It's been an eventful few days and I've been struggling to decide where best to start this blog about my journey abroad, simply because it was the most eventful 6 days of my life, but i must say through all the chaos I absolutely loved every minute of it! So firstly I will tell you about the occurrence of events leading up to the race.
On Thursday, i went down on the train to Manchester to meet the team manager. It wasn't plain sailing though even then! Heading towards Edinburgh the conductor of the train claimed i would need to pay an extra £150 when travelling across the border. After a few panicked phone calls we managed to find out that if i got a railcard at Edinburgh station I could get away with just paying £30. So i had 25 mins to get off the train, run down the stairs, find the train office, fill out an entire form, recieve my railcard, run back up the stairs and then get on the train (all with a heavy bike box and a huge rucksack). It was so stressful but i just made it in time by 15 seconds to departure. I was not going to let anything stop me from racing in Belgium!
I stayed overnight in Yorkshire on Thursday night and Tony, the team manager, came in the mini bus to pick me up the following morning. We then went to pick the other girls up and the engine started steaming badly. We were a bit concerned - to say the least - but carried on. We picked up Sophie and Rhiannon then went back to Tony's to pick something up. Tony got out to find part of the exhaust on the ground. A short journey down to Quick Fit told us everything we needed to know. The exhaust wasn't broken someone had actually stolen it during the night! It had been perfectly unscrewed and it would take at least a day to order up the parts for it. We couldn't believe it, of all the things that could have gone wrong! How were we going to get to Belgium now? I was freaking out a little bit I must admit. With the train trouble the day before and now this I was sooooooo scared the world was going to throw everything possible at us to stop us racing in Belgium! Time for flapjacks Rhiannon decided! :-) It proved a great idea. We were not going to give up and it gave us time to brain storm. We ended up abandoning the bus and splitting up. Us 3 girls went with Sophie's Mum Sue in their van and Tony took his little car and picked up the other 3 girls. We were finally on the road once more! Phew!!
A 4.5 hour car journey down to Dover for the ferry was great fun with lots of laughs and singing! Will never forget our wee road trip. The girls were so nice in welcoming me to the team. I didn't know any of them but they made me feel like i deserved to be there too even though I was just guest riding, I really felt a part of it all. We were pushed for time again though! We were within a few minutes of the cut off time for getting on the ferry on the way down the motorway. It was close but we made it on... first too.. which was exciting for us ;-)
We touched down in Calais in France and it was rather interesting trying to find our way to the hotel. We managed it and attempted a bit of french to the hotel manager before we went to our beds ready for a route recce the next day!
We got up earlyish the next day all set for getting out for a ride. Unfortunately, Tony and the other girls hadn't been as lucky catching the earlier ferry and only arrived at the hotel at about 4.00am in the morning. No worries though, the recce of the course was pushed back to the afternoon but we weren't going to hang about. Sue, Sophie, Rhiannon and I went for a short stroll to "explore the French culture" as I had never been abroad before but actually it ended up being a trip down to the local Decathlon!! It was good fun though and truly amused Sophie. Her being so relaxed and happy before the race really chilled me out even though it was such a huge event.
Once the other girls (Sophie, Gwenno and Kim) got up they got breakfast and we went out for a route recce! It was good getting out on the bikes and waking the legs up after a full day of travelling. It was also great getting to meet the other girls properly. We did two laps and learnt some skills for the race then returned to the cars. But before heading back to the hotels we took a very memorable moment with this statue of Jesus! We were praying for luck for the race the following day, it was such good fun!
End of Part 1. There is so much more i could say about these few days but it just won't fit in a blog! Hope this gives you an idea of how exciting and valuable the entire experience was for me and I hope you enjoyed reading! I hope to finish writing part 2 about the race and get it up on the site within a couple of days!
Big thanks for reading and for all the support! :-)
