairy guy who turned up the wick a little more.  We were hammering along this road at an uncomfortably fast speed.  After a while we caught up with a larger group and I hoped that the two would combine.  I was on the front at the time and rolled up to the back, only for the Italians plus the VC167 guy to ride straight through.  At the time I thought it would be better to hang on with the steadier group and not tire myself out trying to stay with a team that was too fast for me, so I let them go.

The bunch seemed to have quite a few Audax Denmark riders, but there was a mix of riders and no-one seemed to be concerned about me joining them.  In the bunch was a familiar face who called out “Colin” to me.  It was Justin Sykes.  Justin is an Australian living in London.  We had bumped into each other on the Severn Across, but more notably on the Bryan Chapman, where we had ridden the hard section up and over the Elan Valley together and also part of the night section from Menai Bridge to Dolgellau.  This ride was certainly bringing back memories of the Bryan Chapman, but the 2006 version with its persistent rain and headwinds, not the more pleasant 2007 version with its warm and sunny Sunday.

The Danes were pleasant company but a couple of gentle hills soon sorted out that I was going much better than they were, and reluctantly, after a couple of attempts at soft pedalling near the top I allowed them to drop back and found myself in a smaller group of faster riders.  We caught up with the mad Italians near Hilaire-les-Landes; maybe they had a small mechanical or had stopped to put on another layer in the persistent heavy rain.  We turned off onto the D20 and the pace became mildly insane, through-and-off at 20mph plus wasn’t my understanding of PBP wisdom.  I can’t recall exactly how things broke up but I think I let them go for the second time.  For some reason my memories of this section were confused (even by the time I returned from Tinteniac to Fougeres I found it difficult to remember some of the junctions.  Perhaps it was because I was blindly following wheels for various parts of the ride).  There were a couple of Americans ahead, including a heavily built guy who had a furious pedalling technique.  It was all I could do to hold his wheel on the flats but the hills gave me some respite.  This, after pedalling hard to keep up with the Italians triggered an ache in my left knee.  He had a companion and I had another refugee from the mad Italians.  Together we formed a four that worked pretty well together.  When we reached the appropriately named Dingé (for if anything the rain had increased in intensity) I knew from perusing the maps that we were only about 10k from Tinteniac so I held on to this group even though it was going slightly faster.  One of the guys I was riding with had some friends in Quedillac which was not far off the route beyond Tinteniac so he was going to stay there for a few hours, possibly the night, and get some dry clothes.  I told him of my plan, as yet still not certain, to reach Carhaix.  The lure of dry clothes from the drop bag in the coach was strong but I was not sure that I had another 100 miles in my legs that day and was still worried about doing the hilly section between Loudeac and Carhaix in the dark.

There is a photograph of me at Dingé.  It shows me, in early afternoon in a French August, riding along in bib tights, rain jacket and high visibility jacket.  The jacket is reflecting the flash that was necessary in the gloom.  A reflection of the bicycle wheels is clear in the standing water on the tarmac; water is dripping from my nose.  My eyes are dark and etched with the effort of staring at the road.

Between Tinteniac and Dingé I saw some riders, with the red numbers of vedettes riding in the opposite direction.  At first I thought they must have already been to Brest but then I realised that could not be as they would have covered 850km in less than 24 hours.  They must have packed at Tinteniac and were now making a grim retreat, either to ride home or perhaps to the nearest station.  It was my first sign of the havoc that the weather was playing on the 2007 PBP.  I remember a wooded section, a slight rise and then a slight descent towards the Tinteniac sign.  There was a sharp turn into the school that was the control, with waterproof-clad marshals dripping into the persistent rain.

In the confusion of parking my bike I lost contact with most of my companions.  It took me a little while to locate the building which housed the control, get my card stamped, and then navigate up to the top floor of the two-storey building to find the kitchen and my third pasta meal of the day.   The English rider who was going to stay in Quedillac didn’t stay long but offered me some ibuprofen cream for my knee, which I rubbed in and I also took an ibuprofen tablet.  Apart from feeling rather damp I did not feel too bad.  Looking around everyone looked as if they were struggling, wet and bedraggled.  There was little conversation.  In recollection it was perhaps like a scene from the 2006 Bryan Chapman only several times the scale.  There wasn’t anyone I recognised so I munched in silence.  As soon as I went outside I felt the cold and damp and was shivering a little as I set off.  The first landmark was the bridge of the main N137 (the road that leads from St Malo to Rennes).  Last year, as we were driving back from our French holiday near the Gironde estuary, I had pointed out Tinteniac and said that the Paris-Brest-Paris route went underneath this bridge.  Now I was riding it.  The rain eased.  The ache in my left knee persisted but it was nothing obvious so I assumed it was just the cold.  There were quite a few people on the road but no groups forming until I met the mad Italians from the previous stage.  This time they welcomed me and I started riding with them.  One of the two girls was struggling a bit.  The road rose up persistently to the hilltop town of Becherel and as it did they dropped back and I found myself on my own once more, riding into the head/cross wind.  The rain continued.  It was a ride of persistence.  At this time my head was tossing up the permutations of reaching Loudeac or Carhaix.  It was two-thirty when I left Tinteniac and it could easily take four-and-a-half hours in this weather or even five to reach Loudeac.  To get a decent rest would mean setting off from Loudeac after eight with the hilliest section to go.  It could easily be one am before I reached the shelter of the bus and dry clothes at Carhaix.  On a normal 600k ride that would be no problem but on a normal 600k ride the first day started at 6am after a reasonable chance of sleep.  On this ride the first day started at 10pm and I had only a couple of slight dozes in the last 30 hours, with another eight to ten hours to go.  I had no prior experience to call upon.  On the positive side my legs were still OK and my head was strong.  I recall praying at least twice on this section, asking just for strength of mind and each time my prayers were answered.

One place I was hoping to reach was St Meen le Grand, not because it was the birthplace of Louison Bobet, one of the Tour de France’s greatest heroes and one of most famous if not the most famous of Brittany’s sporting sons, nor because of any architectural or culinary merits.  My desire was quite simple.  In studying the maps I’d noticed that there was a section which turned more south-west, with a brief piece of due south.  That meant a tailwind after so many hours of fighting the weather.  Suddenly, for a few brief minutes I was pedalling at 23mph without effort, without pain.  The rain even stopped as if in celebration of this pleasure.  Then the road turned westwards again and the rain lashed down some more and it was miserable again.  The route was a seemingly eternal series of little switchbacks.  There were no serious hills; looking at the map it seems that there are hardly two consecutive contours.  But the ground kept rising and falling.  Mentally I knew that there were two towns, Illifaut and Meneac, and they were about 9km apart, but each 9km seemed to stretch out forever.  I caught up with a group, mostly of vedettes and rode with them for a bit, then for some reason went ahead of them.  Then I felt tired and stopped to eat a banana and some of a gel, a bit of a mid-stage break.  My knee ached on each ascent and I felt a little wan.  Then got back on the bike and rejoined the vedettes.  They were going a bit strong for me after Meneac and I dropped behind, deciding to ride at my own pace.  There was a descent into La Trinite Porhoet, although with the wet road and headwind it did not give much respite.  We turned briefly eastwards in the town and then turned left up a hill.  Somewhere on the hill I was joined by an Australian, Steve.  It turned out that we had both been at Macquarie University at the same time in the 1980s, although he was a couple of years younger than me and had studied Economics whereas I had studied Geology.  Even so it was nice to have a connection with the other rider.  We stayed together, not that we were a strong enough group to provide much help, but the social interaction and mutual suffering somehow made it all a little more bearable.  At the top of the hill was a small village, Plumieux.  They had a sign up which apologised that the weather had cancelled their fete but wishing us luck.  The rain was only spitting but the wind was very keen and we were riding almost straight into it.  We kept plugging away and doing our turns and after what seemed like a long while we reached another descent into the scenic town of La Cheze.

After La Cheze the road seemed to climb for an eternity, as if we were climbed a big range of hills.  I dropped into a low gear and kept climbing through some woods, into an open area, along a slight descent where it was hard to rise up through the gears and then another long hill where it was more exposed.  I did most of the work, but Steve helped out from time to time.  Ahead we could see the group of vedettes from which we had dropped back.  (Incredibly this “hill” only rose 60m from bottom to top, which shows how hard it can be to ride into the wind when fatigued).  I had deluded myself that Loudeac would be on the other side of the hill and once we reached the top we’d have a nice descent to the control, but the signpost indicated 4 kilometers, two descents and two ascents, and on the damp and foggy horizon it was clear that Loudeac was like so many other French towns: on the top of a hill!  (I guess with all this rain they don’t have to worry too much about water.  Later on I was beginning to wonder whether Noah was a Frenchman).

We caught the other group as we reached the roundabout underneath the Loudeac bypass and we rolled into the control, the traffic being marshalled so that we could ride through.  It was another school.  A long line of crash barriers formed a one way system to get us through the car parks and school yards to a playground where it seemed that half the town was waiting to greet us, with lots of applause as each rider clumsily dismounted.  (This was to be the end of one of the Graham Baxter Tour riders; Ann Benton misjudged one of the turns and fell into a crash barrier, breaking an arm).   I parked my bike and got my bearings.  The first thing I needed was the toilet then I found a separate building for the control to get my card stamped then a third building for food.  There seemed to be two areas, one fast food and one restaurant.  By the time I realised I was in the queue for the restaurant I was close to the front and helped myself to a huge pile of food.  I think I had puree instead of pasta with chicken and pile of sauce and rice pudding and bananas for the next stage.  Perhaps not, the meals tended to blur in the memory, but it was hot and filling and full of carbohydrates to restore my depleted energy reserves.  It was only 6.30pm.  Despite the weather and the tiredness and the ache in my left knee I began to feel more positive.  Nearly all the riders at Loudeac had the red plates of vedette riders.  I realised that I must be near the front of the tourist riders and caught a lot of people who were in the 80hour group and had left between one and a half and two hours ahead of me.  I was beginning to realise that I was on the verge of an awesome ride given the weather.  I called home with this new sense of elation and told my wife that I was heading for Carhaix, which was my preferred target.  Another reason for elation on the last stage was passing 400km in 18 hours 15 minutes.  Before this year my best was 21 hours (admittedly with a sleep stop) and I had reduced this to 20 hours on the Severn Across, now I had reduced it further, despite the bad weather.  I also checked in with Mike McGeevor, our tour host to tell him I was aiming for Carhaix.  Although the pain in my knee had eased a bit it had still been troubling me on the hills.  In my pannier I had some anti-inflammatory cream so I applied that.

While I was eating I was joined by Andy Clarkson and the other VC167 rider who I had met just after Fougeres.  I asked, in true Southern softy fashion if it was OK to join them and they said yes.  Andy set off at a very steady pace through the streets of Loudeac in spitting rain and gathering gloom (it was obviously not going to be a bright end to the day, holding on to the twilight).  There was a whole series of switchbacks to the village of Treve.  We went slow up the hills and alternated between manic and cautious on the descents, as there were some heavily patched sections of road.  Two other riders from the North of England had joined us and I felt that I was in good company.  This would help through the hard section to Corlay.  My mental picture of this stage was that the first half would be the most hilly section on the way to Brest (Although everyone mentions Roc Trezevel it was a long gradual ascent, which I expected to find easy given my hill training, leg strength, and experience of the Bryan Chapman.  But this next section was a series of hills without respite, some of which looked quite steep, some quite long, and the one up to Merleac both long and steep) then after Corlay the road broadly followed a valley at the foot of the central Bretagne hills (south of Bourbriac, where we had our first French family holiday in 2004).  We discussed this as we found a long hill climbing up to Grace-Uzel.  My knee was aching quite a bit; I realised that the cream had probably reduced the inflammation, but it was the inflammation that was protecting what ever was hurting and so, perversely the treatment seemed to have made the condition worse!  The best way to climb with the sore knee was to keep a very consistent rhythm, so that is what I did.  The only problem was that it dropped Andy and the other VC167 guy and I was in the company of just the two others.  There were a couple of hairy descents along roads which were narrow and worse surfaced than most of those we had encountered and a couple of points where we needed to be careful with the directions.  Then we got to a pleasant valley and a nice descent along which the wind seemed to be from behind.  I told them of my faint hope that the angle of the central Bretagne hills might channel a north wind round to the east.  (Who says I can’t be optimistic?).  Then we turned right up a wooded lane and then a new road surface and then the long climb to Merleac.  We could see some riders a long way ahead of us as we started the ascent.  There was a long steep ramp that curved to the right, then a flatter section and then another long ramp up to the village on top of the hill.  Seeing the other group encouraged me to keep my rhythm and power up towards the others.  I dropped the two English guys and never saw them again.  I rode through the vedettes just before the village, encouraged by the bystanders in the village and then set myself for the long descent on the other side.  The wind did seem to be funnelling a little behind.  I was on my own, in the gathering dusk.  The rain had stopped, except for a few spits and spots. From reading stories of the PBP I suspected that there was a secret control on this section (especially as it was one that it was possible to short-cut) and for some strange reason I expected it to be in St Martin des Pres.  This meant a short stop and a rest, so I powered on with this in anticipation.   I caught up with two Spanish riders on a short hill and aimed to ride with them but then lost them on the next climb.  This did wonders for my ego, another nationality left in my wake as I hammered along.  St Martin des Pres was en fete; they had a marquee in the village square and most of them appeared to be tucking into a hog roast, although a few saw the riders passing in the gloom.  (I learnt later, from watching Damon Peacock’s PBP movie that this was also a walk in bar for cyclists.)  The road wound along up to a T-junction at which I turned left.  As I did so, coming in the other direction were a car, a couple of motorbikes and fifteen or so cyclists.  This must be the head of the race, a mere 240k ahead of me, already heading back to Paris, hoping to finish on Wednesday afternoon.  For some strange reason this inspired me and kept me going even though I thought I had been going too hard.  After a couple more rises there was a welcome descent into Corlay, where I was waved off the road into the actual secret control, which I think was in the town hall.  Here I got my card stamped and munched on a banana and drank some water.  Another milestone had passed, 300 miles in 23 hours 7 minutes, yet another personal best.  There were a few riders flaked out around the sides of the room covered in foil blankets.  Once I had recollected my senses I rode off and found myself, by coincidence, in the company of the two Spanish riders.  It was fully night.

We were now back on a main road, with a good surface, lit by our lights so that we could make a good pace.  A pattern of events ensued, which was to repeat itself for much of the next few hundred kilometres.  On the flat the Spanish riders would get into a good rhythm and I would just about to be able to keep up, then on the hills I would find the going easier and ride on the front, often soft-pedalling to make sure that I stayed in touch.  One of the Spaniards was going much better than the other, but we still managed to take turns on the front, without exchanging a word, a universal cyclists’ convention applying that you should do what you can to help the group.  Is there any other sport where such assistance to fellow competitors is so embedded in the culture?  There must have been a touch of moonlight or perhaps the last vestiges of dusk as I was aware of the hills to the north, familiar terrain from the holiday in 2004.  The wind did seem to give brief assistance on this stretch, as if the hills bent it in our favour, or perhaps it was another sign of prayers being answered.  The road was more undulating than I expected and after one long drag I was on my own.  There was a long fast descent to St Nicolas du Pelem.  I had cycled to this village three years before but not quite reached the main road.  For some reason I was not tempted to make a detour and link up the rides!  At the roundabout there was a crowd of fifteen or twenty people who had gathered to cheer the riders on.  Remembering my mistake at Fougeres I was cautious about taking the wrong turning and so missed the continuation of the route.  I carried on right round the roundabout and re-appeared, much to the surprise of the crowd before taking the correct exit second time around.  The time was 10.10pm, exactly 24 hours after leaving Guyancourt and the bright lights of the roundabout enabled me to check my distance, 311.2 miles, and another personal best.  There were more gradual hills to Plounevez-Quintin (From the family holiday I remember a stop for a baguette in a Boulangerie in this village as we journeyed south to visit Lac du Guerledan and the Abbey de Bon Repos, where we had a very pleasant picnic (so pleasant that we repeated the journey the following year).   On the bike there was a sequence of bends and roads with manhole covers that would not have been out of place in West Berkshire.  The D767 went all the way to Carhaix, but for some reason after a few kilometres after Plounevex-Quintin we turned off onto minor roads.  I had to concentrate on the turning and there was also another long gradual hill, but also in the back of my mind was a calculation of what distance I could cycle in 24 hours.  If I had done 311 miles on an Audax bike in bad weather, with 4 longish control stops and no support, what could I do on a race bike with tri-bars, fast aerodynamic lightweight wheels?  After several iterations I came up with almost 400.  From that point the idea of doing the National 24 hour time trial next year was set.  (It was a strange thing, to establish a new goal and a new ambition less than half way through completing the old one but it helped me to continue with the ride).  What it indicated was a sense of the achievement already accomplished.  Despite the bad weather and without any particular urgency (except perhaps the hunt for the secret control) I was likely to reach Carhaix close to 11pm, a little ahead of my optimistic schedule.  This had been a big day with a strong mind and strong legs.  I hope I said a prayer of thanks at this point but I can’t honestly remember if I did.

A couple of kind souls were standing at the turn-off to indicate the route, which helped as it was more difficult to pick up the arrows at night.  However, there was one other sign which helped to indicate that we were on the right route, the occasional cyclist in high-visibility gear with good lights coming in the other direction, more of the best vedettes heading back to Paris.  In my mind I thought that the next section was quite short and mostly flat.

This lane had limited road markings and was probably the only part of the ride where my one Watt LED light was a constraint on my speed.  However, this argument might be unsound.  After more than 24 hours into a ride without sleep, in the late evening, towards the end of a stage there were other factors that could inhibit my performance.  After a kilometre or so along this lane I caught up with a loose group of five or six other riders.  Although I got to the front I decided not to ride through but to remain in their company.  For most of the way I stayed on the front, not going that hard, but welcoming the additional illumination from their lights.  There was no conversation, just a group of solitary individuals coalesced in the dark.  The lane seemed interminable, with lots of steep rises which I did out of the saddle with a slow cadence.  Trees loomed either side, almost like a Devon lane (though not so narrow, steep, or high banked).  There were a couple of cross-roads and signposts to a place, Saint Lubin, which I had never heard of, rather than anything that indicated Mael-Carhaix, the next place.  On one junction, which could have been precarious, a couple of locals waited and warned us.  Occasional lights would pass in the opposite direction which was a better indicator that we were on the right road than the sparse arrows at the rare junctions.  I could not believe how far it was to Mael-Carhaix; it was the first time that I had been spooked on the ride, and I was fortunate that I had company or I might have felt seriously stressed.  Eventually there was a long climb and a short descent into the village.  The next trick that my mind had played was that, given the name Mael-Carhaix, it might actually have been a suburb of Carhaix itself.  So, as we twisted through its windy streets and past its elegant Breton church I hoped that we were almost there.  Also, given we had done so much climbing, I hoped that we were on one of those Breton ridges and that we would have a nice downhill into Carhaix (wasn’t that the mistake I had made into Loudeac?).  Then someone else took up the pace, which seemed to double and I had to slip up through the gears.  Thinking back I wonder if it was another rider who had the same delusion that we were almost to the control.  Suddenly we were flashing along through the lanes, catching up and passing another group of riders.  All the time I kept expecting the lights of Carhaix to appear in an amber glow like a British town would and all the time the horizon kept resolutely dark and tree-lined.  We then had a slight descent and I got my hopes up, as if I was descending Dartmoor from Princetown to Yelverton.  But the descent was still so slight that there was little opportunity to rest.  Then, worse still, after a couple of bends the road went up once more.  Finally, we saw a glow of lights ahead, but even then it seemed to take an age to reach Carhaix.  It was as if the good citizens of the town had detached it from its foundations and decamped it ten or twenty kilometres farther away.  That is night riding for you.  Distances are always further than they seem and speeds are always less.

It was only then that I realised that one or two of the riders were also on Graham Baxter tours.  I suspect they were on the other coach as I did not recognise them and they did not recognise me.  We rolled into Carhaix and even the quiet avenue leading to the control seemed to drag.  The others went looking for the coach and I headed for the control.  I wanted to get my card stamped before I forgot.  I also thought there would be a note saying where the bus was.  The control was very quiet, with no queue to get my card stamped.  Several people were huddled under space blankets trying to get some sleep.  I decided not to eat but to try and find the coach, it would be good to get some dry clothes.  I couldn’t find a notice telling me where the coach was but Mike had indicated that it would be opposite the control or a little way down the road so I went for an explore.  I went a little bit past it (hidden in a car park) but then saw Mike, who was sitting in a deck chair by the road looking out for people.  He looked after me, and my bike, offered me food.  I was somewhat disorientated but eventually got myself sorted out with my drop bag and a bowl of cornflakes and milk.  I have never been a big eater before I go to sleep on a ride, but this helped take the edge off my hunger.  I climbed onto the coach, where on or two people were already sleeping and got into some welcome dry clothes, and snuggled up with a little stuffed bear, Tuff Teddy, who had been looking after the drop bag.  Boris, my usual fluffy companion was in the pannier on the bike.

I could not get comfortable sitting down, so tried various positions lying on the floor.  None of these seemed to work; something always cut into my side or my back.  After what seemed like five minutes I sat up in a panic.  How was I ever going to get some sleep?  Was the best choice to just ride onto Brest rather than toss and turn here?  Would I pay for the loss of sleep later on?  I looked at my watch.  I had been out cold for two hours without realising.

I tried to get a little more sleep but it wasn’t going to happen.  There were several other shadowy figures asleep in the coach so I had to do a silent contortionist act between the seats to get back into cycling gear, a new pair of shorts, a new pair of gloves, and a new jersey.  I said thank you to Mike and headed up the road to the control to get a hot breakfast which consisted of roast pork, pasta, rice pudding and fruit in syrup.  At 4am!  Yum!

Then it was off into the cold of the early hours and another prayer to keep my head together.  I felt quite alert through the streets of Carhaix and the long descent to the river.  I kept a good look out for the turns and soon picked up the road up to Poullaouen.  I knew that this was a long drag, from the map, and so took my time.  I passed a couple of riders and a third, a woman rider, picked up my wheel.  I was climbing smoothly and well and was looking forward to tackling Roc Trezevel.  There was a nice descent after Poullaouen which I took with only one touch of the brakes, demonstrating that the 1 Watt LED bulb was sufficient for the PBP.  It all seemed to go so well and then disaster struck.

There was a big clang from the rear of the bike and I felt my saddle go.  I had to peel off to the side of the road and wave the lady rider past.  It was as I had feared, the right hand side saddle rail had snapped at the very back, just as it curved up to the saddle.  In desperation I loosened the saddle to see if I could somehow clamp the saddle around the crack but it was too far back to do this.  So then I had to clamp the saddle back down.  I couldn’t get any purchase on the Allen key for some reason and had to call out for help for a passing rider who very kindly held my bike whilst I struggled to tighten up the bolt.  It was the stuff of nightmares.  I had tried to replace everything on the bike that I thought might break, an attempt to eliminate mechanical trouble.  There was a new chain, rear cassette, bottom bracket, gear and brake cables, the wheels had been rebuilt.  But the saddle was my old race bike saddle because the new saddle on the Audax bike hadn’t been broken in.  (Because it had taken too long to get all the new bits from Campagnolo).  The old saddle, after thousands of miles of British potholes had become fatigued and broken.  I rejected the idea of returning to Carhaix.  In the early hours of the morning it was unlikely I could find a spare saddle.  I had seen some bike repair centres at the controls and hoped that there might be one at Brest.  However, I was not sure that they would have a saddle as it is not the sort of thing that breaks every day.  As least I would get to Brest in the morning so if I couldn’t get a saddle at the control it was probable that I could find one at a bike shop.  I didn’t even think what level of pain I might suffer from riding 600km on a brand new saddle.  There was another horrible thought that I might have to pack in Brest but I prayed that would not happen.

With all these thoughts running around in my mind I set off for Huelgoat.  It was uncomfortable but with shifting my weight forward it was possible to balance on the nose of the saddle and not on the sagging rear end.  Even so I passed a few riders on the ascent to the lakeside resort.  There was a flat section by the lake and then a long and quite steep ascent up to the main road.  Here there were lights in both directions, although more heading out to Brest than returning.  It was cold and dark with a headwind and it was difficult to pedal with the uncomfortable saddle position.  I stopped once or twice with a sense of desperation and had to tell myself to keep going as after the top there would be a long descent.  There was one long steep ramp and then the gradient eased off and the trees disappeared and we were on the plateau at the top.  The roundabout appeared in the first light of day and then I began the descent.

It was horrible.  My position on the bike was uncomfortable and did not lend itself to high-cadence pedalling, so I ended up grinding along in a too-high gear.  At one point I stopped more out of misery than anything else.  Justin passed me and asked what the problem was; I told him about the broken saddle and he commiserated.  However, there was some consolation, at least I had a better night than a few of the vedettes.  Along the side of the road, in little nooks and crannies were people sleeping, riders who had attempted to make it to Brest and been caught by the dozies.  It was quite bright and so I turned off the lights.  During the descent two of the official motorbikes passed me.  The first told me to put my lights back on.  I tried to attract his attention about my broken saddle.  Then the second told me to put my lights back on and I failed to attract him also.  So I soldiered on through Sizun.  Once again my mental picture of the route was wrong.  I did not think it was far after Sizun that the route turned off the main road.  In fact it was 9km over a series of undulations and one sustained climb.  It was demoralising.  Yet in one way it was the crux of the stage.  Once I turned off the main road it seemed like there was a bit of a tailwind, it was slightly downhill and it was properly light and brightening up.  I seemed to have managed to get a more comfortable position on the saddle, leaning back and almost hanging on to the bars.  The last bit of gym training to work on the triceps paid off in a way that was not expected!  The roads tended down into Loperhet and I hoped I was almost in Brest but there were the endless drags up and down through Plougastel-Daoulas to come.  Eventually I could see the sea and there was a final descent down to the Pont Albert Louppe.  The sun came out and various riders had stopped to take photographs of their companions.  I thought about getting my camera out and recording the memory but I was more worried about saddles.  A recumbent rider caught up with me and we talked about the saddle.  I followed the signs onto a cycle path but then must have missed a turn.  The recumbent rider followed me.  We went past my son Peter’s favourite place, Oceanopolis and there were still no signs, although confusingly there were some other arrows.  As we headed into city it was obvious we had gone wrong.  I saw a couple of people at a florist shop and asked for directions.  They looked at each other and then explained that we had to go up the hill, slightly back on our tracks.  I had to wait for the recumbent and we climbed for some time and took the first turn on the right as intended.  This didn’t look right and we stopped for directions again.  We realised that we had turned right too soon and worked our way back onto the road we had left.  Then we saw riders coming from the right.  A quick call and we realised they had just left the control.  So we followed the stream of riders and surprised the marshals by sneaking up from behind them.  It was nine am on Wednesday, thirty-four hours and fifty minutes after leaving Paris.

I headed straight for the bike repair shop at the control and through sign language pointed out the problem with the saddle.  When I looked, the second saddle rail had also broken and the whole back of the saddle was bent back at an angle of about twenty degrees.  I learned the French word for saddle “Selle”, which is the same as the Italian (although after breaking two Selle Italia saddles in the same year I might not be switching back to the same brand).  She offered me a choice of two saddles and I chose what I thought was the cheapest.  They did not take cards so I knew I would need some cash, so I asked for directions to a cash machine.  In her rapid French she explained something.  I looked in that direction but did not find it.  On my return, she was just about to get the new saddle fixed when I realised that I had missed the “cent” as in “cent-soixante-deux”.  What I thought was €62 saddle was €162.  I quickly asked for the other one, which was €90.  In between I had also got my card stamped.  Now I could relax and get some food, although the breakfast offering was mostly bread and ham, which wasn’t ideal.  However, washed down with a substantial amount of water, I could relax after the excitement of the morning.  Now all I had to do was ride back to Paris.  I also removed several layers of clothes as it was now warm and sunny.  I actually put sunblock on!  Justin saw me and asked how I was and I told him that I had a new saddle so everything was OK.  And it was.  My prayers had been answered.  Although I had doubted the physical world, by putting my trust in God I had been looked after.

A little stiff legged I set off back to Paris.  Having got lost on the way in to Brest I was nervous about making a mistake and glad that other riders were on the road to show that I had not gone wrong.  It was a strange feeling.  I had just set out on new ground, riding further than I had ever done before yet I was only half way on this ride.  The sun was out and I had stripped down to shorts and a short sleeved jersey (as it turned out for the only time on the whole Paris-Brest-Paris).    The road through Guipavas was busy, with a detour onto a cycle path and another hilly detour off the main drag and along a parallel road in the suburbs.  Then we were out of the busy town and on a straight road with undulations, into the northerly wind.  It felt good to have a proper saddle so that the power could be transmitted properly through the pedals rather than being lost having to hold me steady on the bike.  It was so much easier on the climbs.  Approaching Landerneau there was a superb fast descent, in excess of 40mph, although the roughness of the road could be felt on my sore bottom.  I could see what looked like a strong trio of riders a little way ahead and rode like a maniac through the streets of the town to get on their wheels.   They took turns as we found our way out of the inland port, sunshine on the marinas before we found the road out towards Sizun and Roc Trezevel.  It immediately started climbing at a steady gradient to get out of the valley and I found myself on the front of the small group, and then on my own as my steady climbing rhythm took hold.  (Why did I chase so hard on the flat to catch them when I would have passed them easily on the hill?)  A big German got back on my wheel and held fast onto it as the gradient eased.  The wind funnelled behind us as we turned right into what seemed like a side valley and I flicked up through the gears, eventually reaching the big ring and flying along at 20mph, presumably still up a slight gradient.  This was fantastic, freedom, for the first time not being held back by the weather or the night or a mechanical.  The road rose more steeply again; this was a monster hill.  (From Landerneau to le Queff the road rises 160m in 8km, from Sizun to Roc Trezevel it rises 240m in 15km, but this first hill never gets a mention in most accounts).  I dropped the German and did not see him again until the control at Carhaix.

At the top of the hill was the turn on the outward route, so there were riders on the other side of the road heading towards Brest.  It was at this point that I realised the difference between the dribs and drabs that I was riding in and the endless stream of the main bulge of riders behind still heading towards Brest.  In my direction it was possible to have a clear road in front from time to time, but heading westwards there was hardly a gap of fifty metres.  Most of the riders looked in good condition, perhaps looking forward to being almost halfway, perhaps enjoying the sunshine.  I was able to roll along much of the route from le Queff to Sizun, making me realise one of the reasons why I had suffered so much on this section on the way out that it was mostly uphill and not just the broken saddle.  I passed Justin somewhere on this section of the route.  I realised that the people going in the opposite direction were three hours or so behind me.  Now for the big hill; it was time to get my head in gear.  15km is a long way to go uphill; the only similar experience was probably the hill out of Newtown on the Bryan Chapman that goes up 10km (although that is much harder, rising almost 400m).  It could easily be an hour uphill which could be demoralising.  So I just took it steadily, changing up and down gears as the gradient eased or stiffened, amusing myself by watching the endless stream of riders descending, with the advantage of full daylight and working saddles!  The recumbents had the most fun, especially the fully enclosed pods of which there were two or three.  Every now and again I passed someone climbing.  No-one passed me.  I could see the rocky outcrops of the Montagnes d’Arrées which were near the summit; they were approached and passed quicker than I thought.  I was passing riders more frequently and more quickly now.  The roundabout at the top was almost a disappointment as I had enjoyed the climb, 42 minutes to do the 15k (22 kilometres per hour for the major climb!)  However, there was still a long way to Carhaix.

The road across the top was frightening.  There was a fierce cross-wind.  The D764 is the main road in these parts and one of the few parts of the PBP route to have heavy trucks.  These were forced into the middle of the road by the massive stream of riders coming in the opposite direction and so came quite close to me.  Twice I was almost blown off the road by the combination of the cross-wind and their slipstream.  Then there was a long fast descent, more 40mph stuff.  At the bottom Bob Johnson caught me, VC167’s strongest rider and champion half-wheeler.  He had a hotel booked in Quedillac for the night and was riding strongly.  We rode together for a couple of kilometres, exchanging tales and blitzing a few other riders, before he moved ahead without seeming to change pace or effort.   There were a few groups going in my direction; the problem was that I always caught up to them on the hills, where I was going too strongly.  In retrospect this is where my training had given me the best advantage, working on building up the power that could be delivered while mostly fat burning combined with doing events like the Bryan Chapman, the Elenith, and Cambrian permanents, meant that I could climb hills when tired not much slower than I climbed them when fresh, whereas other riders lost more of their speed up the hills when tired.  The wind remained strong and blew across the route.  The blue sky had gone and not only was it cloudy but to the north the horizon looked blurred as if it was raining on the high hills of central Brittany.  Soon after there were spits of rain on the wind.  After one last hill, I could see the deep valley of l’Hyere and Carhaix on the hill beyond.  The last hill into the town was hard work.  I stopped in the gusty wind at an ATM to top up my cash resources which had been drained by the purchase of the saddle.  I pulled on my rain-jacket as heavier rain lashed down.

I met Eddie, the coach driver at the coach, where I switched batteries.  I had originally planned to do this; then decided I wouldn’t need to given that I was riding on the 1 Watt 15 LED Lumicycle system which should give at least 30 hours of illumination.   However, I’d noticed at one point on the ride that the 5 Watt halogen bulb was on; I must have knocked it and it may have been running for two hours, so I did not want to risk the battery failing, perhaps on the Thursday night.  Then I rode up to the control and had a very welcome lunch.  It was 2pm.  The only person to have passed me on the last stage had been Bob Johnson.  I did some mental calculations – four hours to Loudeac, four more to Tinteniac (probably a little more as some of this section would be into the wind).  It would be about 11pm by the time I reached Tinteniac and probably too late to push on to Fougeres.  That would leave 360k to do on Thursday which would probably be a bit too far.  I reckoned the saddle had cost me about an hour (twenty minutes in trying to fix it, twenty minutes on the ride, and twenty minutes extra in Brest getting it fixed) but that hour might be the critical one in achieving a Thursday night finish.  However, experience of three 600k rides told me that there was no point in planning anything more than the next stage in detail.  The German who had held my wheel at Landerneau caught me up due to my cashpoint stop and we ate together, briefly.  Then I rode off in the spitting rain with my shorts, jersey and rain jacket.

Once again I found it difficult to get into a group to start.  Eventually I found one group together with a slightly grumpy looking Frenchman who seemed suspicious of my attempts to form a group.  Then a faster group came along and my group sort of disintegrated.  I tried to hang onto the faster group but found the pace uncomfortable as we approached Mael-Carhaix.  I was stunned by how far the distance was (compared with the short haul I had hoped it would be on the outward section the previous night).  Strangely, having dropped back, I found a better rhythm and caught up with the fast group on a hill.  Even so, they were going too quickly for me to do a turn on the front.  They hammered along the narrow lanes through Saint Lubin at perhaps twice the speed we had done the previous night.  It took good bike handling to stay in formation which was quite nerve-wracking forty hours into an event.  Eventually I found my way to the front and did a couple of short turns.  There were two strong German riders who seemed to be organising things and they seemed to take umbrage at my slower pace, so took over again.  It seemed like a trice and we were on the main road and flying through Plounevez-Quintin.  The cross-winds here were very strong and it took a hard effort to stay in touch, but soon afterwards there was a hill and my climbing legs let me take over at the head of the bunch.  The Germans then started talking to me and we said where we had come from and how we were going and I told them where Basingstoke was.  I think they came from near Frankfurt.  They were all vedettes and were riding as a four, with a hotel organised for the night.  I pointed out the castle at Corlay and soon afterwards they stopped at a little roadside stall for some refreshments.  I stopped and munched on my banana.  Immediately we got going the rain began to fall heavily and they all rushed for their rain jackets.  I began to roll gently but they seemed intent on turning this into a longer stop so I carried on.  At least this section had a slight tail wind as the route turned south-east through the hills towards Loudeac.  I wondered if there was another secret control on this section.

At St-Martin-des-Pres they were still en-fete, as if they had not stopped partying since I had passed through the previous evening.  They had obviously imbibed as this time no-one was out to look at the race passing through.  The roads were very quiet, the bulge of riders had passed and anyone still heading westwards would almost certainly have been out of time.  I was prepared for a big hill up to Merleac but it was much easier in this direction than going out.  The descent on the other side was fantastic but at the bottom I began to feel a little empty so I stopped for five minutes to eat some fig rolls.  Only one rider passed me in this time, it was almost like being on a UK Audax ride than Paris-Brest-Paris.  There were more serious hills through Grace-Uzel and then undulations through Treve.  The intermittent rain persisted but was never serious.  On the last climb up to Loudeac there was a small boy and his parents at a filling station.  He ran alongside each rider as they climbed the hill, going faster than some and at least as fast as me.  He must have run his legs off that day, running a specified distance to a line probably drawn in his and his parent’s imagination, the line of safety.  Then I had arrived in Carhaix, half an hour before I expected.  The Germans never caught me up but they had done me a big favour by injecting some speed into the stage.

Loudeac was almost empty of riders.  Later that night it would probably become like a refugee camp; I heard that the dormitories were full and that people queued ages to get food, as randonneurs got this far and could go no further.  There was no queue to stamp the card and no queue to get food.  I had fish and puree; I needed a change from the endless pasta.  On the downside there was no-one at the control that I could recognise.  The staff seemed weary, though I was not sure whether this would have been from the last night’s onslaught or in anticipation of the night to come.  But when I went through it was quiet.  I contemplated the ride to Tinteniac.  It had been one of the more demoralising stages on the way out.  I had made good time to Loudeac; I would leave the control not long after six.  If I was going well then Fougeres was a strong possibility but I was sure that at some stage the distance and the lack of sleep would overcome caffeine (consumed) and adrenalin (self-produced).

As I set off a rider misjudged one of the turns in the barrier and crashed   I didn’t think much of this until after the finish when I heard that Ann Benton had broken her arm in similar circumstances.  My legs were a little stiff and it took all of the gentle downhill out of Loudeac to the bypass to loosen them up; then I continued on my own, heading south east.  It was along this section that I saw the last of the outbound riders, a tired-looking Japanese with a heavily loaded cycle.  He must have been hours out of time but he rode with a quiet persistence as if he was going to complete the route even if it took him six days.  I hope that he did and was satisfied.  I know that I prayed for those who were struggling and hoped that a wind would come to blow them home; yes it would benefit me but it was those who were at the end of their tethers that I prayed for, those who needed something to go right at last to complete the ride.  My only concern was making a good pace to Tinteniac and hoping that I could reach Fougeres before sleeping, keeping open the idea of a Thursday night finish.

Descending the hill into La Cheze made me aware of the impact of the wind on the way out.  What seemed like a big and serious climb was revealed to be a gentle amble.  The hill the other side was more serious than the descent had indicated, again due to the relevant absence of wind on this section.  At the top I met a group of three French riders who wore reflective jackets with Groupama stencilled near the collar.  I took them to be riding together.  They were going a reasonable pace, just a little slower than my pace.  It took me a while to catch them up.  After sitting in for a minute, I took a turn on the front but, like many of the French they seemed suspicious of strangers, and they dropped back a little.  I could see another small group a hundred yards ahead so I increased my pace and rode to the back of this new group.  The French followed, on my tail and we were now a group of seven, riding through Plumieux, the village which had apologised for the rain ruining their fete.  There was a nice fast descent to La Trinite Porhoet and then another climb.  The group climbed well together, about my pace.  My knee was hurting, as it had done all day, so I climbed out of the saddle.  This was also blessed relief for my increasingly sore bottom.  At the top of the hill we turned more into the wind, which re-appeared.  It was mostly a cross-wind but also slightly a head-wind and as we were on the far side of the road at times it was channelled along the hedge into our faces.  The road climbed gently but persistently.  It was hard work trying to stay on the group for a while.  We reached the shelter of some trees on the left hand side and that helped me to get to the front and take a turn.  After this they got a little used to me, as if I had proved that I had some semblance of culture and propriety and could respect the unwritten rules of the road.  There was one rider, also French, who rode in purple kit, who rode inconsistently and who seemed to avoid taking his turn.  One from our group had a quite word with him and he seemed to ride better after that.  After this first bit of discovery we seemed to start to work better as a group.  By Meneac we had reached the section of endless little undulations, and at each hill we would rise, almost as one, out of our saddles, and struggle upwards.  Riding as a group helped to keep the pace up on the flat and the slight downhills and the journey passed much better than it had on the outward leg.  At Illifaut we were waved off the road into a building hidden by trees, the second secret control.  This gave me a chance to attach the front lights and munch on a banana.  I have a simple system, the bottom half of a space bar is permanently attached to the bars.  The space bar itself has the lights permanently attached and adjusted to the correct angle.  All it takes to attach the lights is to slot the top of the space bar onto its base and slot a piece of garden wire through the hole to keep the two connected.  The battery is secured to the top tube with a Velcro strap and the wires looped around the bar bag and tied in with the garden wire so that they cannot be detached on bumps.  The whole process takes about a minute (and less than that to reverse) and means that I can ride in daylight without the distraction of lights attached.

Four of us continued.  We lost the man in purple; it seemed to be two guys from the Groupama and one guy from the front group; yet this guy seemed to know one of the Groupama guys quite well.  I think their names were Jean-Claude and Michele.

After Illifaut the next town was St Meen le Grande.  Here the route would turn north, into the wind and uphill, and I was worried that I would not be able to stay with the group, especially given how well Jean-Claude and Michele were riding.  Jean-Claude suddenly rode off at pace; Michele touched me on the arm to indicate that I should not follow, that he had family ahead.  Sure enough, as we reached the outskirts of the town he was parked by the side of the road, talking to two diminutive figures (mind you, he was not much shorter than me, so most people would have looked small in comparison), which I understood to be his uncle and aunt.  It was just like tales of the Tour de France pausing in its frantic urgency to let the local boy ride into his town at the head of affairs and be feted, not because he was a champion but because he dared to ride the Tour de France, just as we were feted in a minor way for daring to ride Paris-Brest-Paris.

This inspired him to ride quickly up the hill which had more than its fair share of drain covers and up onto the main road.  I was struggling to stay with them and did not think that I would be able to do a turn for a while.  The light was just starting to fade.  We turned off onto the D20, heading for Becherel and then Tinteniac.  We were riding well as a group, a good rhythm then Michele headed off, to see his parents.  As we reached the town there was a group of twenty who burst into applause and cheers of personal recognition.  Jean-Claude was met by a crowd of friends and relatives.  I rolled around the corner to give him some privacy, but waited, munching on a banana, for I wanted the comfort of the group.  He thanked me for waiting, but for me the thanks were to the French, for in some ways this was the most special moment of Paris-Brest-Paris, the sense that we were like ancient gladiators, or the champions of medieval combat, doing something that was out of the sense of the common man yet what many secretly hoped that they might one day do, or might once have done; not that there was anything special or superhuman about us, just that we dared to do it.  (What we had not seen at this stage were the Wednesday morning newspaper stories describing the horrible weather and how it had “massacred” the field.  The celebrations were perhaps fuelled by relief that Jean-Claude and Michele were still riding, that they were not one of the many who had abandoned on the way out, 365 at Loudeac alone, no wonder the support crew had looked so fatigued).

We regrouped as the individual members of our foursome tore themselves from relatives and carried out.  I started out on the front with Jean-Claude and after fifteen minutes began to feel fatigue.  None of the others looked keen to take over so I promised myself five minutes more.  As this was completed we reached a short climb and the usual climbing ability kept me on the front.  We continued like this, with short rises every kilometre or two until we had a longer climb to Becherel.  It was now dusk.  I had developed a new technique of turning my rear light on without stopping.  At the top of the climb into Becherel we met a larger group, which I then headed and got a clear descent through the top of the town, tearing along at 30mph.  We had to slow for a nasty junction but there was enough left to regain momentum.  With several people to drive the pace we hammered into Tinteniac at high speed.  It was 9.30pm and my head was still clear.  Not only was Fougeres still on, I might have a chance at a reasonable sleep!  As we rolled into the control there was a huge cheer.  Clearly Jean-Claude and Michele were well-connected local riders for most of the people staffing the parking area seemed to know them.  I walked off, remembering the layout of the control, getting my card stamped.  I didn’t see them again, but they are the sort of companions that I am sure were provided for me in answer to my prayers.

In the warmth of the control I ate more pasta and more rice pudding.  I was confident of making Fougeres and phoned home.  My wife had had a bad day; the last thing she wanted was a cheerful Audax rider phoning home.  I went outside, feeling deflated, further depressed by the rain that was now sheeting down in the darkness.  There was no sign of the Frenchmen, whether they were ahead or behind I did not know, so I started warming up my legs.  A couple of Germans went passed and for a couple of kilometres I tried to hang onto their wheels, but they were going too fast for me.  Besides, it was not much fun following bikes without mudguards in the pouring rain.  I was feeling tired, perhaps with my optimism burst from the call home and I just wanted to get to Fougeres.  At one point a truck came along the other side of the road at high speed; a curtain of water picked up by its slipstream slammed into me soaking me head to toe.  At another point I heard a car coming up behind me and slowing down, but instead of the stream of abuse or snide comments that would have been given in the UK someone leaned out of the window in the heavy rain, yelling encouragement.  I kept plodding along and then came to a crossroads.  I kept hoping to see the glow of lights from Fougeres, as I knew it was only 54 kilometres between the controls.  After going through a village with a brightly lit street I could see a distant glow in the darkness.  My hopes rose.  Then I came to another crossroads; there were three or four riders milling about looking for the marker arrow, “la fleche”.

I had made the same mistake as them, missing a sign to turn left at a crossroads, but fortunately we had only gone a few hundred metres beyond the turn.  I followed them along the seemingly endless D20, through villages I could barely recall from the journey outward (which had also been in pouring rain).  There was one slight descent that was nerve-wracking.  In my head I was thinking that I would reach St Hilaire-des-Landes, where there was a T-junction and then it would not be long until Fougeres.  Eventually we reached the T-junction, which was up a slight hill, at which point I think the group dropped behind me.  This was the section of road which I had ridden in company with the mad Italians and the Danes on the way out.  My brain had been playing tricks and I had totally underestimated the distance.  As usual, with fatigue and dark, what seemed like a comfortable pace was probably not much more than a crawl.  The body also tends to underestimate the amount of time that has passed at night, probably as alertness is not so high.  By the time I eventually reached the outskirts of Fougeres, the others passed me.  Then there was the silly lane-y bit to get back to the control, with the steepest descent of the whole ride which ended in a T-junction at the foot of the hardest bit.  Fortunately I remembered the layout of the road but I suspect that a lot of other riders would have had a nervous moment as they headed for the wall on the far side of the T fearing that their brakes would not grip.  I rolled into the control at ten past one; it had taken me three hours and ten minutes of riding to complete just 54 kilometres, at a reckless speed of 17kmh.

I got my card stamped.  There were a few people who had found places in the control, which was a sports hall attached to the school and found resting places on piles of mattresses.  I got my card stamped and looked for a notice on the location of the Graham Baxter coach.  I cycled out of the control to try and find it but failed miserably (it was almost opposite the entrance to the control but on the left when I turned right.  I must have been reaching the befuddled stage), so I left a message on Mike’s phone to say that I was not checking in at the bus but I was at Fougeres and OK.  Then I tried to make myself comfortable in a janitor’s cupboard (well it was about 5 metres square).  A nice lady explained that there was a dormitory and gave me directions, so I followed those (although I’m quite sure I could have fallen asleep on the floor).  I followed her very good directions and found a place to park my bicycle in the large pile parked outside the restaurant section of the control.  The staff at dormitory asked me for a wake up time (I said 5:30) as it was now about 2am.  (I had read an article, in one of my long distance cycling books that explained that a natural sleep cycle was about 90 minutes and that the best way to sleep was multiples of these, so 5.30am should be at the completion of the second cycle)  Then they issued me with a blanket and guided me into a large room (presumably a classroom cleared of desks) full of mattresses.  Next to me was someone who was attached to a portable respirator which hissed and wheezed.  I was too tired to comprehend why he might be here rather than in a hospital or how they were looking after him.  I worried that I would not possibly sleep with this distraction; it was like having a particularly bad snorer next to me.  I lay down in my wet clothes (as the dry ones were in the coach that I could not find), pulled my blanket over me and woke up three hours later.

Normally when I sleep I have some awareness of the passage of time but here, just as in Carhaix, it was if I had not slept at all.  I lay there for five minutes, collecting my thoughts.  The respirator was gone, so either the person had gone or had no longer needed it.   I sorted out my gear; I had brought my pannier inside, so had to collect this and my helmet and make sure that my precious articles (wallet containing the brevet card, and my bear, Boris, who had made his way under the blanket!) were safe.  Then I padded out of the dormitory, let them know that I had woken up before my call (by the time I did this it was 5.26 so I only just saved them a walk) and then went into the restaurant for a nice breakfast.  There was no queue but many weary faces.  Once I’d eaten I felt a lot more positive.  There was only 310k to go!!

On a normal ride 310k on the flat would take me about 14 hours, but I had no idea how long to add for the fact that I had already done over 900k.  So I did some rough arithmetic and reckoned that I would get back to Paris about 1am (as I write this I realise that my arithmetic was flawed.  I expect to take 17 hours which would mean an 11pm arrival after a 6am start).  With this goal in mind, equalling what I thought my par time would be, 75 hours, ie as good as I had expected to achieve when I set out.

I was stiff legged for some time as I rode out of Fougeres, but the first hill helped to sort things out and I got into what I thought was a reasonable rhythm.  It was still dark and spitting rain but not the heavy downpour of the previous night.  My reasonable rhythm seemed to be too fast for anyone else on the road.  I passed rider after rider, strung out hundreds of metres apart on the long straight road.  I counted down the distance to Gorron, the first main landmark on the route back, which was 30km from Fougeres and so just over one third distance.  No-one passed me or stayed on my wheel in those 30km.  The darkness was replaced by slate grey skies and the rain eased to an intermittent spotting.  Just before Gorron I met a group of three French cyclists.  I wanted to ride with them, but a woman in the group, with excellent English said that I was going too fast.  I offered to ease up and ride with them and we rode together to the next town Ambrieres-les-Valles.  It is always easier to be in company than on your own, if it means only sacrificing a little speed.  Five minutes extra on a stage is nothing compared with the saving of mental resources achieved through social interaction; it is much better to ride together even without considering wind resistance.  Gradually our speed picked up as they got used to my pace and having someone on the front but then the rain tipped down again and most of them headed for cover to put on a rain layer.  I continued on and one of them stayed with me but there was a short steep hill as we left the town followed by a longer hill with a newly laid surface.  He dropped back a bit on the first hill and then struggled and dropped off on the second.

The rain eased off and the route turned hilly.  I had forgotten how hilly this section was.  It probably explains why I was struggling before I teamed up with the Italian group on this stage on the way out.  I used signposts to measure progress as the route went through Chantrigné, Lassay-les-Chateaux, and Charchigné, where there was a signpost to Villaines-la-Juhel – 15.5km.  Less than 10 miles to the next control; I was encouraged and put on a good spurt through Le Ribay and an excellent long descent after the crossing of the busy N12.  Then there was another long climb which I stormed up and blitzed past a group of riders at the top before flying down another hill to Hardanges, where it appeared that someone had moved Villaines about 7km further away.  (It turned out that the route took a longer way to Villaines to avoid having to ride along a busy section of the N12).  This was disappointing but I managed to keep up my rhythm and ride through a couple more groups before getting to the control in light rain.  It had been a really excellent stage, 87.5km ridden non-stop, with hardly anyone passing me.  There had been some wind assistance, but I think more in the mind that actual as most of the route was east-west.  It was the usual routine at the control, get the card swiped, the brevet stamped, and then cross the road to get more food.  It was baguettes as they were still on breakfast, my second of the day.  Whilst eating the baguette I studied the next stage, which I thought would be hard, given my memories of the outbound route.  I recalled that the section nearest Villaines was hilly and then there was the interminable straight road through La Hutte towards Mamers, then a section done in the dark and heavy rain in which all the features had been lost.  I broke the ride mentally in thirds.  When I set-off I hoped to reach Mamers at least before taking a snack break.

One other milestone was passed on the stage to Villaines.  It was my first ever 1000km ride, a milestone which took 59 hours and 30 minutes to achieve.  I reached Villaines at 9.45am, just three and a half hours after leaving Fougeres, a consistent 25kmh average.  Villaines was in party mode when I arrived, with music and line dancing.  However, when I left the rain came down and I suspect that it had scattered the line dancers.

At the control there was a man with a polystyrene helmet with a model Eiffel Tower constructed out of plastic mesh.  So much for saving stress on the neck!  Another rider was clearly struggling to walk (perhaps the cyclist’s equivalent of sea-legs) and someone carried his tray of food down the ramp into the sports hall.  The dedication and kindness of the people at the controls was consistently wonderful.

I was stiff and bow legged as I set off for Mortagne-au-Perche in more heavy rain.  The rain eased off and it was a little warmer, but I kept all my wet and cold weather clothes on.  It was quite pleasant rolling along roads towards Fresnay-sur-Sarthe.  The wind was giving us a little assistance on this section as we headed east of south.  As the morning progressed it was also picking up in strength.  Most of the hills were climbed out of the saddle due to a combination of pain in my left knee, stiffness in the legs and soreness behind.  Villages were reasonably evenly spaced: Averton, St Paul le Gaultier, Souge le Ganelon.  I experimented with coasting down the hills but found that the sharpest pain came when I resumed pedalling, especially if the gear was slightly too low and the legs spun until they found resistance.  After a while I found it easier to continue to pedal and not to coast.  This also seemed kinder on my sore bottom.  A consequence was a slightly higher average speed.  The strange thing about this section is that I recall very little about it either going out or coming back.  Although it should not be so strange, bits and pieces of the ride drift in and out of my memory.  Sometimes sections that were hazy snap into sharp relief and at other times events that stood out clear become difficult to recall.  After the ride I took some notes to put structure on my memories and the act of writing this helped to further consolidate the experience.

There was a section where there was some newly cut grass on the bank, despite the wet ground, and I was concerned that there might be some thorns.  There was a drier section where the road climbed up through a village reminiscent of Herefordshire.  Then there was the last hill before Fresnay.  Most of the riders on the road were French.  Two of them passed me and I caught them up and we rode as a loose group of three for a while.  It seemed like the usual case of people being faster than me on the first part of a stage before my legs fully loosened up then, as I got fully warm, the people who had put too much effort into the early part of the stage dropping back.  After the last hill before Fresnay I had just one of them on my tail who followed me for quite some time until I motioned him to take over.

After Fresnay we turned more into the wind on a long straight road with undulations, which had been a miserable experience on the way out.  It threatened to be a miserable experience on the way back as the wind was making it hard.  I could see a group ahead and with my French companion we gradually reeled them in, catching them just by the bridge under the Autoroute. We stayed on the back for a bit then I took over on the front.  Not long afterwards there was a steepish hill and I dropped them about half-way up.  My French companion stayed with the group.  I rolled down the other side without much intensity, wondering if they would catch up but by now my hill climbing was significantly faster than my peers on the road.  The next town was St Remy du Val, which had quite a rough road surface and then there was a long climb up to the D311.  Near the top I caught up with a couple of riders, including an Australian (whose name I learnt later was Gary).  He called out “Hello, Basingstoke”.  It turned out that he had taught at Harriet Costello School in Basingstoke before emigrating.  I rode with these two for a little bit before dropping them just before Mamers.  As we worked our way through the town the sun came out.  There was a steep little climb out of Mamers and I was suddenly cooking, so made a stop to shed a couple of layers.  For the second time on the ride I was down to a short-sleeved shirt although I kept the bib tights on.  As I re-joined the climb I met a guy from Middlesborough and we talked for a while.  The roads along this section were rough.  In the UK the weight of traffic usually causes the road surface to break up, with potholes forming and causing hazards.  Here, it seemed that the tar had been eroded, leaving the stones slightly proud, causing a constant vibration which was painful for sore behinds and hard work on the pedals.  I spent most of this section in a loose group as the road wound its way through scenic wooded little hills.  The fine weather was obviously only going to be with us for a while; black clouds were closing in from the north, promising more rain.  I hoped to make Mortagne before it reached us.  After Parfondeval there were a couple of descents.  The second one was to a roundabout on a main road.  Ahead was Mortagne-au-Perche, like many of the control towns, on top of a hill.  It was a good steady climb which I did in the saddle, weaving past weary vedettes in the spitting rain.  (How come I could not remember such a long descent in the dark; perhaps it was the rain).  Just as we entered the town there was a left turn and a final steep section up to the control in a huge community centre.  It was a good end to another long stage, broken only by a stop to take off clothes.  I followed my usual routine, getting my card stamped and then collecting a huge plate of pasta and bolognaise sauce.  It was very quiet, and one of the helpers, an Englishwoman living locally, sat down and talked while she was eating her lunch.  She told me that riders had packed at Mortagne on the way out and that 1500 riders had already abandoned.  My head did the maths; that was almost 30%, more than twice the normal figure for Paris-Brest-Paris.  I knew that the Tuesday had been hard, but I could scarcely believe this, especially as it was likely that there would be more abandons through time lost or mechanicals on the last day.  But I could do nothing about those who had abandoned.  I had just two stages and 140km to go.  It was 2pm and there was a slight chance that I might finish in daylight.  Before I started 75 hours seemed like my par time, now I was heading for a scarcely credible 72.

With this to cheer me I set off, stiff-legged into the grey afternoon, enjoying a bit of a tail wind on a slightly southerly section out of Mortagne.  There weren’t really any riders to go with.  It had been spitting rain so I put my rain jacket on but on the first of three climbs between Mortagne and Longny I was overheating so I stopped at the top to take the jacket off and stuff it in my bag.  Then I headed off; it was quite mild, showing 23 degrees on my cycle computer.  Strangely I found it was more comfortable to sit in the saddle up the hills, which actual helped me to climb better (On the Roberts Audax bike I have always found it quicker to climb in the saddle; getting out of the saddle is either a sign of desperation or a short stint to vary the riding position.)  I swept past a number of riders on the next long climb, which started in windy fields and then turned up into sheltered woods, and repeated the trick on the last climb before Longny.  I took care in the busy little village centre to find the correct turn and was on new territory heading towards Marchainville.  (From Longny to Gambais the route was different from the way out, just one of two parts of the ride where we did not retrace our steps, the other being between Sizun and Brest.  The road started in a valley but soon started climbing steeply through some woods.  I got into a terrific rhythm up this hill and powered up it.  There was a flat section on top which I though must be the prelude to another descent.  In the middle of the forest there was a slight turn and descent which felt very much like the road angling along the top of a hill, but then the road rose again.  Marchainville came and went and I continued to power along, expecting a descent and a rest at any moment.  There was a strong looking group of eight or ten riders ahead and I latched onto the back of them.  One of the riders on the front was wearing a pair of bib tights which were wearing to a point of being see-through.  This was too unpleasant and painful-looking to watch so I rolled onto the front of the group and then left them behind.  I thought twice about this but didn’t want to watch a pair of sore bottoms struggling along, so carried on through La Ferté-Vidame where there was a huge area of parkland and what looked like the trappings of a huge house.  At last, I thought.  This will be built on the top of an escarpment, and the big descent will happen soon.  There was a signpost to Brezolles, which I knew was two-thirds of the way through the stage, and I presumed that would be in a valley.

However, the endless plateau continued, with me hammering away in expectation of a big descent.  It was now mixed woodland and arable fields, but never a view of a distant horizon.  I passed Gary the Australian again, and another couple of riders.  Sometimes I tried to stay with a group, but as soon as the rode rose I would be ahead of them.  In the more open sections the wind pushed across us and made riding harder.  The rain spat off and on, without ever really getting hard.  I stayed in a group of four through the twists and turns of Brezolles, once again excited that this might be the town on the top of a hill before the big descent.

After Brezolles the country became more open.  Sometimes the road turned more to the north and into the wind and it was hard work.  The surfaces were rough, the same eroded tarmac that had been so painful before Mortagne-au-Perche.  I felt that I had gone too hard on the early part of this stage and was worried that I was now going to suffer.  The rain began to worsen.  I could see a largish group of riders behind me and relaxed.  If I did not go too hard they would catch me up and I would be able to sit in for a while.  They gradually closed on me as I stopped struggling.  The rain got heavier.  Then it got really heavy, too heavy to continue without putting my rain jacket on, otherwise I was going to get my inner layer soaked.  But now the group was too close for me to have time to stop and put the jacket on before they caught me. The rain sheeted down and made the decision for me.  I slammed on the brakes, leapt off the bike and loosed the pannier strap almost in one move, slipped on the rain jacket with surprising efficiency and tightened the pannier just as the group went passed.  Then there were two nervous attempts to get wet cleats onto wet pedals before I got going.  They were a hundred metres ahead of me and hammering along at over 30kph.  Two thoughts went through my head.  Firstly – I’d missed it. Second – I wanted to catch that train.  I sprinted away from a standing start until the computer showed more than 20mph and then stuck my head down and time trialled towards the group on this pan flat road in strong cross winds and driving rain.  For a moment I thought it was going to be too hard and then they had a change at the front which was enough for me to start closing the gap again.  I reckon it took me two kilometres to close that 100m gap, and by the time I had done it I wondered why I had.  I tucked in at the back of the group on the leeward side hoping to recover, thinking it foolish to ride so hard after 700 miles.  There were some strong riders on the front who took it along the last 15k into Dreux.  It looked like we were heading straight for the town before we suddenly turned left.  The tailwind helped me to promote myself in the group, which was handy, as a few splits developed on the next section, after a left turn more into the wind.  Then we turned right once more, into a gentle chalk valley.  The speeds remained over 20mph the whole way.   We followed a devious route along minor roads into Dreux, with a couple of short hills that brought me to the front of the group, which was already shredding after a number of sharp turns.  I arrived at the control with Gary the Australian.

It had been like the sprint before the café stop on a CCB club run, high speed, wheel-to-wheel stuff, with the adrenalin running and I was totally elated as I entered the control.  As it was like a club run I had a couple of pastries and a cup of tea, which being France turned out to be mildly hot water with a teabag on the side.  There was a man murdering an accordion.  But neither his music nor the hopeless tea could dampen my spirits.  This was the penultimate control.  It was 5.30pm and I only had 70k to go.  It was likely that not only was I going to finish on Thursday I was going to finish in daylight!

Gary was met by an Australian who had travelled all the way to France to provide support to Australian PBP riders at this final control.  He didn’t have much to do so he had a good chat with me.  He explained that he had real problems eating on Audax rides, with nausea and vomiting if he ate too much; this had limited him to 200k rides with the occasional 300k.  I explained that I had suffered from similar problems and one thing that had helped me was Gavilast tablets.  (I can’t remember exactly when I took Gavilast on Paris-Brest-Paris, but I took it every 12 hours except once, and the only time I suffered nausea on the ride was when I forgot to take the Gavilast)  He said he would take my advice and I hope it works for him.  I took a couple of bananas for the last stage and also put a gel in my back pocket; I reckoned that this would be sufficient to see me back.

I nearly went the wrong way out of Dreux but someone pointed me in the right direction.  There was then a maze of roads to follow before leaving the town.  One road was closed and the route took us through a suburb full of speed bumps which was a real pain.  Then we followed a series of narrow roads.  There was a long section of newly laid tarmac between ploughed fields.  In various places there was mud on the road, which made me worry about stones getting in the tyres.  I found myself in a group of three with one rider going really hard, I could just about hold his wheel, but gained an advantage hammering through one village over potholed roads that would have not been out of place in West Berkshire.  Then, just as we went up a narrow gentle climb, I realised my front tyre was going flat.  I pulled over to the side of the road, cursing.  It was my trusty 28mm Schwalbe touring tyre that had seen two winters of club runs, two Bryan Chapmans, and a whole series of other rides without puncturing.  It did not take me long to find the cause of the problem, a long tooth shaped flint which would have put most Hampshire flints to shame.  At least the tyre was easy to remove, and it was not long before I had the wheel back on.  Two marshals on motorbikes stopped to ask if I was OK.  They didn’t understand my explanation that it was just a puncture but eventually with shakes of head I managed to convince them that I was OK.  Then I packed up the bike and headed off.  Before the puncture I expected to complete the ride before 9pm, in less than 71 hours, but it was obviously going to be difficult to make that time now.  I started off hard, but this was because my mental arithmetic was struggling to cope with nearly 1200km of riding and I had thought that I needed to get in by 9pm to achieve a 72 hour time.  Then I realised my mistake and eased off.

The route went through a wooded section.  The spitting rain returned and then got heavier.  As I approached Bourdonne it came down heavily.  There was a long wall to the right hand side of the road as it skirted the estate of a chateau.  I counted down the distance to Gambais, knowing that the route back from there would be familiar.  Then the rain absolutely sheeted down, just like it had towards the end of the 2006 Bryan Chapman.  All the cars had their lights on in the gloom and the road was just one slick of water.  There was a short climb out of Gambais and fortunately the rain eased off to a steady downpour.  The rain jacket was pointless, nothing short of a dry suit or a diving bell would keep that sort of rain out.  Having ridden back along this section it was familiar.  As I approached Gambaiseuil I saw Australian Gary by the side of the road; it was his turn to fix a puncture.  He was not the only one who had been caught out by flinty roads and heavy rain.  The decorative cobbles across the road in Gambaiseuil were a double curse, both rough on the bottom and treacherous on the grip.  On the warm up ride the next hill had been a stiff climb but no problem in the saddle in 40-21 but the attempt at repeating this lasted about fifty metres before I dropped it to 40-26 and plodded up out of the saddle.  This was a sign of having ridden 1200km.  In Montfort d’Amaury I remembered that there was a steep downhill to a mini-roundabout.  It was treacherous on the brakes and I was worried that I might not be able to stop.  Landmarks passed by, the traffic lights at the foot of another hill and then the roundabout in Jouars where the motorcycle escort had pulled off.  I was finally tiring; there was a sensation of wanting to get the ride over with but no great urgency to finish.  The climb out of Elancourt was the last hill then it was the endless succession of traffic lights towards the finish.  I found myself in a loose group of equally tired riders.  None of us could hold a wheel properly.  Every one of these seemed to turn red as we approached them.  In the last twenty kilometres, my right knee had developed a sharp pain (surprisingly the left knee, which had troubled me for much of the ride, was pain free), and this did not appreciate each requirement for acceleration.  The route back was slightly different from the way out and seemed endless (despite being slightly shorter), as it wound its way through the town centre to the finish.  I sprinted the last few sections between traffic lights out of perversity and then rolled neatly up the wooden ramp off the roundabout.  There was a reasonable crowd gathered but I was feeling a little dazed.  I don’t think it was anticlimax, or any emotion.  The feelings over the last 20km were just simply the mind gradually turning itself off.  For seventy-one hours (except the five hours combined of catatonic stupor in Carhaix and Fougeres I had been concentrating, focusing on the road, the weather, the wheel in front, calculating how much energy I had, where and when and what to eat, how to cope with a broken saddle, how far could I get before I needed to sleep, what was the best way to echelon in a group to minimise the effect of the wind, what was the best gear in which to climb the next hill, the optimum moment to get out of the saddle, how to ease the pain in the left knee, or the bottom, was that group ahead going to hold together, were they going too fast, too slow, too erratic, when should I go to the front, how long should I stay there, was the pace too fast up the hill to the others behind, how much longer can I hold that wheel, and in the moments of peace between these calculation, prayer, thoughts of home, thoughts of the finish.  Now I was at the finish and tired.  The physical tiredness had not yet caught up, but the mental tiredness had.  There were plenty of staff at the finish, but hardly any of them seemed to usher the tired cyclist to the control.  I must have lost a minute or two being misdirected before I handed in my brevet, which had been carefully carried around the entire ride and somehow kept dry.

There weren’t a huge number of riders at the finish.  A few were wandering about aimlessly and a few others were flaked out asleep.  Then I saw Gary, the Australian, so we stopped and chatted.

Something else was trying to settle in my mind.  I had finished in 71 hours and 12 minutes, nearly four hours faster than I had expected.  I would have settled for a Friday morning finish in 80 hours.  I had not anticipated that I would be so fast.  They had offered a free meal so I went and shivered over this and my free glass of wine.  Most of the riders at the finish were quiet, as if their achievements had not sunk in.  Perhaps their minds were like mine, still partly out on the road, watching the scenery roll past, balancing in the cross-winds, ignoring the rain, sometimes spitting, sometimes lashing, rarely far away.  The memories of sunshine on the Pont Albert-Luppe were very distant.  The sensation of waiting with anticipation and frustration at the start were forgotten.

I soon got cold and returned to the Gymnase, which was really warm.  I had a quick look at the photos on the Maindru stand, which showed how wet it was at Dinge, just before Tinteniac on the way out.  There was at least one set of photos that I could not remember them taking (and still don’t), just as I suspect that if I rode Paris-Brest-Paris again there would be bits blanked out from my memory (unlike most long distance rides where I can recall every hill, every bump, and every turning when I pass by them again).

There was no-one else around that I could recognise, so I rode out, shivering, back to the hotel.

Mike, the guide, and Gordon Panicca were at in the hotel.  Gordon was the only other of our party that had finished, having ridden with the vedettes.  Ann Benton was there and I gathered she had packed.  It was only in conversation later that I heard about her accident.  They had salvaged some snacks and baguettes but the bar seemed closed.  Mike was very impressed with my time.  After a quick chat, I went upstairs and had an extremely pleasant shower and put on dry clothes for the first time in 48 hours.  This was the motivation for returning.

On the ferry on the way out there had been a free quarter bottle of wine with the meal.  I had salvaged this and left it in my bag.  This was my celebratory drink, down in the hotel lobby.  Mike was very impressed with my time for a first ride, especially given that I had a significant mechanical.  Gordon was also impressed, it turned out that I had ridden fast than him as he had started out with the vedettes.  He suggested that the weather was worth about 4 hours extra this time than the last (held in good weather).

The time was beginning to sink in.  Gordon suggested that I would be in the top 1000 finishers.  Fatigue had dimmed my usually good mental arithmetic throughout the second half of the ride, but I did some proper calculations.  A departure time of 10.10pm Monday and arrival in Brest of 9.00am gave an outbound leg of 33 hours and 50 minutes.  Leaving Brest at 10.00am Wednesday and returning 9.20pm Thursday gave a return leg of 35 hours 20 minutes.  This suggested that I lost very little pace on the second and third days, especially as the combination of sleep stops and mechanicals virtually cancelled each other out, and the weather was equally perverse on both legs.

Gordon and Mike started to doze.  My brain was still active from the adrenalin and the tail end of the caffeine effect.  Then Dave Bradshaw walked in.  He looked shattered.  From various bits of conversation I put together the details: he had been aiming for a sub-60 hour time and had decided the best way to do this was to go for the Randonneur start at 5am, so to maximise the amount of daylight.  However, this meant that he had started in the worst of the weather.  He would also have been hammering through the tail end of a demoralised field, which was unlikely to be any help to him, and also hitting many of the big controls when they were at their busiest.  His actual time of 66 hours was still highly impressive to me but I got the feeling that he was disappointed.  This is the strange thing with expectations.  He had aimed to finish 15 hours quicker than me and he actually finished just under 5 hours quicker, so he was 6 hours slower and I was four hours quicker than expected.  Result, he was disappointed, I was ecstatic.  Yet he had still finished 12 hours quicker than last time whereas I had probably set my expectations too low.  Gordon reckoned that the ride took 4 hours longer this time than in 2003 due to the bad weather.  (This was backed up by the statistics.  In 2003 245 riders posted a sub-60 hour time whereas in 2007, the 245 placed rider posted a time of just over 63 ½ hours).

Unfortunately, this conversation, continued the next day and on the Saturday set me off on a dangerous course, almost certain to set me in the same trap as Dave.  If I could do 71 hours in bad weather, without trying to go especially fast, on an unaerodynamic Audax frame with mudguards and rack, what could I do with a fast frame, fast wheels, and vehicle support?  The magic 60 hours beckons and will sit there as a temptation for the next four years.  It would be foolish to predict what might happen over that time.  4 years before I had just completed by first ever 300k ride in a state of exhaustion thinking that would be about my limit.  Now I had completed 4 times the distance, in a fair degree of style.

It was time for sleep, in a proper bed.

The next day was strange, surreal.  For a start, I could not walk down stairs.  My legs had seized almost completely and I could only go down stairs one step at a time, leaning on the handrail.  It was a time for catching up, firstly to hear the disasters.  Ann Benton had broken her arm.  Richard Phipps had inexplicable crashed on the first night, been taken to hospital for a check up and had to abandon; perhaps he had just fallen asleep, he could not tell.  Chris Rutter had abandoned on the return to Loudeac, having problems with glasses in the continuous rain.  Mike Sadler had abandoned on the same leg; the muscles in his neck had given way and he could not lift his head to see the road clearly.  Others had gone well, Judith Swallow had finished, keeping a fellow rider company.  Dave Johnston was true to his plan; fairly fast out to Brest and then enjoy the ride back.

Chris, Dave Bradshaw, and I walked up to the Gymnase about lunchtime, this time by the shortest route.  We looked at our photos and I paid for a set of pictures taken on the Tuesday morning and afternoon.  Then we went round to the restaurant for more food and the others claimed their free drink (I had claimed mine the night before).  Then we went round to sit in the middle of the roundabout and watch the later finishers roll in.  Some completed the ride in style, some, chiefly Americans, did so with false drama.  A group of Cardiff Byways riders in pink jerseys and berets did a lap of honour.  Two unfortunate riders went round the roundabout twice before finding the finish exit.  Quite a number of riders were suffering from collapsed necks, their heads supported by neck braces, or by two inner tubes, one tied to the back of the saddle.  Some were plainly completely exhausted.  Others, perhaps stronger riders who had ridden along to help weaker friends looked comparatively okay.  Various people appeared with cans of beer – Dave Johnston and Ian Weatherill, then Damon Peacock and Heather Swift turned up with more beer.  Damon is a film producer who rides along with a digital camcorder, interviewing riders whilst riding the route himself; it is quite achievement to complete the ride let alone make a movie at the same time.  Heather acts as vehicle support, swapping batteries and camcorders and capturing additional footage at the controls.  She reckoned that it takes about 40 hours to drive the route, stopping at all of the controls, which supports my usual reckoning that the cycling time for an Audax route is about half that of the driving time.  It was nice just to chat and banter and the afternoon disappeared quickly.  The only problem was standing up with seized legs and I had to be pulled to my feet.

On the way back I met Dave and Pam Pilbeam.  Dave had completed my ride and was interested in my proposed article on training for Audax.  I felt that my gym training had been an excellent complement to miles on the bike.  My leg strength and endurance was clearly better than my peers, both in the way that I regularly passed everyone on the hills and also the relatively even splits out and back.  But this was not the only specific preparation I had done.  Over the last two months before Paris-Brest-Paris my gym work was focused on upper back and neck strength; even the aerobic element was an 800m swim in the pool.  The result was no upper back pain or neck pain despite 1200km of cross-winds.  A few years before 100km of cross-winds would have been sufficient for me to be painfully stiff the next day.  (I did have the usual problem of a trapped nerve in one of the top vertebrae, with a legacy of numbness in the fourth finger of my left hand and the fourth toe of my left foot.  This was the same after all my 600k rides so I was not worried about it when it happened on this one.  It takes about two days to come on and then about a month to go away.).  Then I waddled back to the hotel to pack up my bike.  I made a half-hearted attempt to wash it, which was pointless.  (When I got back home it dawned on me that we had ridden 770 miles in winter conditions, which is the same sort of mileage as I would normally to from 1 October to 31 December.  It took me two hours of detailed scrubbing and polishing to clean the bicycle, enough to relay the whole story of Paris-Brest-Paris to my fascinated parents with umpteen interruptions for questions and general discussion.)

There was a dinner and it was possible to hear other stories.  Some people had made it back just in time, but others had not.  Mike made a speech, but seemed disappointed, he felt that he had not done enough, so Gordon and I talked him up.  His heart had been in the right place – just a few tips had been really helpful for me, even though I would have finished without them, and some of the advice on navigating the controls would have been very helpful for those struggling to reach the time limit.  The coach support and hotel accommodation had taken a lot of unnecessary stress out of the adventure and I would use the same arrangements again.

There are many reflections on Paris-Brest-Paris.  Even now, six weeks after the event, various memories appear and disappear.  At a Church study group we were examining the Beatitudes and the phrase “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven”.  It made me think that if I plotted the frequency of my prayer it would coincide with the most difficult parts of the rides, that I turned to God when I most needed help and was mostly likely to ignore him when things were going well.  My prayers were answered.  He looked after me and also the other riders.  I do not think there were any fatalities; there had been one in 2003.  All of our coach returned alive, with only one serious injury, a broken arm.  .