Stage 1

Welcome to the real tour de france. Stage 1 began at a time commonly defined as silly'o'clock and with a relitively easy trip across the channel to Lille. Unfortunatly our bikes (packed on the night-train the day before) made the even easier trip to Paris, obviously they wanted to skip the first 3 stages. Lazy bikes. Speaking to Gaz on Wednesday night I joked 'I guess the only thing worse than British Rail network organisation is British Rail organisation in conjuction with French'. Yep. Anyway, this gave us the oportunity to check out Lille which is nice although it seems to have a facination with modern shopping centres therefore making it the french Telford.

After the delay we finally go going and proceeded to ride like the wind (i.e. in short bursts and sometimes in the wrong direction). 60K was acheieved easily and we stopped in a small village outside of Arrus for the night. The hotel was woeful but it didn't matter. Neither of us could be bothered with dinner so a quick beer, some figs rolls and sleep was the subsitute.