Bike2bless

Bike2Bless 2008 was a huge success, a huge amount of fun and raised a huge

amount of money for Bless' work in Croatia this summer. 11 people, 10.5

bikes and 200km of French countryside. It was a circular route starting and

ending in Caen and taking in as many hills as possible, not easy for a man

who had done two days of training, all on the flat of the Dutch Dykes. The

plan, like all good invasions of France by a group of English, Dutch and

German, was to follow a carefully calculated route that would allow us

regular breaks at an assortment of French café's and be in a hotel in time

for a good French supper and local vin d'table. We would move as a

streamline, seamless mass of cyclists, eleven people moving as one, a sight

of cycling beauty in the French countryside, like a flock of Starlings

dancing through the air or a shoal of fish darting through the sea. We were

many but we would act as one and take France by storm. Children would stand

in villages and wave Union Jack flags as we sped on our way, mothers would

come out and throw sunflower petals at us, Farmers would give us bottles

of beer to quench our aching thirst. It was to be a beautiful thing. There

was however two schools of thought amongst the troops as to how this

carefully calculated route should be executed:  Thought Process A, which we

shall call the Thomas Gwilliam (one of our esteemed Trustees) approach and

Thought Process B, known herein as the David Beasley (our esteemed Bless

Manger?? )approach. The Thomas Gwilliam approach is to look at the route

over breakfast, memorise it completely and then forget it absolutely. The

approach works on two basic principles: routes are there merely as a guide

(and largely to be avoided); obstacles do not exist. Hedgerows, marshland,

estuaries, sand, the sea and three lane motorways are not objects to divert

around but hurdles to overcome. It is the Right-To-Room approach of the

cycling world. God made the World, he did not make Cycle Paths and B Roads.

The David Beasley approach is look at the route over breakfast, memorise it

completely and then check it thoroughly at every junction, every stop and

then occasionally whilst cycling. The results of the two schools of thought

- a crazy mix of gentle road cycling, getting thoroughly lost, stopping in

places we weren't meant to stop, cycling through estuaries we weren't

supposed to cycle through, running over small children we weren't suppose to

run over and drinking too much beer (as a mechanism to cope). It was however

a complete blast. The most fun you can have on two wheels. If we could have

done six days we would have done; if we could have continued to Paris, we

would have done; are we doing it again next year - certainly. There is

something that happens when a group of men wear spandex and padded shorts -

something that binds you together, a bond. We may not have cycled as one

homogenous unit, there may have been a kilometre or two between the front of

the pack and the back of the pack; we may have arrived at the hotels at

different times, but we were one and we're already getting ready for next

year.

Ben Wickham