Welcome to Nowhere

We woke up In Calais with the sun thinking about making an appearance , but the clouds decided to cancel that show , a quick breakfast and on to the bikes , “turn right when you leave the hotel and follow the signs” , turn right we did and hit the wall of the head winds , I don’t know how fast the wind was blowing but riding head in to it was rough to say the least.
Having my knees sore from the day before I put on the bracers ( applying Vaseline under it so it won’t chafe to hard) i paddled
on , for the first 11km I was using the two lowest gears cause I just couldn’t put more pressure on the knees .
Then we hit the “undulations” or in the riders plain terms “Big F*&king hills” , sore bum , aching knees and a hill do not go well together but I managed to soldier on to the first water stop of the day where I took the knee bracers off only to see that they rubbed me so bad i had clotted blood in the under side of my knees, No worries , it will pass.

From there on I rode with out the bracers and it was actually better , I managed to pick up some pace and made the lunch break ( a lovely spot near a pond – don’t ask me for the name of the place) , where the Nokia phone battery decided to die , taking the GPS tracker with her, so now I don’t have a track record of the route from the water stop to the end ( this was at the 80km point ).

Lunch was a welcome stop as they broke out the hot food , a warm plate of Pasta with Chicken , was brilliant , I didn’t even bother looking at the rest of the food.
After that we climbed on the bike and we resumed our way to Abberville which will be our resting stop for the night , with the crew saying 40 km to go , in relatively smooth and easy road , My Ass will testify other wise !!!
The road was rubbish and the hills were not flat … unless you are a Sherpa !!! , and to top it all up the wind died down .. to our joy .. only to have a serious pissing heavy rain come down on us for the next 40 km.
The water proofs were a bit of help and we put on our rear lights , to say that by the time I got to the hotel I was soaked will be an understatement in the least .

Day 2 over and another 120 km done .