Captain Havoc and Coronals summer trip.

Captain Havoc

Being the first person (as far as I know) to cycle from Kilkenny to it's twin town of Moret sur-Loing, I've now decided I want to be the first person to cycle from Kilkenny to up the Col de l'Iseran. Plan is to get the ferry from Rosslare to Le Havre and cycle down, mounting the pass from the south east. After climbing I intend on getting a bus through the Mt. Blanc tunnel to Chamonix and cycle through roads I've cycled many times of Valais and Vaud before flying out of Geneva. I intend on staying in Formule 1 and similar budget hotels. Next month the TdF route will be announced and I plan on taking in some of that also, so I will be needing to book one hotel next month with the rest of it being properly planned as the dates for the ferries come out in January. I'll be working on a budget of about €1,000. I don't plan on having any backup as travelling light worked fine for me this year.

Does anyone else want to join me?

Planet X

Don't think the Rosslare Ferry goes to Le Harve? It goes to Roscoff and Cherbourg, the Irish Ferries Oscar Wilde anyway.
Bets of luck. I'm building a touring bike and plan to head to France for a bit next year. Nothing massive, week or so.

Captain Havoc

It's the return of the Killer Zombie thread. I've thrown in a holiday request for two weeks in July and I've formulated a route.

Monday 04/07/11:
Kilkenny to Rosslare 92km get ferry to Cherbourg.

Tuesday 05/07/11:
Cherbourg to Flers 145km

Wednesday 06/07/11
Flers to Le Mans 111km

Thursday 07/07/11
Le Mans to Châteauroux 215km (copying tour route)

Friday 08/07/11
Châteauroux to Montlucon 95km (watching stage finish in Châteauroux then heading late to Montlucon)

Saturday 09/07/11
Montlucon to Roanne 135km

Sunday 10/07/11
Roanne to Isle d'Abeau 120km

Monday 11/07/11
Rest day, faffing around Lyon for the day.

Tuesday 12/07/11
Isle d'Abeau to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne 145km

Wednesday 13/07/11
Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Séez 130km (heading over the Col de l'Iseran)

Thursday 14/07/11
Séez to Geneva (and to the pub)

Afterwards I'm heading back to Montreux for a couple of day to break the record for recounting the same story the most amount of times.

The total cost is €600, flights + hotels. I believe I'm being joined from Roanne to Geneva. If someone wants to come it'll bring down the cost to €400ish per person.

TTFN

ashleey

Maniac. Enjoy it. Watch out for the hill out of Cherbourg!

bcmf

We sailed into/and returned from Le Havre 2 years ago. Pretty sure it was with Irish Ferries.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

Captain Havoc

Thanks, you warned me of the hill last year and it was a piece of cake. I had to come back though as that road to Caen looked lethal and I took the coast road instead. Tour routes are announced in October yeah. I think a week around Brittany would be savage.

Diarmuid

The Etape du Tour finishing on Alpe d'Huez coincides with your trip. Not tempted?

Captain Havoc

Diarmuid wrote: »

The Etape du Tour finishing on Alpe d'Huez coincides with your trip. Not tempted?

Why not it is my rest day after all. Explains the lack of hotels around Modane.

ashleey

The coast road is always the right option round there. French main roads are real roads with lots of trucks as opposed to here with trucks on little roads

jwshooter

Im sure you would do it a lot cheaper if the ferry ticket was one way ..:D

Diarmuid

Captain Havoc wrote: »

Why not it is my rest day after all. Explains the lack of hotels around Modane.

A few of us booked a house 20k up the road from Modane for a week around that time. If you are in the region we should meet up.

Captain Havoc

Diarmuid wrote: »

A few of us booked a house 20k up the road from Modane for a week around that time. If you are in the region we should meet up.

Absolutely, you can climb the l'Iseran with us (and if someone has a car, cough, take our luggage, cough)

Captain Havoc

All booked, all paid for

Captain Havoc

Just thought I'd shamelessly bump update you all on the summer plans. I've plugged in about 2,000km since the start of the year (I'd planned for 3,500). I'm not feeling strong at all but much better than when I started after the winter last year, so there's hope yet. I think the two events I've done have stood me well as since them, I've been much better. I really wish I didn't have to work weekends and could be doing sportives every week but c'est la vie. Having the car though has been nice and I can take the bike with me when I'm heading away from Kilkenny, I'll be in Galway some day soon doing training for work in the morning so I'll have the afternoon to check out there.

Coronal will be joining me for six days, which I'm grateful for, it'll be nice that someone else will have to put up with my moaning. We've a van rented for the day of l'étape and we're going to l'alpe d'Huez to shout abuse at encourage the participants. I'm not looking forward to spending a day going uphill but I'm sure when I'm older I'll still be bragging about it. I'm also sooooooo looking forward to returning to Montreux, it's been ten years since I left there (fook, I'm getting old), I still keep in contact with my friends there and I can't wait to see them, how as ever, I think the road from Geneva is going to be very tough with the mother of all hangovers, Coronal you better watch out.

The charity side of things is slow, €242 has been donated to the mycharity page. The hospice fund in total has raised over €500,000 out of an approximate €3mil needed. Currently in Kilkenny and the surrounding counties of Laois, Carlow, Wexford, Waterford and Tipperary there is no hospice, so this would not just serve my own county of Kilkenny but also the surrounding counties. None of the money raised goes to me or the trip, I'm paying for it myself (it is my holiday after all ).

Thanks for all the support so far.

Coronal

Giving this a bit of a bump: I've just booked all my trains and hotels at last. I'm actually already in France the week before for a conference, in Strasbourg, which fits in nicely. I'm there for the weekend anyway, so I'm heading from there to Belfont, then on to Besancon and continuing as detailed here. It adds 60 km to the total distance, but means I don't have a 180 km day to start off on.

I should have well over 4000 km in the legs before setting off. I think every weekend in June is a long weekend, so I'll be out a few days each weekend. Hopefully enough that I won't slow the Captain down too much. The few days we're cycling together should be great to get a pull the whole way to Genevahave a bit of craic.

I've also set up a mycharity page, but have been a little poor at advertising the fact anywhere. So, bit of a bump for it; it's for the Jack and Jill foundation, to help kids with brain damage who suffer severe intellectual and physical developmental delay. Needless to say, most, if not all, government funding for this has been cut by now, so anything that can be donated is a great help. As above, all the money goes directly to them, this being a holiday for me!

Coronal

Gah, sorry for double post, had a minor browser crash and clicked "submit" twice.

Captain Havoc

If you slow Captain Sandbag down, you've got issues

Captain Havoc

Giving this a bit of a bump now. I can't believe how relaxed I am about the whole thing, I've done 4,000km of cycling this year, which is more than I did last year. It's now only three weeks away and I'm tapering a bit now but I'm not all that tired due to the lazy ass way I went about those 4,000kms, approximately 3,900 of those kilometers were spent in the small ring only going into the big ring for the odd decent, time-trial or tail-hurricane. It's also been a very dry year so far, so only one epic spin in the rain to mention. I don't know how I'll fair on the Col but I don't think you can prepare yourself for anything like that anyway.

The bike is not ready, there's still a couple of odd jobs to be done to it, including finding the remaining bolts for the rack and getting new ones, although my lazy ass ways tell me I'm just going to buy a new one thirty minutes before I'm due to leave. The bike again will be the lidl one, although I'm unsure about the aksium wheels I just got as the spokes are flat, which causes me concern about their strength, we'll probably go with them anyway.

Luggage, as per last year will be minimal, my leisure wear will consist of a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, sandals and two pairs of jocks. My riding wear will consist of two pairs of shorts, three pairs of socks, a base layer, a jersey (all MCC), shoes, fingerless gloves, sun glasses, race cap and helmet. Maintenance, I will have a multi-tool, chain splitter, large pump, adapter for petrol stations, tyre levers, four tubes and a spare tyre. I plan on bringing my camcorder and all photos will be done with my mobile phone which I hope to upload to my flickr account at the end of each day.

I'm pretty sure I've everything booked already, I'll go over that in due course and see what we've left out, all the important stuff is reserved and paid for. I haven't really looked ahead for things to do as the only thing I plan on doing is cycling and sleeping until we get to Geneva where I plan on horsing into steak tartare and pints of Cardinal. Despite having GPS on the phone, I'm not going to use it as my map reading skills are very good, I'll just buy these as I go along.

On the charity side of things, I'm pretty disappointed at how much I've raised, €627 out of planned €2,770. I know I don't need to be too disappointed as none of the cash is going to myself but it is a cause I feel strongly about so if you have any spare change, I'm rattling my tin can here for the Susie Long Hospice fund. There are other ways though you can help by linking or updating this to your facebook pages, if you have a business perhaps you could promote it by updating it on the business facebook page or printing off one of these posters and putting it in your shop (especially if you're in KK). In another attempt to raise cash, while I'm gone there'll be a sticky auctioning a "Cycling" magazine from January 1982 which has Stephen Roche on the cover, thanks to thebouldwhacker, we got it autographed by the man himself at the recent Tour de Cure, so we hope it's worth a few quid, again all money goes to the Susie Long Hospice Fund.

Right, that's it I guess, thanks for all the help to date and a pre-thanks for all the help I will get, I'm sure Coronal will have his update soon enough.

Hermy

Is there a bank account I can lodge some money in? I don't has a credit card.

Captain Havoc

There is indeed.

www.susielonghospice.com wrote:

Make a Donation
You can make a donation by:

Directly lodging your donation to the fund bank account:

Bank: AIB High St., Kilkenny
A/C Name: Susie Long Hospice Fund
A/C No: 34627051
Sort Code: 93-31-98
IBAN: IE70AIBK
Swift: AIBKIE2D
Note: Please include your name and the word “donation” in the narrative of the lodgement slip, as this helps us keep account of our funds.

Acknowledgement:
If you would like to receive an acknowledgement, please send your lodgement slip and your contact details to our Treasurer at the address below.

Setting up a Direct Debit with your bank

Complete a standard Direct Debit Mandate Form from your bank

Sending a cheque, payable to the “Susie Long Hospice Fund” to:

The Treasurer
Susie Long Hospice Fund
&s Rioch's Terrace
Kilkenny

Tel. 087 948 6636

Note: The Susie Long Hospice Fund has charitable status and as a result, donations in excess of EUR250.00 per year can be claimed back against tax. Charity Number: CHY 17950

Hermy

Sorted.

Toblerone1978

Captain Havoc wrote: »

Maintenance, I will have a multi-tool, chain splitter, large pump, adapter for petrol stations, tyre levers, four tubes and a spare tyre.

I thought this was supposed to be a cycling challenge, you're making it too easy bringing all this gear with you

Remind me to give you a well deserved donation before I go on my hols next wk. When are you going?

Captain Havoc

Toblerone1978 wrote: »

I thought this was supposed to be a cycling challenge, you're making it too easy bringing all this gear with you

Remind me to give you a well deserved donation before I go on my hols next wk. When are you going?

Yeah, the challenge is seeing how long I can get Coronal to let me slip-stream him :P

I will.

Coronal

Hah, if you're slip-streaming me, who's gonna get me all the way to Geneva? I suspect we're going to end up trackstanding outside Roanne to see who takes the first pull :pac:

Captain Havoc

There's something I didn't break to you yet.

Coronal

Oh, I see. Interesting. I'll get me bigger cassette then. And a triple. And then stay in front to get pushed up break the wind for you :pac: It doesn't look that steep anyway, does it?

Captain Havoc

Coronal wrote: »

Oh, I see. Interesting. I'll get me bigger cassette then. And a triple. And then stay in front to get pushed up break the wind for you :pac: It doesn't look that steep anyway, does it?

The photo might clear up the steepness thing. That road going through the mountain is a motorway that we can't use.

Coronal

Awesome. Yeah, that one's gonna hurt alright. The Col d'Iseran is the day after as well, isn't it? Ah well! I'm sure we'll laugh about it later.

hahah


hah


hah

Coronal

OK, update at long last! I'm off to a conference in Strasbourg today, which is where I'll be starting my portion of the tour from. The bag is packed, as is the bike for train transport. The total weight of bike+bag+all my crap in it, as seen below, (including bike kit, but minus helmet and shoes) is 12.5 kg, which isn't too bad. I can't see anywhere to drop any more weight off it.



And all packed up in two bin bags with zip ties and duct tape:



I might get out for a few spins on it this week, but I think my fitness is decent enough in any case. There will be some tough days, but it should be fine. The captain has a lot of hills in his legs, so between the two of us *ahem*, we'll get up them all.

I'll be posting progress here and on twitter (@mikedunneIRL). I think there'll be some nice pics

Captain Havoc

I'm off in the morning, the bike is ready to rock and roll. I was up until 1am fiddling around, I got very cheesed off and left it, thinking I had another evening of tweaking and playing around, I turned a couple of screws and a few seconds later hey presto, all is good. I still have to pack EVERYTHING (into that bag in the photo) . I feel funny also, like meh, last year was überexciting, this year it's all planned, I learned from last year what surprises could arise, I've done a bike course in the mean time so I'm covered technically also, lacking a fear of failure seems to have taken the edge off. Out of boredom, I'll be updating here and through my flickr account with photos as until I meet up with Coronal next Saturday, I'll be on my todd.

I'll be doing up a thread in a few miuntes (or hours) auctioning a 1982 "Cycling" magazine signed by the man on the cover, Stephen Roche. All the money raised will go to the Susie Long Hospice Fund.


The bike done up, I'll give ye a weight when I'm loaded up. It has new Aksium wheels, new tyres, new pedals, new white bar tape and one new bottle cage (the white one).


The magazine that is being auctioned. Thanks to thebouldwhacker for getting the man himself to sign it at the recent Tour de Cure.