Captain Havoc raising money for Susie Long Hospice Fund.

Captain Havoc

As the title says I'm raising money for the Susie Long Hospice Fund. You can donate here. All money goes to the hospice fund and non of it is being used to fund my trip. You can also share the link on your facebook, there's a poster, if you want to print it and put it in a shop (if you work in one), we're doing a running diary in the cycling forum and I should be doing photo updates via flickr.

I said I'd put that at the start as opposed to people reading half of this post getting bored and tuning out. What I'm doing to raise money is cycling 1,500km from next Monday to Montreux in Switzerland via Europe's highest mountain pass, the Col de l'Iseran which is 2,770m above sea level. Am I ready, no, not at all but I'll give it a lash.

The route will take 11 days and is as follows:
Day 1. Kilkenny to Rosslare: 95km. Relatively straight forward day, not much climbing to be done, get straight on boat in Rosslare which leaves at 15h30ish.

Day 2. Cherbourg to Flers: 150km. A wee bit bumpy but should be straight forward enough. Won't have time for hanging around though as the boat gets in around 11h00 and it should take me nine hours to get to Flers, it depends on the weather, if it's not so hot I won't need to stop so often to buy water but if it's super hot I can go through up to ten litres of water. Rehydration is a killer also because if I don't drink enough I'll be tired and if I drink to much I just end up stopping every five minutes to pee and in France, they don't have ditches to hide behind.

Day 3. Flers to Le Mans: 110km. Fairly flat, there seems to be one hill of note about 15km from the end which would be like heading over the hill there at Johnswell. I'll probably get up early is I can to catch the Tour de France on TV.

Day 4. Le Mans to Châteauroux: 220km. Long but flat day on the saddle, I don't think there's any hill over 100m high. I'm planning to take the exact route that will be taken by the Tour de France the following day.

Day 5. Châteauroux to Montlucon: 100km. I'm hanging around Châteauroux for the day to watch the sprint finish of the Tour de France. I have no intentions of getting out of bed before chucking out time from the hotel. I'll cycle around for a couple of hours, take a couple of photos and then head down to the finish line a few hours before the race is due in. I can watch the race on a big screen at the finish line, I think I'm supposed to be meeting up with another boardsie there. The riders are due in around 17h20 so I won't be starting to cycle until about 18h00 which means I'll be about one hour or more cycling in the dark.

Day 6. Montlucon to Roanne: 150km. Looks like a lumpy day, I hate lumpy days. The great thing about this day is that I'm meeting up with another boardsie, Coronal, in Roanne and we're going to be cycling the rest of the journey together.

Day 7. Roanne to Villefontaine: 120km. Big hill at the start, 600m, will make us tired for the rest of the day. I think the highlight of the day will be heading through Lyon, should be interesting, I love cycling through large cities full of French drivers.

Day 8. Rest day. We've a van hired for the day and are heading up to the Alpe d'Huez to watch an amateur event and cheer on for the Irish guys doing it. We'll probably cycle about 50kms just to keep the legs moving.

Day 9. Villefontaine to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne: 180km. First big climb of the day over the Col de l'Épine, which is two meters short of 1,000, it's also fairly steep. We're heading around the Lac d'Aiguebelette which looks pretty but I imagine it's that Woodstock kind of pretty: you're going through too much pain to care how good the scenery looks.

Day 10. Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Séez: 140km. The Col de l'Iseran is Europes highest mountain pass at 2,770m. 90km of going up is going to kill me. I'm a poor climber without baggage, I can't even think how I'm going to get over this, totally unprepared but for my insanity. Will be in a lot of pain for a while after this.

Day 11. Séez to Geneva: 150km. My barely intact legs have to start the day climbing, 1,000m in the first 25km. After that torture, it's almost all downhill or flat all the way to Geneva. We are partying in Geneva, I think the party is going to consist of falling asleep at the bar after half a beer.

Day 12. Geneva to Montreux: 100km. I leave Coronal in Lausanne, where he heads onto Bern. It's flat the whole way and I'm on very familiar turf. I used to live in Montreux, I'm meeting up with a couple of friends and there's going to be a few beers had, that's for sure.

Well done for reading this far.

ft9

How are you getting home?

Captain Havoc

ft9 wrote: »

How are you getting home?

Flying Aer Lingus from Geneva.

ft9

Ha not so bad, once you don't have to turn around and cycle back.

Captain Havoc

ft9 wrote: »

Ha not so bad, once you don't have to turn around and cycle back.

Would love to :rolleyes: but have to get back to work.

Captain Havoc

We made it over. Had to abandon our first attempt due to a storm which meant the following day we had to climb over and cycle a shed load of kilometers afterwards, which wasn't in the script. Raised about €1,500 so far for the hospice fund.