Day 1 – Sunday 15 June 2014

Solihull to Calais

Hotel

Hotel Particulier Richelieu

Notes

We assembled at Solihull railway station early in the morning for a train to London Marylebone. Fortunately there is a lift at the station that is just about big enough to get a bicycle into, provided you twist the front wheel round.

Local train travel with a bicycle in England is relatively painless and it doesn’t cost anything. There is a lot of pessimism about rail travel avec velos but that only applies to inter-city travel with certain train operators. Local trains all have a neatly arranged wheelchair and bicycle space next to the special-needs toilet. It has a curved door that slides round inside itself and creates untold confusion for the occupant. The door controls are all-electric and are some of the worst labelled I have come across. There is a button for closing and opening the door and one for locking it, but they’re hardly intuitive and there is frequently a conversation between the occupant and anyone sitting outside.

Occupant, "How do I shut the door?"

Helpful observer, "Press the button!"

"What button?"

"The one on the left."

"Oh yes."

The door slowly revolves shut and then immediately opens again.

Occupant, "It’s opened again."

Helpful observer, "You kept your finger on the button. Just press it once."

Door shuts. Another passenger in a hurry staggers up the moving train and makes for the toilet door button.

Helpful observer, "There’s someone in there… "

Too late! The door opens slowly, revealing the embarrassed occupant.

"Oh sorry!"

Mutual embarrassment. The door closes again agonisingly slowly.

The train manager, guard or whatever he or she is called these days came along the train and squeezed round five bicycles but, it being Sunday and not too many people on board, merely grimaced and checked our tickets and Senior Railcards. At last, having stopped everywhere, we arrived at Ruislip where we were all turfed off. There had been a fire at Wembley and were told that our tickets would be valid for Tube travel. We manhandled our loaded bicycles through the Tube system to Oxford Circus (puff, heave) peddled off in the general direction of St Pancras via a sports store that may have been Decathlon, but my memory is hazy. I have a photograph of it so we must have been there. Usefully these days photographs have what is known as exif (Exchangeable Image File) data that I find really helpful in telling me when when shots were taken. My camera also has the ability to record GPS data which would have told me where I took the shot, but I didn’t have it switched on at the time.

At St Pancras we bought sandwiches and heaved our bicycles up an escalator to the platform for Folkstone where we met up with the Eurotunnel Cycle Service minibus and headed off through the tunnel to Calais where we were dropped in the middle of a business park in Coquelles, close to the French end of the tunnel. There was another group of cyclists already there waiting to be picked up for the return journey to England. From there it was a quick hop and a jump to the centre of Calais.

Our bicycles were locked up in a spare room in the hotel, and we cleaned ourselves up and headed off to the same restaurant we had used the year before. They actually remembered us, but I’m not sure whether that was a good thing or not.