First blog post.

In a weeks time I am taking my hybrid (TZ), some panniers, a tent and a lot of fear on the ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo. From there I am catching (hopefully), some trains to St Brevins les Pins at the mouth of the Loire. Then I’m spending 9 days cycling the course of the Loire to Nevers. It’s called the Eurovelo 6 route and one day will hopefully deposit me on the Black Sea at Constanta.

Yesterday was my first trial run on a fully loaded TZ.

Sarah agreed, under extreme duress, to accompany me on my test run… Not just on a fully loaded 20 mile bike ride, but also to test run my tent for the night. I say under duress – Sarah despises camping!! and cycling up hills…

For that reason I planned a route mainly downhill.

Taking the train from Clapham Junction to Woldingham (top of the N Downs), then rolling downhill all the way to Lingfield, where we would camp for the night. It’s a route I know from the club run and has some brilliant, if terrifying, downhills on country lanes, up and down, the Downs.

The ride to Lingfield went fairly hitch free, though I must say TZ handles very very differently with all the weight on. The front was light, especially at speed, and wobbling all over the place – lesson learned.  The pitching of the tent

went pretty smoothly too, and I wasn’t overly concerned about the hurricane remnant apparently coming our way! After that we peddled around a bit, took in some nice food, and wine – then headed back to the campsite (Longacres, Lingfield) for a kind of boozy picnic and retired for the eve.

All in all – a successful test. And a lovely 24 hours.