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A


personal record of Gerry‘s bicycle ride from Navestock


to Mertesdorf W


hy The idea of cycling to Germany entered into my


head for number of reasons. First, after a gap of about 35 years, I had joined a cycling club and since February of this year have been riding quite hard on a regular basis - 70 miles every Saturday before lunch is about the norm. Sec- ondly, due to our chil- drens‘ ages, we missed out on a Summer holiday this year and, finally, the club‘s trip to Hermeskeil pre- sented an opportunity for a test- ing ride and also to raise some money for charity.


D Planning the Trip


ead simple! Work out the distance between start


and finish and divide by the dis- tance that you reckon on doing each day. I estimated the dis- tance to Hermeskeil to be ap- proximately 400 miles and, therefore, 4 days. Detailed route planning for a bike trip is a bit more complicated as you can- not, for example, leave yourself miles from anywhere looking for a hotel nor can you, or would you want to, use motorways.


I 18


am accused of being a mapaholic


by my family who cannot understand why I take pleasure in simply poring over a map. Anyway, study- ing paper maps sup- plemented by internet mapping, aerial photographs and tourist web-sites was a most enjoyable and absorbing


exercise from which I ar- rived at my route.


D T


ay One - Fri 10.10.08 – Navestock (GB) to


St. Omer (F) (106 miles or 170k)


o keep to my schedule of four days, I needed to start


my second day on the other side of the channel. Dover is about 75 miles from home and St. Omer was therefore the obvious choice for the first night being at least 25 miles in- side France. Work- ing backwards from here meant getting a


ferry to Calais at about lunchtime so as to eat on the ferry and not lose valuable riding time. This, in turn, meant getting an even earlier ferry (Tilbury to Gravesend) at about 7.30 in the morning. So it was, therefore, that I set off from Navestock at 6.00 am to cover the 20 miles down the A128 to Tilbury – in the dark!


I


t was a pity that I had to start in the dark as the front light


was quite heavy and had to be lugged around for the rest of the trip. Weight was always going to be the big issue and, when fully loaded, pick- ing up the bike felt like the back wheel was bolted to the ground! The


effect of weight on a bike is mainly to accentuate the gradi- ents; for better or worse – usu-


ally the worse. Bearing this in mind,


the


choice of road after embarking from the ferry at Gravesend


was made for me; I aimed for Rochester via Lower Higham rather than Higham!


A


fter Rochester it was a case of following as closely


as possible the old A2; or Wat- ling Street to the Romans amongst you. This, of course, led to Canterbury where it was time to take on fuel (a coffee and a pastry) for the remaining hour or so to Dover. Unfortu- nately,


the


hitherto good pro- gress made me compla- cent as I lingered for too long in the cafe. Upon leav-


ing Canterbury a south easterly wind got up and it soon became apparent that my preferred route of weaving in and out of villages to avoid the main road was not going to get me to Dover in time to catch the 1.00 ferry.


C


atching the lunchtime ferry was probably the most im-


portant deadline of the trip. It was therefore time to throw a carefully planned quiet and sce- nic route out of the window and just get onto the A2 dual car- riageway and grit my teeth all the way into Dover. To give some idea of the strength of the wind, I actually had to pedal quite hard to keep up a reason- able pace going down the steep hill which leads to the ferry terminal!


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