Final Update!!!

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the delayed update. We arrived in St. Tropez on Saturday 17th, day 10, as we had hoped.

Continuing from the last time we updated you, the next morning we faced an awesome headwind. It was about 22MPH and, as it was Archie’s day-off of map reading, he found great pleasure in blaming Tom and Kells for the wind, and that we were too close to the hill which was apparently making it a lot stronger. Anyway, the target we set looked unlikely, when after our morning shift we had covered a third of the desired distance. To be fair, it felt like we had been cycling uphill all morning. As an example of just how strong the wind was, whilst standing around having yet another breather, a piece of bark was ripped off the nearby tree and slapped Jamie in the face. As none of us were in a very good mood at the time, this certainly cheered us up, although Jamie still complains about the ‘massive cut’ he has on the inside of his mouth.
Unfortunately, spirits were not very high at the end of the day, when we had to find a campsite 50K from our original destination, in Viviers.
The next day we set ourselves the target of making up for lost ground and trying to reach Aix en Provence. This seemed daunting but we got up early and really turned the afterburners on… By Brekky, we had already covered the same amount of mileage we had done the day before so we were in good stead, yet still had some hills to cross before the we got close. We hedged our bets and took advice from JCR, who advised a clever, yet high-risk strategy of cutting off 20-30 Km off our journey. The decision went to a vote, for the first time, Jamie won a vote leaving Archie and Barney complaining. Usually Tom and Humphrey were the deciding voters!
So after a few hills early on, still with momentum from a good mornings work, we took fewer breaks and peddled hard. It was a great feeling, cycling into Aix en Provence, down from the hills into the city centre, even though we found ourselves on a 4-lane motorway for part of it, with Kells stuck in the left hand lane holding up traffic, however, he didn’t fail 4 driving tests for nothing, with the experience of a seasoned driver, he didn’t look, he just turned and came back over to the right.. ( he probably wasn’t the only one to do this as Tom was also on his second!) Unfortunately we had a couple of problems finding the campsite in the evening, and to make things worse Archie dropped his phone whilst asking for directions, later to be collected by Skipper and K’naan, however mysteriously not working..

The next day, we had high spirits in the knowledge that we were getting close to St.Tropez, and again set off at lightning pace… Feeling so confident, we decided the rucksack was not needed for the day; we had only experienced three over the past 8 days (although it turns out Archie had actually experienced one, however kept quiet to maintain his pride after giving Barney so much stick – He cycled 20Km with a nearly flat back tyre!)
But by 11 O’clock, Sods law struck, as we were forced to call the Landrover after a third puncture. Barney was battling up a hill, when he suddenly realised he had his first puncture. So, taking the sole inner tube we had in Archie’s saddlebag, he replaced the tyre... But, disaster struck when that tube proceeded to burst just minutes later. Barney, looking quite sheepish had to tell us what had happened and we then waited 45 minutes for the Landrover to locate us. But the rest of the day went well, we arrived in Le Luc, only 30Km away from the final destination and were thrilled to only be so close, and for some the knowledge that we wouldn’t have to bother packing up our tents and tidying the campsite every morning. When we were greeted at the campsite, we were asked if we minded noise, which we said we didn’t, and they warned us that there was going to be a party that night at the campsite, which got us excited as we thought we might be celebrating one night early. However, when we went down for a drink, this turned out to be the most depressing sit-down supper and dancing, which we were clearly the only guests not to be invited to following an incident at the pool earlier on. This was when we all went to the pool soon after arrival and were greeted by stares from everyone there, which admittedly wasn’t unusual to us by this stage, as we seemed to stand out wherever we went… however, we got in the pool and started playing volley ball when the manager came over and absolutely let rip at us in extremely poor English, shouting at us in front of everyone about the fact that we were wearing the wrong swimming trunks. Needless to say, we were far from happy about this, and skipper in particular made a point of exiting the pool extremely slowly, and as he kept reminding us, if he had been able to speak French, he would have given this guy a piece of his mind… also unhappy about this was JCR, who again was the only one wearing skimpies in order to fit in amongst the frogs.

Finally, the last day started off with another one of Barney’s interesting choices of route. This one, he assured us, was a shortcut. On paper it did look so, but as we turned off the flat, concrete main road onto a dirt track, which led up past a landfill site, our doubts emerged. The track did, however avoid a 300m climb so this turned out to be one of Barney’s better gambles. By the time we reached the Garde-Freneit route we were all glad to be back on smooth concrete, we now all knew we were on the home straight and not even the massive hill climb ahead of us could slow us down or dampen our spirits. We blasted up the hill and cruised causally in St Tropez.

Arriving in St. Tropez we were met by all our families (Tom’s included much to his surprise). As we crossed the line there was a universal feeling of great excitement and satisfaction. The champagne was flowing, mostly from Hec’s hand and despite a minor incident of Nelson Snr. splitting his hand open on a bottle, it was an overwhelming experience and will not be forgotten.

We would all like to thank you so much for your generosity and support. An especially large thanks is due to all the parents who were absolutely fantastic in the way they helped with organisation and fully supported the idea from day 1, before Christmas when we first had the idea. We are delighted to have far exceeded our sponsorship target of £10,000 by more than double that. However we are still hoping to see a couple more donations so please see our justgiving for an ongoing, almost final figure. A special thanks must go to Henry Thornton and the Thornton Trust, who’s £10,000 donation spurred us greatly on our way.

Many pictures to follow!