Kevs Word

Our room last night was perched right over the Indianapolis raceway and every 5mins or so a blaring siren from an ambulance, fire truck or police would career past our window and when they died down the town yobbos flew into action. Mike and I both agreed it was going to be gangs of fun trying to sleep thru that.

Our solution was to close the two double glaze windows, immediate silence, job done. Only problem was our room temp started to peak at around 59 c so Litchfield detective skills came to the fore and he located a very rare thing in Europoean hotels that we have frequented air conditioning - problem solved.

Next morning after our standard 16 course brekky we set off in the rain and are soon riding a peaceful trail beside the Meuse river. I'm afraid the Belgiums are not a patch on the Dutch for trail surface quality as we alternated from smoothish to pit holed patched up bitumen to smooth to gravel to dirt and then the daddy of them all, cobblestones !.

I have watched Paris - Robaix many times and watched Cancellara , Boonen Stewie O`grady and co fly over the cobbles at 50 kph - don't see any problem with that not hat big a deal. Even fully loaded we approached those speeds sometimes reaching 10 kph .. hell they are rough !

We arrived Givet NE France after a gut wrenching 55 km . Totally flat, all our days should be this tough !

France is the country which makes Baguettes, or sandwiches as they call therm the most delicious crunchy bread on Earth, can see myself having a few hundred of those during the next few days

The weather has been ordinary the last few days 13 C with showers but is forecast to improve next week i hope as I don't function well under 30 c !