‘Twas the night before…

By James S

After a long day’s travelling the C2C team are now tucked up in bed preparing for the challenge ahead. An early start from a very busy Gatwick entailed a long bus transfer to our ‘upgraded’ plane. Apparently they had a significant cargo load today that required a larger plane and scrambling an alternative crew – something to do with bike boxes!

By mid-morning the team had arrived at our staging hotel in Biarritz to start building bikes and prepare for the final hours ahead of departure. Being a tour that takes lunch seriously, midday saw us take a break from bike building to quickly sample the strong atlantic surf of Biarritz followed by many excellent ‘Basque Burgers’ overlooking the sea whilst the weather was alternately indecisive between stormy rain and seaside sun.

The afternoon saw the completion of the bike builds, some damp shake-down rides and after some tweaks to a few bikes the relief that the team’s hardware was in good shape for the following morning.

With the countdown to departure looming, all that remained was a briefing from the Mountain High team, a carb-loaded dinner and then final checks and much-needed catch-up on sleep for the impending challenge.

Meanwhile, the weather outside seemed to be intensifying – was this hurricane Irma having its unseasonal effect on this part of the world? It certainly seems like the next few days could be extremely unsettled. However, nothing will deter the team who are focussed on completing the challenge whatever nature throws at us – we’re also looking forward to sampling the Mediterranean surf on Friday!

Please continue your amazing support and follow the team this week using the online tracker – we’ll also be posting daily updates on our rides and experiences throughout the week.