Thanks for the nice comments - I was really excited when they posted the photos to see my little bike on the internet!!

Anyway, this is a bit long but here's a bit about one of my adventures. I might have to move it to another thread sometime but thougth I'd start it off here.


Lets see – Paris Roubaix was a good one. It’s run from the outskirts of Paris to Roubaix in Flanders ( Southern Belgium) takes about 7 hours for the Pro’s to do it and large sections of it have cobbled farm tracks that have been used for years by farmers. It’s mostly flat but the cobbles are VERY rough so it’s like riding over millions of mini hills, which really sap your legs as the only way to ride them is hard. It’s usually run around Easter so its often wet and cold and the tracks turn to mud very quickly and it’s nickname is The Hell of the North, not only because it truly is a hard mans course, but it also goes past lots of areas that were involved in the serious trench warfare of the First World War.

Anyway, I’ve been to watch it twice – this first year I took my bike and had a go at riding the cobbles. Anyone can have a go before the race comes through and it was great fun – just very hard work! The weather was grey & freezing and we stood there waiting for the race to come through with a Belgium waffle in one hand ( yummy!) and a bottle of Primus – v .strong Belgium beer in the other .Despite the cold the atmosphere was great. Basically the crowd lines along a cart track only one car wide, that runs through the middle of a field and farmers had parked trailers along side and people were standing on them waiting for the race to come by.

When they finally came through it was incredible. Because the course is so narrow you really have to watch yourself and I ended up with mud splattered over my face as loads of riders and support cars zoomed by. I was freezing but it was well worth the wait to be able to see the riders so close up. T

The place we were standing at was about 40 mins from the finish, so by that point everyone was exhausted and some of the riders were just a pair of hollow eyes staring out of their mud splattered faces. The race finishes in Roubaix where riders race straight into the packed velodrome and do 2 laps in front of the roaring crowd before finally reaching the end and anyone who wins Paris-Roubaix has huge respect as it's probably the hardest one-day race around. By the way – this is all done on road bikes!!!. When you look at the surface you think they must be mad and ought to be on a nice comfy mountain bike, but no!


I went to see the race again last year and this time it was so hot I was standing there in a t-shirt and got sunburnt! We also took a mini – BBQ and cooked burgers and sausages on the roadside before the race came through. When they finally arrived it was in a huge cloud of dust – you could see them across approaching across the fields by the clouds of dust!

I’m going again in a few weeks time so I wonder what the day will hold this time. I’ll keep you posted….