Day 4 - Beauvais to Paris

It's not far to go now, however, our preparation for the last push has been less than ideal.



True to form we decided to forsake the joys of the Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Beauvais and get a taxi to town. Things started badly and then got worse - the taxi was late, leading to an altercation about the fare (resolved by us paying 10 euros and walking off). Followed by a friendly local "recommending" a restaurant to us...top tip: Never eat in a restaurant with pictures of the food on the menu. We ended up having fondue at about 11pm - on return to the hotel we discovered we were locked out. Luckily Derek and Abby had their key, leaving Stu and I, and John and Craig homeless.



A call to our guides got us one empty room with a double bed, unfortunately not clean. Craig and I only slept in there because the others had stripped the bloodstained sheets of before we saw them. We had a poor night's sleep perched on opposite sides of the small double bed (that's the official story anyway.....)

Whilst this was going on, John, displaying an aptitude for B&E that was rather worrying, broke into another room and by about 2am we were all asleep.


Our late night meant we were tired and worse for wear the following morning - Stu was so asleep that when someone broke into the room and stole his camera he didn't wake up - readers you have been spared the the worst of the pictures.



When we're on the road though, we are soon flying along. We're riding well as a group and although the weather is not great we're making good enough time for a patisserie stop...





The last lunch stop in Auvers-sur-Oise is on the edge of the Paris conurbation - from here on in we are riding on city roads. We're excited and know we're going to make it now.

The weather hasn't finished with us though and yet again the rain is torrential. A desire for dry clothes and to see the Eiffel tower results in us all taking too many chances in the traffic, Derek ignores almost every red light from lunch until we reach the Park de Clichy where the whole group meets up to ride the last few miles to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.

We've got a few minutes and head off to a Cafe for a celebratory beer:



Pretty soon we head off, I try to savour the experience of riding down the Champs Elysee but the desire to race down it as fast as I can is too strong to resist. Despite getting separated by the last puncture of the trip (Abby -you get the record) we are all soon at the Eiffel Tower and the end of our trip:

We've made it - 300 miles and about 3500m of climbing. We've raised over £11k for the Prostate Cancer Charity (thank you everyone who supported us).



We've endured helmet hair:







numerous punctures, and a feeling that can only be described as "beyond moist......."