Each new adventure starts the moment you step outside your front door. Today that was 6:15 am to an awaiting taxi to take me, a rucksack, a day bag and my suitably bagged bike to Norwich Railway Station on the first part of my journey to Nice for Ironman France. The planning and preparation had started months ago and this trip has been one thing that’s been static in my year against a backdrop of global financial crisis, company name changes, even employer changes and office changes.
Locomotion is a fairly relaxed way to travel. It’s a relatively environmentally friendly way to travel. It’s a very scenic and social way to travel. It also made a really nice change to flying. Would be great if it was a little cheaper, but it added to the adventure and as I feel remarkably relaxed at the end of the day was probably worthwhile.
I was at Norwich station by 6:30am and suitably early for the 7am train to London Liverpool St. I’d received some teasing for travelling first class. I think Snobman was wise in paying an extra £4 each way to upgrade when he booked his train 8 weeks ago on trainline.net. Didn’t quite get a carriage to myself but I certainly had plenty of room for my bike, bags and me.
Not fancying the tube having known that there had been recent tube strikes I opted for a London black cab. £12 for the priviledge there with a driver who thought his surname, Backbreaker, was more appropriate to me with my luggage was happy to tell me of his actress sister who played George Michael’s girlfriend in the video to ‘Last Christmas’.
At St. Pancras whilst I was collecting my pre booked ticket from the machine I was greeted by Veronica a wanna be triathlete and recent marathon virgin at Edinburgh. She hails from South Africa but lives now in Cambridge and was passing through London at the same time. We’ve been in contact via www.iamtri.com and asked me for some advice when she was having pre- first marathon nerves. I enjoyed her questions about Ironman whilst we had a hot chocolate whilst awaiting my 10:25 Eurostar to Paris.
I’ve used the Eurostar from Paris to London four times, but this was the first from London to Paris. Previous journey’s have taken a while. Today’s seemed to fairly fly by. Perhaps it was the company of a good book, “The Shack” by William Paul Young, some MP3 music, the excitement of heading out on an adventure rather then heading home, perhaps it was that I hadn’t cycled to Paris and possibly because I hadn’t spent the day ahead of the journey stood on the champs elysees watching le tour. I did have some guy decide to plonk his bag onto of my bike that was squeezed into a luggage compartment that really wasn’t big enough. Needless to say I found an alternative place for his bag.
Paris greeted me with rain and fellow travellers that had little consideration for others. I don’t quite understand how with bike bag and rucksack I can be invisible. And why when someone is leading a group of people and causing a congestion to they suddenly stop and then try to walk backwards. Wasn’t going to upset me. The queue for taxi’s could have done. It wasn’t that there was a queue, or the size of the queue, but the lack of taxi’s. There were plenty of limo’s but no taxi’s. Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon is a 3 mile walk. Which I didn’t fancy. I could have taken the Paris Metro, though didn’t relish it with luggage especially not the very fierce narrow ticket turnstyles. I similarly didn’t fancy standing in a stressed Parisian taxi queue being jostled and missing my TGV. So when someone else in the queue announced “Limo Gare de Lyon” I moved very quickly using my best pigeon French.
The couple who I shared the limo with were very English and terribly nice. They had an hour to get to Gare de Lyon for a train to Geneva, which made my 2 hour connection look very relaxed. I offered to pay half the fair, but he refused to take more than 20Euro off me before passing what looked like 100+ to the driver. Would certainly be accusing myself of being Snobman if I’d paid that myself. It wasn’t even a stretched a limo, but fourth part of my journey over and I now had plenty of time to sit, eat my packed lunch, read and wait for the display board to tell me which of the 8 platforms labelled D-M in front of me would have the TGV to Gare Nice Ville. With 20 minutes to go the platform number of 17 flashed up next to the name of my train. Gare de Lyon has two terminals and I was in the wrong one.
I wasn’t the first passenger to get to my carriage and as I considered myself to probably have the most luggage on what appeared to be a fully booked train did cause a little concern. But that was short lived. Some friendly fellow passengers aided in the luggage stacking and my bike was soon secured nicely away in a compartment on top of everything else. Result.
Whilst every seat was taken on this double decker train, there was an adequate amount of space with wide seats and sufficient leg room. And no, I hadn’t upgraded on this part of the journey. The weather had cleared up and a good portion of the journey was spent looking out the window wishing I was riding through the countryside outside. Mount Ventoux eventually appeared on the horizon and with it a smile appeared on my face because in four weeks time I will be cycling that beauty at the climax of l’Etape du Tour.
By 21:40 I was safely into my hotel room in Nice. Barely 25 minutes between train pulling up, finding another 20euro taxi journey, this time on my own and registering with a receptionist who tried his best to act as though he didn’t have a record of my pre-paid reservation. I must have just looked too relaxed to bite as very quickly he was giving me room key and telling me to enjoy my stay.
Bike is now built, bags unpacked, room converted to base camp for next fortnight, second half of my packed lunch consumed and this blog entry drafted.
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