Vatersay - Barra(bados)

I woke because I heard the zip on the tent open. I sat bolt upright, who’s that? Tom’s space next to me was empty, and I could see his silhouette through the inner tent. I relaxed back into the warmth of my sleeping bag, content that it wasn’t either an escape bid by one of the girls or a stranger come to tell us we had pitched in the wrong place.

I had woken twice in the night, because it was chucking it down. In the morning light, all of our stuff had remained perfectly dry, and for now, it seemed dry outside.

Terra Nova (1) - (0) Hebridean weather

Tom was by now rustling in the panniers in the vestibule. Hearing the sleeping mat squeaking against the groundsheet, and knowing that I was therefore awake, he stuck his head back in through the inner to wish me good morning. The girls were still sound asleep.

“What are you up to?”, I say, hoping that the rustling is a precursor to breakfast. “I’m going to do some filming and take some photographs,” says Tom. Ok, I admit at this point, I’m a bit disappointed about the breakfast, but so far, this is par for the course.

“And I’m going for swim”.

Wait a minute. Rewind. What?

“You’re going for a swim? Are you crazy?” He grins at me (what kind of an answer is that?) and disappears.

As I step out of the tent a few minutes later, I have to admit that the beach is beautiful and the blue water does look inviting. Then I recollect again that we are in the Outer Hebrides, and that inviting-looking blue water is the North Atlantic, and probably freezing cold.

Down on the beach, Tom is stripping off. He gestures to me, and holds out the camera. I grab it and point it at him, still wondering whether he is actually going to do this. “Lars Simonsen, this is all your fault!”, he yells, and canters off into the breaking waves (inspired by our Danish friend’s early morning swimming antics on our recent trip to Denmark). He has to run in quite a way before the water gets deep enough for any swimming. Surely he’s going to turn around? No, no, he’s actually in the North Atlantic. I hope the girls stay asleep. I don’t want to have the argument with Ruth which will naturally ensue if she thinks she has missed out on a swim. At the actual beach.

The swim is (predictably) quite a short affair, but Tom professes himself ‘refreshed’. He looks chilled through, and grabs a few extra layers before continuing his filming expedition, this time armed with Ruth’s waterproof camera.

I go back to the tent, where I can hear the first signs of the girls stirring. Ruth is first awake, and she has remembered exactly where we are and the promise made last night that we would have a trip to the beach in the morning. I get her clothes out, strategically handing her the ones she wore yesterday to get sandy, and layering on top her waterproof trousers to try to keep her warm. I leave her shoes and socks in the tent - no point getting those full of sand. Rhoda is next, and then we are off to the shore, ready to play and explore.

There is no-one else around, at all. We have the most beautiful beach, right outside our tent door, and it is all ours.

This is what it’s about.

We leave our trail of footprints on the pristine sand, being the first people there. Rhoda’s tiny little feet are dwarfed by the yeti prints Daddy leaves in his wake. We write our names in the sand. We paddle in the little breaking waves at the water’s edge. We look at the seaweed and the shells. It is idyllic.

Tom snaps away. And then Tom is fishing Rhoda out of the water. She has disobeyed the instruction to hold hands, jumped over a wave and fallen flat on her face. She’s in no danger, she isn’t hurt, but she is soaking wet. 

Time for that breakfast then, and a change of clothes for Rhoda!

The best of the weather seems to have gone too, and we are mindful that as wild campers, we don’t want to spoil the beauty for others by leaving our tent stuck in the way. The girls are not happy. They don’t want breakfast. They want to play. I bribe them with the promise of stroopwafels and milk, and they reluctantly trail along behind us back to the tent.

By the time we have washed hands and feet, eaten and changed Rhoda into dry clothes, it is clear that the good weather is well and truly behind us. The rain has started again. Blast - the tent will now be wet going back into the panniers.

I deflate sleeping mats and compress the sleeping bags back into their panniers. The kitchen gear (which Tom 'washed' in the sea) is stowed, and we now can barely move in the tent. The vestibule is full of bikes and panniers. We debate what to do next. We know that the tent’s inners can be stripped out from the fly, and we might get the groundsheet out dry. Is it going to be worth the hassle when we have to reassemble it all? Or is it better to have the comfort of knowing that the inners at least, will be dry when we have to pitch the tent again tonight? The theory is that we can just drop the whole of the tent’s interior, but we have never done it. If we accomplish it, leaving just the fly and the poles, we can have everything else packed and hung on the bikes, keeping us out of the wet (and consequently keeping everyone warm) for longer. We decide to go for it.

We launch into a sing-song of our anthem for the trip: “Oh, pack it in your panniers” (to the tune of the 'Hokey-Cokey'). Another of those surreal moments - what else would we be singing on a Hebridean beach in the pouring rain trying to shovel as much as possible away still dry?

We put the tent inners in… (dry!)
We pull the ground sheet out…. 
Contort ourselves to fold it and we shake it all about. 
Everything is dry except the pegs and fly 
That’s what it’s all about….

Oh! Pack it in your panniers… (repeat until blessed)

With only the poles, pegs and fly sheet left, there is nothing for it but to venture outside. We wheel out the bikes, task Ruth and Rhoda with helping to collect the pegs and set about dismantling the last remnant of shelter.

We are wrestling the wet tent when a cry goes up from the girls. They have just spotted Noel, Clem and Steff approaching on their bikes. They have been for a ride to the end of the road, having had lunch and had just arrived for a visit to the beach.

We agree that we will meet them shortly at the Vatersay community cafe next to the beach, where we are about to head for lunch and drinks and leave them to explore. First though, we have an appointment with the end of the road in Vatersay, so that we can say we have ridden the whole way. We are only a few hundred metres short, so it doesn’t take long. The end of the road is not particularly exciting, as ends of the roads go. The road terminates in a T-shape, surrounded by houses and a sentinel telephone box. We turn and head back (checking that Strava has definitely captured the moment - after all, if it’s not on Strava, it didn't happen!) the way we have just come and stop at the cafe.

We are struck by what a lovely facility it is for such a tiny island. There are showers, toilets, water and facilities for campers to use, with signage directing those with camper vans to a suitable place to park up. The cafe is lovely and warm, serving a tasty and reasonably priced menu. We haven’t got a huge amount of cash with us (still accustomed to paying by card wherever we go, this is a constant battle for us to remember that paying by card might not be an option out here!), but we manage to order food and drinks for all of us. Ruth is particularly insistent that she wants soup. She is not disappointed.

Steff, Clem and Noel rejoin us just as we are finishing up. We compare notes on our camp spots - we seem to have fared well, as they found their chosen beach quite windy overnight, where we have enjoyed relative quiet (apart from the heavy downpours). We explain that we are planning to stop in at the Co-op again for food before riding up the west side of the island, and then onwards past the airport to the north of the island to see the bits we missed last time. We agree to ride together, and look in the direction we are about to set off, already knowing that before very long we have to climb back over that rather large hill that we had to push up yesterday, but this time in the pouring rain.

Cycle tourists in the rain always elicit sympathetic looks in cafes when they leave. When you have three children in the group, sympathy is mixed with incredulity - “you can’t seriously be going out in that?” We remind ourselves that the rain won’t last forever (especially out here, where half an hour can transform the weather from hideous to gorgeous or vice versa), and zip the children into their waterproofs. We aren’t going to get anywhere if we don’t get going!

In spite of the precipitation, the climb doesn’t seem quite as bad in this direction. Ruth and I are last up again, having been distracted by passing the crashed plane from WWII on the hillside and views out to sea of fishing boats and little sailing boats bobbing about. The ‘Ruth pedalling while Mummy pushes’ technique is tested again and comes up trumps.

After a quick stop to restock (and obtain more cash) at the Co-op back on Barra, we are soon on our way again. The road is comfortingly familiar from our last visit. A new campsite has opened, but it is only a couple of miles away and we soon pass it, deciding that it is too early in the day to stop.

We pass the old Manse that we had looked at sadly last time, apparently still empty. Empty buildings always leave me sad - particularly those that have once been homes. This time is no different - I think again what a waste it is for such a lovely house in such a lovely place to have no family to call its own.

We had our eye on a particular rest spot in any event - the one we stopped at on our last visit where the now infamous 'extreme breast feeding' shot of me feeding Rhoda under a tarp was taken. Last time, we had settled down on a well appointed bench for a snack and a drink and the weather had suddenly turned squally, and Tom had chucked the tarp over me and Rhoda to keep us warm and dry. This time, the weather was improving, when we stopped for snacks and a recreation of the shot. Rhoda is rather larger than the last time! I’m not sure quite what Clem and Steff made of all this -we showed them the original shot so that we didn’t appear to be total nutters.

2014

2017

Reaching the turning for Traigh Mhor, we hit the most enormous swarm of midges, turning us into cycling ninjas, swatting them off our skin, spitting and snorting them away and wiping them out of our eyes. Evil, evil midges. Riding through a cloud of them with no warning is particularly mean - for the first couple of seconds I thought it was raining again until the skin on my hands started turning black as the corpses of those that had come into contact with the deet that I had applied earlier built up. Riding along the coast, we hadn’t been plagued too badly, but at the turning for the Ferry, the weather improved and the wind and rain subsided, the midges were coming out in force. We pushed on towards the airport. It was the wrong time of day to see a plane land, but the views were every bit as spectacular across the bay was we remembered. Last time, we hadn’t cycled up this part of the island. Tom and Thomas had had a tour by car from the owner of the campsite we stayed with, and I hadn’t been this far at all.

We reached the tiny airport, with its miniature facilities. The baggage reclaim is housed in what can only be described as a bus shelter. Literally, the bags are passed from the plane by hand to a bus shelter. That is the baggage handling facility. We didn’t have any suitcases, but (possibly taking being likened to luggage on the back of the bike a little too seriously) soon Ruth and Rhoda were taking turns along the baggage belt.

We toyed with whether to wild camp, or to go to a campsite. In the end, the soggy start to the day, sandy children and bodies covered in midge corpses meant that the idea of a hot shower and an indoor cooking area won out, so we headed off to Eoligarry and the signed campsite at Croft 1, with the single track road turning into two gravelled ruts as we continued along it.

Putting the tent up was a rather more involved affair with the inners detached. While Tom rehung the inners, I slung the tarp over the bikes, as more rain was forecast, but we needed the vestibule space to get our panniers back in some semblance of order after our unorthodox departure.

Poor Rhoda’s face full of midge bites left her looking like she had a dose of the measles. The lady at the campsite said even the local kids at the nursery she worked at were covered. Tom and I endured a miserable evening of itching caused by the previous night’s bites, and tried to avoid collecting any more. The forecast rain arrived as we were turning in for the night, so we hoped that might at least mean they would be kept at bay for the morning...

To be continued...

Going with the flow - Bikepacking for pre-schoolers

"Daddy, look!"

More than a little alarmed by the accompanying ripping sound, I darted out of the kitchen wondering what on earth was going on, only to find Ruth in the hall trying to velcro her big brother's bikepacking bags to her 16" Islabike. Too much 'Mountain Bikes and Bothy Nights' on YouTube...

In trying to help her complete the 'play' task she'd started, it became tantalisingly apparent that yes, Thomas Ivor's top tube bag did fit nicely in the Cnoc 16's frame, and yes, you could strap a drybag to the handlebars without impeding the function of the brakes... and good grief! The seat pack fits under her saddle, too!

Before any of us knew it, we had stuffed some down jackets in the bags and were out at the bandstand, little Ruth lapping with tremendous fervour. A little boy on a kick scooter tried to race her, and that was it - she was off like a miniature, female, cycle touring Jeremy Clarkson.

I've written before about giving little children opportunities that others might think beyond them, but a bit like the cadence sensor when I taught Thomas Ivor to change gear, this one came as if from nowhere. It's only last June when Ruth was helping to hold her big brother's bike when 'King Louis' was being measured for a frame bag, and here we were witnessing another seminal moment. I mean, why shouldn't a little girl of just turned four have a set of bikepacking bags?

The next day we found ourselves in Newthorpe once more, and this time it was 'Merida's turn (it would seem so to have been named!) for 'the treatment' (see below for spec list).

Self evidently, it would be pointless spending a significant amount of money on a lightweight bike only to hand a child a load of weight to slow them down, or to impede their recently-learned steering, pedalling or braking, but the three bags come to a total of less than 450 grammes, and so far they've largely been filled with feathers, in the form of the down jacket she would otherwise be wearing, and her sleeping bag. At that, along with her spare inner tube, Ruth's bike still only weighs about 7kg - that's still only half the weight of a 16"-wheeled bike-shaped-behemoth from Halfords, before you add the tinsel tassels on the handlebars and the 'Tiny Tears' threatening to fall out of the basket. That's before you consider that many children of four years old are still using the 'S-word'...

Children love carrying something on their bike, especially when everyone else is. Family life is a team sport, and they feed off feeling like they are an integral part of the mission. In this case, Ruth has decided that now she has the bags, she wants to go 'bothying' even more than she did before (which was a LOT), so we've had the maps out and have a plan in development. When we tour longer distances, we'll still use her trailerbike to make sure we cover the ground and stay safe on the road, at which she will have a pair of panniers on her rear rack, once more feeling like she's part of the team. She can probably use her 'frame bag' off her Cnoc as a top tube bag on her trailer bike.

A ride out today, five miles or so, with Daddy on foot and Rhoda on her balance bike, has proved that the Cnoc remains stable, handles fine, and most of all that the little girl at the helm of what looks every inch a touring machine is exceptionally proud of herself, to the point of stopping to tell everyone coming the other way that she was carrying her sleeping bag!

We had a little play with our new Alpkit Krakau stove as well today, and had a hot snack next to the river, on the edge of the woodland where Mummy and Daddy went canoe camping last summer.


A very productive couple of days, which we never saw coming! Above all, a lesson in 'going with the flow'; of letting the children lead when it comes to their adventures and their kit - because if they, like you, don't enjoy it, you probably should be doing something else.

Ruth's Islabikes Cnoc 16 luggage:

Bar bag: Alpkit Airlok Extra Dry Bag (£12) with Dual Straps (£5) - contains Alpkit 'Cloud Cover' down-filled blanket for sleeping in.
'Frame bag': An upturned Alpkit Small Fuel Pod (now discontinued and replaced with a slightly different shape. Luckily found one in their bargain bin for £12 which fits perfectly!) - contains spare inner tube, and possibly a favourite pebble.
Seat pack: Alpkit Small Koala (was called the 'Wombat' originally - review here) - £70 (some in the bargain bin with minor imperfections for £40 if you don't mind grey or yellow at the time of writing!) - contains Spotty Otter Drift Down II combo jacket.

Total Cost of luggage: £99

That's less than the cost of two nights in a Premier Inn - excitement aside, by your third night in the bothy, you're quids in!

Becherel, books, bombard and beans

On a "normal" holiday, departure day marks the end of the journey. When you are touring, almost every day is departure day, but it is also arrival day somewhere new. We had the panniers packed and bikes loaded in record time this morning (just prior to 9am, definitely a Family ByCycle best!). Morgane invited us to have some breakfast, and Ruth really wanted to play with her new friend Brewen, so we took time with our hosts and lined up with our trailers for a group portrait before we left.

Ruth really really didn't want to leave, and threw her first full-power tantrum of the trip. I had to wrestle her, kicking and screaming into the trailer. I knew a little of how she felt. The stay with Morgane and Marin was like wandering into a little corner of heaven, and leaving was a wrench even with the promise of more adventures to be had on the road ahead.

We headed towards Becherel for our lunch stop, and back out onto roads used (in the opposite direction) for this year's Tour de France, passing the very pleasant-looking municipal campsite which we'd originally planned to use. Forewarned by Marin, we were expecting a decent climb up to our intended lunch stop, but were promised that the rewards would be worth it. Indeed, the warning wasn't for nothing. It was a long climb (on the road this time) with several false summits on the way which turned it from a "grit your teeth and struggle to the top climb" into a definite "get off and push" climb in places. Thomas Ivor and Daddy had fewer difficulties but still looked tired at the top.

Arriving into Becherel, it was clear why the town is such a tourist honeypot. Narrow, picturesque streets of bookshops, little eateries and lovely views back down that massive hill. Our appetite for galettes whetted by Morgane's lovely cooking, when we found a crêperie, we couldn't refuse, and the Family ByCycle caravane was soon safely parked up at the roadside. Five galettes, four crepes and about a million litres of water later (it was thirsty work getting up there!) we emerged back into the sunshine to look around. Becherel isn't called the 'Cité des Livres' for nothing, and we had arrived during a book festival. Long trestle tables loaded with books lined the street. The art galleries exhibited works inspired by French literature. The whole atmosphere of the place breathed culture.

We were therefore delighted to pause to listen to two young Breton children who sat down in the street and began to play Breton folk music. Since our ferry wake up call, Thomas Ivor had been asking about what French music was like, so this was a great chance to stop and soak up the atmosphere. The two young people were very competent musicians, and they soon gathered a crowd and accrued (to their innocent surprise) a fair few well earned euros in their instrument case. Tom has come away wanting to acquire a double reeded 'bombard' (in addition to the billig - the Breton shopping list is getting expensive!) to join the three trombones, tuba, piano, saxophone and assorted recorders in the Family ByCycle musical collection. Ruth and Rhoda were surprisingly engrossed in the music given that they were both due a nap, and we lingered in Becherel for an extra hour.

It was therefore with some relief (given that today was another relatively long mileage day) that we knew the next section of our road would very definitely be downhill. It turned out to be the steepest and longest descent of the trip. Thomas Ivor in particular did us proud, confidence restored after his spill earlier in the trip, and we made good time towards the Ille et Rance canal.

I reached where Tom and Thomas Ivor had stopped at the canal, to find Tom looking at his watch. It was later than it looked, and we needed to warn our next hosts that we were running an hour or so late. Tom dropped his pace to keep me company for the last stretch, which was along more traditional, waterside tow path with a sandy surface (really loose in places - drive chains caked with grit again after five minutes!). We passed plenty of families out walking and fishing together, and a decent number of other cyclists (mainly leisure riders rather than cycle tourists) who without exception all shouted a cheery hello. Perhaps, like yesterday, that Breton flag on the trailer does make a difference! Betraying our true nationality, Tom called out a greeting to a slightly bewildered couple on their boat, with an Ullapool registration, telling them that was where we'd cycled last summer!

I was looking forward to some more nice level canal path after the morning's exertions, but after passing a number of locks and with the tourist count thinning out, we took to a section which was not really canal towpath, but rather cycle path climbing up the hillside alongside the canal through the trees. It was shady, which was nice, but otherwise quite tough going with the trailer since the surface was loose and criss-crossed with tree roots. Before long, I was lagging far behind the boys, and running out of steam. The girls woke from their nap (probably due to the sudden change in surface). I wondered what they would make of this, but I needn't have worried. They were delighted with the bumps and wobbles, promptly deciding that mummy and the trailer were the "Ninky-Nonk" and they were off for a bumpy ride. Mummy was slightly less delighted, but happy children makes for an easier ride even if you do think you might be about to lose your teeth as the trailer snags on tree roots for the millionth time. In due course, though, it flattened back out and we joined the road, passing the railway station (Thomas Ivor's first sight of French trains in the flesh) as we entered town.

Our hosts for this evening are Yves and Christine, cyclists who had taken their two daughters in a trailer and cycled round France when they were not much older than our girls are now. We had a delicious meal al fresco in their garden and enjoyed learning from them how they thought their travels had benefitted their girls, and listened to their plans for their next trip as a couple now that both girls are off to university.

Violette and her father Yves, pictured by Thomas Ivor

When we tell people that we are taking our children cycle touring, most think we are mad. It is so nice to meet families who have put doubts to one side and gone out and done it. Our circumstances and resources mean that we are not really able to throw caution to the wind and take off for months or years at a time, but hearing about their experiences inspires us to believe that we have more in us, even in our shorter holiday rides.

Who will buy...?

I'm not a morning person. I never have been. I'm just not the sort of person who wakes, or is woken, and automatically dives headlong into a new day, full of bounce and vitality, like  a character in a breakfast cereal advert. At the other end of the day, I can keep plugging away into the night, but don't call me in the morning.

Alastair Humphreys wrote "Mornings come peacefully on the road". Now that I am settled back into being 'on the road', even a broken spoke isn't disturbing that peace.

In a complete reversal of the normal order, I woke first this morning, at dawn. Instead of fighting the daylight, or being aware of other people having beaten me to it, I heard the sweet silence of the morning, punctuated only by birdsong, the occasional call from Morgane and Marin's rooster, and the tolling of a distant church bell, quite unlike those we hear at home. All the moment wanted for was some Grieg playing in the background.

Tempting as it might have been on another day to vegetate and luxuriate in the calm, and despite the mileage we've done, which at the moment amounts to more strenuous exercise than I am ever used to at home, I got up, got dressed, and, taking the camera, slipped out into the crisp morning air. With the lifting of the burden of a day already being accounted for before it even begins, and with the children still asleep, I was wound back a decade or more, to the days when I would have gone out to take photographs, just for the pleasure of it, and because I could. Nothing earth shattering, but a wholesale and liberating paradigm shift all the same. Shades of the first scene after the intermission, in 'Oliver'; "Who will buy this wonderful morning...".

I can only attribute to the invigorating power of the road, the slowly settling change in me.

That's not to say we didn't have things to do today, because that spoke wasn't going to fix itself, and our bikes were literally caked in sand and grit after many miles on the voies vertes. The resulting mess was like having oiled your bike with cutting compound.

I returned to the house, where everyone else was starting their day. We breakfasted with our hosts, the girls taking the opportunity to show their new friend Brewen 'In the Night Garden' on the iPad, in between playing with his toys. Oh, add rhubarb jam to the menu when we get back home!

Morgane, Marin and Brewen were off to a baptism, so we let them get on their way and got ourselves ready for a trip into St Méen le Grande, the nearest town, to try and get my spoke fixed, and source some kit to clean the bikes with. Riding the bikes unladen was something of a novelty!

A beautiful new mural adorns the water tower as you enter Saint Méen Le Grand.

Saint Méen Le Grand is a cycling town, justifiably proud of her most famous son, three-time Tour de France winner Louison Bobet. We have seen, again, levels of civic pride we just don't recognise from home, heightened of course because of the passage of a stage of the Tour this year. Every shop in town has a picture of their 'local boy done good' in the window. To think all we managed for our Olympians was a thin coat of gold paint on a post box.

In the midst of this cycling fervour, rolling into town we were stopped by a Police  roadblock - for a bunch of roadies! We never quite got to the bottom of what the event was, but there were loads of them knocking about town. The first guys we stopped to talk to told us the bike shop wasn't open all day, so we got on with that bit of the job first.

In a town like this, we were unsurprised to find a nicely-appointed bike shop, with something of a racing bent; lots of lovely rims hanging up, but nothing of the kind that might have tempted me to buy a replacement wheel. The mechanic took the view that rebuilding the whole wheel would be uneconomic, so we had him crack on and change the broken spoke, whilst we had a whizz round the shop buying cleaning materials and a couple of new chains. I'd had some slipping a couple of times yesterday, and having previously broken one (embarrassingly, in the middle of a road-rage incident, whilst on a roundabout, towing the trailer) in Exeter last year after our trip to Scotland, I figured that whilst they've not done massive miles, at almost a year old, and now covered in rubbish, they could go.

I also managed to source a cycling-themed souvenir from our trip, which will appear in due course...

It was back into town for lunch next, via a cracking patisserie, with their obligatory picture of Bobet in the window. We're learning not to miss lunchtime now! 

We struggled to find somewhere to park the trailer, and our bikes, in the blistering midday heat. In the end, the bikes were locked up at one end of the town square and the trailer came with us to the other. We got some funny looks for parking Ruth and Rhoda a few metres from our table outside the restaurant, but the shade was critical, not only for the comfort of the sleeping girls (and 'Froomey') but for the cakes nestled in the back!

Unsurprisingly, it was galettes for lunch, with some new fillings. Smoked salmon and crème fraîche couldn't be passed by, but when we translated 'Noix de St Jacques', I had to order one of them as well...

Thomas Ivor put away another plateful of steak haché without blinking. It makes such a change for him to just demolish meals without fuss - the lad's clearly been working hard.

Lunch concluded (crêpes all round!), we went back out down 'Rue Louison Bobet' (that man again!) to the industrial estate, to visit the supermarket for some provisions, and for a naughty trip to the jet wash. A bottle of degreasant later, we had the worst of the muck rinsed off the bikes, ready to ride back to base to change the chains and give the drivetrains a thorough clean. This went well enough except for the heart-stopping moment when Thomas Ivor, who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Rhoda as I linked up my new chain, took my filthy old one and made for the house and our hosts' living room. Mercifully, we got to her just in time!

We've had a lovely day in Saint Méen Le Grand, although we must move on once more tomorrow. Another time perhaps we will be able to make time to visit the Bobet museum. We have dropped the shortest day of our schedule to stay here, so we do have mileage to make up tomorrow once more, but we and the bikes are refreshed, the distance won't break any records, the weather is nice, and perhaps I can even look forward to another relaxing early start in the morning.