London to Cannes: Retrospective Write Up: Day 6

Day 6 - Friday 17th September, 2010

Chartres, Rest Day

0 miles!

0 moving time, 0 mph moving ave!

Today's a rest day. Well deserved? Who can say.

Well needed? Definitely!

Quite a few things to do.

Get some more rechargeable batteries, and another mains USB socket adapter for charging. Do some washing. Find new hotel and move over to it (the Dell laptop that John has kindly been lugging around makes its debut and comes into its own). Sight-see. Eat. Plan for tomorrow. Clear off GoPro cam. Drink alcohol in reasonable quantities (read into that what you will). Get everything charged and re-organised for tomorrow.

As a side note, we're really happy with how the bikes have performed so far. They're heavy, but that's mostly because we've probably got too much gear. But in general they've looked after us well, and there are only a few things that we're thinking about chucking away or changing.

I'm particularly happy with the Selle-Anatomica saddle. I struggle with saddles in general, and have tried a few before this one, but I made the brave (or foolish) decision to buy a new one and bring it on this trip - based on reviews and customer feedback alone. I'm not disappointed, and I can honestly say it's the most comfortable thing I've ever used. It does require a bit of daily tinkering - adjusting the tension so it's just right is an art and not a science, and something the manual can't really explain, you just sort of get a feel for it after a few days - but that's the design and it means it's more comfortable out of the 'box'. It's a good design too, and I don't think about the saddle much now which is about the best you can hope for.

Previously, even on a 3 day London>Paris, the saddle I bought for that trip (Specialized Alias), was hurting a bit and I was constantly shifting weight and position during the day to try and find comfort. But it's an OK saddle and it now lives on my road bike. But any pain that gave was nothing compared to the saddle I had before that - a quite expensive Selle Italia Max Gel type thing. It

was extremely painful and left me bruised and in agony for a week after just a single days ride! That one will soon be seen on eBay and I hope I never have to ride on one again.

But the (Brooks based) Selle-Anatomica, which can be ordered from USA or their distributor in Germany, is an absolute find, and I want to tell everyone about it.

The Ergon grips are also nice, and actually I think I like this setup better than drops for long distances. You can't brake while on the end bars, but it's a small price to pay, and seems generally more comfortable than drops for me. Again, the rotation angle of the grips took a bit of adjusting but when you get it right there's very little pressure or strain on the wrists.

What else? Well, all the rest of the gear seems good. We abandoned the CTC bike bag. Although we'll probably need it, we can get a similar one or order it online to arrive at our destination, so it just seemed like a kilogram extra that I could live without carrying. But there are probably some other things we can lose too if we get desperate and need to shed more weight.

I'm really happy with the gearing. I've used the really low grannies so many times. For anyone that hasn't toured much - like us - you just can't underestimate what a difference the weight makes on hills, especially long ones. John's a bit fitter than me and has stronger legs, but even he has started thinking about whether it was wise to not change out his gears to make them closer to mine. One thing I've noticed though is in the lowest gear, when you try and set off you have to be careful as you can really spin fast, especially if you've ended up on a less steep section. But you can start again from static even on a steep hill, albeit you need to be careful as it's a bit out of control and a bit hairy sometimes. It also feels like you could rip the wheel off if you give it a bit too much welly - but fortunately my legs are unlikely to do that!

John's Ridgeback's steel (we think), and mine's Aluminium, so my ride should be harsher according to the experts, and maybe it, is but I'll never really know as I can't compare it to anything, and so far it seems fine.

That was a long aside, but the bike's are an important part of the trip, so thought we should talk about them!

Back to our day off in Chartres. Although there were quite a few interesting happenings even on the rest day, it's not 'really' part of the tour, so that's enough typing, and here is a small selection of 'the day in pictures':