The Journey

It seems amazing that a just a week ago we crossed the border from France into Italy, lunched on wild boar pasta, and tackled a climb that even some of the riders on this year's Giro d'Italia found impossible (though of course we had much better conditions).
That was also the day that someone told me I was the oldest rider in the 13 years of Firefly tours – after which, of course, I simply had to finish. They gave me a little plastic toy prize that evening which is sitting on the table. It tends to fall over, which seems appropriate.
Later on, at our last lunch stop in the beautiful hilltop town of Gourdon on our final day, I got to meet the previous aged incumbent, Ivor. He's just three days older than me (not a lot, that, in 67 years) and he'd ridden up from the Côte d'Azur to join us on the descent to Antibes and Cannes. We might form a very exclusive club, I think – the Fireflies Pensioners Cycling Club, or Velo Veterans Luminoles...
Ivor's wife was there in Cannes to meet him. By the time he introduced her to me I'd finished crying on another Firefly's shoulder and had got a beer and my breath back. They were both very nice. So was the shoulder.
So now it's over – the awfully big adventure didn't disappoint. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that 'Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.' That kind of sums it up: for those who suffer, we laboured, and rode. The point is, of course, that the ones doing the suffering don't have a choice about it, while we Fireflies do – at least unless or until we turn into sufferers ourselves, as many of us no doubt will.
I tried to say a couple of things on the evening when we all had to explain our reasons for riding. One was that living in Africa teaches you that saving a life isn't always possible – or even advisable in some cases. Then there's the enormous gulf between resources and facilities in the first world and the third: we are indeed the lucky ones. And also it's not just the sufferers who need support – it's all those who choose – or often don't choose – to care for them, including the great, struggling, beleaguered UK national health service.
The final thing I said was that I wasn't riding for my own life – at least not in the sense of trying to save it. I'm just riding not to waste it.
Thanks for reading, thanks for looking at the pictures (I hope), thanks for contributing.

Bon voyage! Buon viaggio! Ride on!

Separated at birth? Ivor and me – the FPCC.