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.

Back to The Future

First, farewell to the tinselly, trashy, overpriced Cote d'Azur. The hotel was fine. I reckoned (wrongly) that it would be easy to pick up a taxi for the 5 km to Nice airport, but I must have walked half way there before I even saw one. Its (again) very nice, chatty driver stopped though, and I got there in time to find another Firefly at the check-in. We had a coffee and headed for passport control, only to find a static queue of literally hundreds of people and just two desks open.
We went straight to the front, got through a separate business-class gate (someone else avoided passport control altogether), only to find further milling crowds in the departure hub, very limited information and no gate indicated for our flight. Eventually things sorted themselves out, we got on board and were told that the plane had been parked in the wrong place, had therefore missed its takeoff slot, and anyway there was a line of thunderstorms to the north so everything was on hold for several hours.
In fact, we only took off about an hour late, but the storm clouds were still around, and turbulent enough to stop the cabin crew getting their snack trolleys round to everyone.
The passport queues at Gatwick were equally unbelievable, but at least they had lots of desks in operation. A train, a bus and home for a shower, a nice supper out in good company and dreamless sleep until 05:30, when I woke up to find the light and the radio still on. Back to sleep until 10:00, then tea, coffee, breakfast and the start of an ascent on the mountain of washing.

I still can't sum it all up, but meanwhile here are some bare statistics:

Total Distance: 974.20 km (but I had that 'easy day' on La Bonnette)
Total Time: 53h 38m 12s
Elevation Gain: 20,749 m
Average Speed: 18.2 km/h
Average Heart Rate: 112 bpm
Average Cadence: 64 rpm
Calories Used: 15,997 (notoriously inaccurate, this, but it shows I wasn't pushing)
Weight Loss: 2.5 kg

We did about 20 major climbs, missing out on the Col de Joux Plane and the Galiber in particular:
Drouzin le Mont (1,240 m)
Col de la Columbiere (1,613 m)
Le Grand Bornand
Col du Marais (840 m)
Col de la Croix-Fry (1,457 m)
Col des Aravis (1,486 m)
Col des Saisies (1,650 m)
Col de la Madaleine (1,993 m)
Col du Glandon (1,924 m)
Col de Lautaret (2,057 m)
Col de L'Echelle (1,766 m)
Monte Jafferau (1,908 m)
Col de Montgenevre (1,792 m)
Col d'Izoard (2,361 m)
Col de Vars (2,111 m)
Col de la Bonnette (2,802 m)
Col d'Allos (2,240 m)
Col des Champs (2,087 m)
Col de Toutes Aures (1,120 m)
Col de Luens (1,024 m)

For anyone with a reasonable Internet connection, you can download a Google Earth file from the following link. This will not only show you the route day by day, but you can 'tour' along each section, and view the route profile. I've indicated where the peaks are.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/51xhmidzfitplxy/Fireflies%202013.kmz

I've updated the Alpine Climbs page to include details of all the cols we tackled (as well as some we couldn't).

And there's a link to some iPhone pictures on Flickr in the Links section. One of the other riders (Richard Lewisjohn) was shooting really great pictures and videos and will make them available in due course.

Stage 8 - Castellane to Cannes

The last leg (but hopefully not last legs): just 110 km with 1,100 m of ascent. Up the Col de Luens and then a long, flattish stretch before descending to Greolieres and pulling up to the lunch stop at Gourdon. Then it's downhill to the coast at Antibes, Juan-les-Pins and – finally – Cannes. 'Bonne route' to all les luminoles. We ride on...

Made it. We had a good climb in the beginning, with me leading an all-female group up to the Valderoute plateau. I made another (completely futile but fun) attack later in a larger group, with a lot of encouragement, and managed to pass everybody – but then blew up dramatically to general applause. 

There was a jolly coffee stop at Guillomes after a spectacular, jagged gorge descent and then a final pull up to the stunningly pretty hilltop town of Gourdon, from which we could see the Mediterranean at last. I had Salade Nicoise and chips, and lots of San Pellegrino for the mineral content. I'd ordered steak as well but fortunately it didn't arrive.

A rather tricky, traffic-filled descent followed and after about an hour and a half we were making our way down the coast through heavy traffic.

We stopped somewhere around Palm Beach for an hour of mutual congratulations, a few drinks and a swim – just the group; no spectators.

My Enigma next to a special Fireflies Colnago C50 at Palm Beach.

Some time after 17:00 we all reassembled in a beach-side car park, made ourselves as respectable as possible (new caps!) and eventually set off for a last 2 km formation run with a police motorcycle escort down La Croisette to the Palais des Festivals, bringing the whole place to a standstill. 

We stuck the bikes in the van, found our bags, and then it was time for the public party, with a lot of friends, relatives and high and mixed emotions, a last group photo and a speech or two. 

And that was the end, officially, though there will be plenty of media-type parties for Fireflies who are  'in the business' (that's most of them) in Cannes. We said our last goodbyes all over again, packed up and headed off – in my case for a cheap hotel in Cagnes-sur-Mer courtesy of a taxi that cost as much as the room. However, the young Algerian driver played nice oud music, was delighted when I recognised it, and then chipped in for Leuka with 10 Euros off the bill.

The fifth stage of this year's Tour de France will be setting off from just outside my hotel on 3 July. I'll be glued to the TV, I'm sure

I'm finding it impossible to sum it all up, apart from knowing that I'm sad it's over, but I'll try again in a day or two. Meanwhile the great news is that the Virgin Money Giving Page ticked over to exactly £2,000 at the very moment we crossed the finish line. Thank you all so much for contributing! You have done Leuka and the team at Hammersmith Hospital proud. 'Chapeau!', as we old rouleurs say. 

The last group photo at the Palais des Festivals.

Team kit.

Details Start:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/330176198

Details FINISH:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/330176145

Stage 7 - Le Sauze to Castellane

Suddenly, it seems, we're getting near the end. Last night (a bit late) all the riders had to say why they were riding. Some have done this ride eight times (out of thirteen), others are here for the first time, like me. Many, many of them have – or have had – friends and relatives with cancer. Some of those people have even died during this trip. It was hard to see people you have come to know enough to realise how committed and focused they are about this ride – and how tough they have had to be to keep riding, with torn muscles, a possible fractured wrist and multiple minor and major scratches and scrapes, unable to finish their descriptions.

I managed to say a bit about my own experiences, and also how living in Africa makes you realise that saving lives or 'beating cancer' just isn't an option for the majority of people alive today. The Tour doctor (who has been measuring a few of our patellar and Achilles' tendons) also made the point that non-Eurasian patients are thousands of times more likely to find a donor than Black or mixed-race ones (including his own kids), and put in a plea for everyone to join the Bone Marrow Register. That's not an option for me, I imagine, but please check it out.

Anyhow, we assembled at the usual unearthly hour for a penultimate 140 km covering three lesser-known cols and 3,000 m of climbing. My physio yesterday was great, incidentally. There are two guys from Integra Training attached to the Tour and they use a system called 'Muscle Activation Techniques to 'switch on' muscle groups that have stopped working effectively – in our case probably due to over-use. I was a bit sceptical, but their explanations made sense and it really seemed to work: more power and more flexibility and it's very non-invasive.

Thankfully too, my headset mods seemed to have been successful, and we set off at a good pace on a quiet track for the Col d'Allos – a pretty climb and a slightly less demanding one, though topping out at 2,240 m. There was a good mountainy bar/café at the top and a quite demanding descent after it. 

Next came the slightly smaller but steeper Col des Champs (2,087 m) which had a beautiful fir-tree-lined middle section followed by a bleak, exposed and extremely windy top part, with land slips and torrents of mud and water across the road. There were plenty of squeaking marmots too. The descent was better, once we'd got below the wind, and we stopped for lunch (spag bol, yum yum) a little  sooner than planned, a bit before Guillaumes. 

I'd dropped right back on the previous climb, mainly through chatting to a nice Italian rider about bikes and stuff (he's riding a very pretty carbon Cinelli) but I've been feeling steadily stronger and, on the final climb – the smaller Col de Toutes Aures (1,120 m) I thought I'd push things a bit. We had a good, steady group of about a dozen riding well together for 30 km or so to beat the wind (lots of sweeping bends and tunnels) and I was on the front as we hit the 17 km climb. We all stuck together, but nobody was coming through. Then we started catching a few stragglers, mostly in pairs, and passing the third of these and looking back I could see I'd got a gap. 

I carried on, upping my heart rate to a moderate 125 or so, and just slipped away. What seemed like an age later (probably about 45 minutes in fact) one of the support vans shouted that I'd only got 1.5 km to go. This was a lie, of course (it was really more like 5.5 km) but I had a three minute lead at what I thought was the top, and stopped at the van for water. A small group caught up, but I stayed with them to the real top and for most of the descent down to the Lac de Castillon, where the whole Tour took a break and splashed about in every possible stage of undress before a final slightly soggy downhill stretch into Castellane. A very good day. 

Coffee stop on the Col d'Allos.

Lunch, lovely lunch. But still 75 km to go.

La Plage at Lac du Castillon.
Fireflies enjoy a swim after cycling in 30+ degrees.

The view from my rather faded but charming single (at last) room in Castellane.

Details Start:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/329790123
Details Finish:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/329789342