Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

On 30 July, my wife Jenny and I will be leaving London on our very own tandem bike and cycling to…Nice. 

We'll cover 1,200km in less than a fortnight. The tandem ride is an ambition I have had for a while, I love the closeness and team work involved. It's all for a good cause – I have set myself a target of £25,000 which will allow my team at the National Hospital to purchase a special high-tech tool needed for difficult endoscopic procedures.

Any support you can offer will really help me on this challenge.

Thank you for your kind donations-

Michael

Day 1  Off to Portsmouth

Slightly nervous as Jenny taking train as she is working till 4pm and also because I am not yet sure if we have bitten off more than we can chew!  As Portsmouth ride is hellish and the train won't take tandems. our daughter who passed her test yesterday is driving me down!  We met Jenny at the station.

Days 2-14!

Back home, hardly believing we made it.

I will post a photo of us on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice in front of the Negresco Hotel, when I have conquered the technology.

Thank you to all those who have so generously sponsored us.  It kept us going. 

 

It was much harder than I had realised, and although I did a long tandem ride as a twenty one year old, I had forgotten the effect of time.  I was  far too ambitious in our daily milage too without a support vehicle, and because I had booked us into all the hotels on route put us under quite some strain

 

The first day in Normandy went fine until lunch time, when at 50 miles, I hit the wall.  We managed to struggle on and made our first hotel at 110 miles after 13 hours on the road.  This was clearly an impracticle daily time in saddle so we had to make some modifications to the schedule.

 

We cheated a bit after that and apart from the fourth day cycling along beautiful lanes along the Cher River, managing 108 miles, managed to keep  distances down to a more managable 50+ a day.

 

The last five days in Provence were fun, and the final fifteen miles into Nice along a beautifully flat cycle path just up from the beach were sheer bliss.

 

In the end we actually cycled 510 miles (830kilometers) - not bad in two weeks although not quite the 800 (1200K) promised, but it was supposed to be a holiday!  I am sure you won't think too badly of us for that.

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