What started as a crazy idea to celebrate my 50th birthday, soon grew into an all consuming reality. Months of training, hours deciding on kit and a major falling out lead to the ride of my life.
I remember when the idea first came into my head and ashamedly it was not mine or original. I was watching a Channel 4 cycling programme with an interview with the fashion designer and keen cyclist Jeff Banks. He was explaining how he had ridden from London to Lake Como. The aim of the ride had been to visit the centre of the cycling world – The church of Madonna Del Ghisallo. He had cycled from London, over to Calais and then down in a roughly south-easterly direction into Italy. I quickly searched for his email address and sent a message begging for any information on his route. To my delight, and surprise I received his map book and highlighted route, about a week later. Armed with this information and about two years until my departure, I began to look for cycling companions.
At work, I quickly found a colleague who was crazy enough to entertain the idea of the bike ride. Ross, a fellow teacher had recently given up smoking and wanted to get fit. I convinced him that there was no better way of achieving this goal than by riding halfway across Europe. His enthusiasm for the adventure was truly amazing and he rather too quickly purchased two bikes to begin training with. We began with some short (25/30 mile) rides, which highlighted Ross’ lack of cycling experience. He also had an uncanny ability to knack of crashing his bike – finally breaking an arm in one off. However, despite his novice status we trained hard and our fitness grew.
I had never intended to ensnare anyone else into the ride, but whilst talking over lunch another colleague, Den heard and asked if he could join the ride. Nothing better than a volunteer over a pressed man. Den was vastly different to Ross in experience and had many years of cycling behind him. We soon became a tight little group and the planning could begin.
I decided from an early point that I needed to buy the bike I was to ride to Italy on first, and train on it from the start. I wanted my body to grow accustomed to the bike and train “loaded up” to get use to the feeling of weight. My aim was to carry about 12kg of kit – not full touring setup, but not credit-card. I purchased a Genesis Equilibrium Ti Disc frame and built it around a full Shimano Ultergra groupset. The bike was beautiful and provided me with a strong, yet light-weight platform.
Training was progressing well when disaster struck. On a routine ride to work I was knocked off my bike and shattered my collar-bone in 5 places. This put me out of action for three months and dented not only my body, but my confidence for quite some time.
Time tripped by and slowly but surely we got closer to the big day…