Day 1: What a day !!!

Day 1 of our challenge is over - well at least the cycling part is anyway. But what a day !! Hard, exhilarating, and ridiculously funny - all at the same time. A day where if it could go wrong...well it did.

We all got up around 6am and met for breakfast at 6.30am. The weather was at least as bad as we had been told: severe rain, strong wind and very cold - 3 degrees at 6.30am in fact. After a swift breakfast we went to the O2 where we were met by our ex Kili team members in Grant Lumley and Brian Harris (plus his wife Shelley) along with family members from the Payne, Rolls and Blay families.

Ready for the off

In incessant rain we set off at 7.45am - pretty much on schedule for what was set to be a gruelling 70 mile day. After 15 hard miles riding straight into the headwind, we stopped for a break at a local petrol station. This was hard: cycling in the rain is not much fun but starting Day 1 in a monsoon and a semi flipping hurricane was just not a good start !!!

Still we soldiered on. And on, and on and on. After 28 miles Matt said to me "Mate shouldn't we be going East??"" Of course I said - "Well we are going West" he said "And have been for miles." "Don't be daft" was my reply..............when Tony came up and said "We have a problem.........we are nearly back at the O2". Of course I laughed thinking they were joking, but in fact they weren't and upon leaving the 15 mile break stop the motorcycle escort had pressed "O2" on his Sat Nav and not "Dover" and we had just done a near 30 mile circle. In driving incessant rain. I kid you not.....................

Where's dover exactly?

So, undeterred we made a quick calculation that we had still done 30 miles and, if we made up time by catching a cab to Canterbury and cycling the last 20 miles we could still make the scheduled ferry in time and we would still have cycled 50 miles in the day. We would then have to make up the 20 miles over the next 13 days.

So that's what we did - and arrived a Dover at 3.30pm in time to get our 4.30pm ferry !! We all completed Day 1 save for Lisa who has a nasty cough and it was worsening badly in the rain. She took the sensible decision to rest up in the afternoon and preserve her body for the remaining 13 days.

Blimey - honestly - you couldn't make it up !! The biggest rainfall day of the year; one of the windiest days for quite some time; the wind blowing unusually from the East and spending 30 miles going in a pretty much complete circle !!

Day 2 anyone ???