Their story, in their words…
The first thing we did when we were preparing to cycle to Paris was plan out the activities, as well as how we could make our journey there and back.
This was one of the hardest bit of the entire thing because there were so many complications. The main problems that kept coming up time and time again was “how would we get there, what hotels to book, how would we communicate with the French”. These problems weren’t solved immediately because they were so difficult to figure out, but we eventually found solutions that fixed those quickly.
Our Plan was to come back via coach but there was no bike slots available on any bus service, so that ruined our chances of having a smooth one way trip back. So Plan B we had to use a bit of our common sense rather than random Google searching. We did finally think of something – and that was to take the train back to the Dieppe ferryport which allowed us to take our bikes back home with no trouble.
The cycle was the most difficult bit. The first day was very smooth up until about hour 4 when the roads started becoming much more hillier towards Newhaven. As we made it, we arrived with loads of time to spare – with maybe 2 and a half hours. The ferry ride was very smooth towards France. Got to France around 11pm, midnight. Slept in and woke up around 8am. The next day the cycle was a fair bit easier because of how many flat roads there were in France, and we were lucky we were met with a HUGE cycle path that stretched for nearly half our route. on the third day from Beauvais to Paris there was mostly downhill sections that we took and really nice and flat roads that never ended.
Alongside this, the fact we had to use Google Maps changed the entire cycle entire. Rather than going for one nice cycle route it opted for more roady, less hilly routes, which massively made the cycle much more bearable. But one factor of the cycle that made some bits difficult was the immense heat. On the second and third day we had to cycle in 25+ degree weather, making us stop a lot more for water and for food. What this experience taught me was one of many but the main takeaway from this was that mindset is very important to challenges in life.
