After months of waiting, the time had finally come.

My day started off with goodbyes. I’d been feeling very emotionally confused in the run up to the departure date.

Excited, nervous, apprehensive. Everything you could feel about such a trip was floating around in my brain.

After saying goodbye to my family, I had to face the moment I’d been dreading; saying goodbye to Mel, my girlfriend.

There were lots of tears and Hollywood-esque goodbyes. It felt like how I imagine it must have been for soldiers going to WW2.

But instead, I have a phone to stay in touch and Nintendo Switch. So, probably pretty overdramatic on my part.

It is by far the worst part about doing something like this. But, with support from eachother, it feels a lot better.

With my comfy family life fading into the distance behind me, I headed to my local train station to meet Ludo in Southsea.

One problem; the train was cancelled. I was hoping for a stress free start, but the bike touring gods wouldn’t allow it.

Instead, I sprinted to Southampton Central to make the train.

35 minutes later I was wheeling onto the train to Fratton. A nice, if unwanted, warm up for the thighs and quick tour of the local sights before I left.

Upon arriving at Ludo’s house, we had a typically continental lunch prepared by Ludo’s mum before saying yet another emotional goodbye.

With that out of the way, we could finally turn our heads towards the task at hand.

Although it was a big day emotionally and symbolically, it was actually practically very low-key.

A train to Brighton then an 11km ride to a campsite just outside of Newhaven ready to pootle onto the ferry the next day.

The train ride passed without event. Of course, we sat by the toilets. A quintessentially British aroma.

Onwards toward the campsite and we rode along the coast path as the sun set, cliffside to our left and English Channel to our right.

11km and some nasty sharp hills to climb up from sea level later, we found the Stud Farm campsite on Telscombe Hill.

And it was beautiful.

Only a tenner a night, hardly anyone there and showers with washing up facilities.

Our tent was up in a flash and we began cooking dinner as the sun went down.

On the menu was orzo with tomatoes fried in garlic oil.

To say we were smug about how the day had turned out would be an understatement. Until the bike touring gods intervened once more.

The wind meant our gas stove was struggling to get the orzo up to boil. So we made the fatal error of moving the stove into our tent porch.

As I eased myself into the tent to continue cooking, my stupidly gangly legs smashed into the stove, sending oily, starchy pasta stock flying into the tent.

The liquid splashed over our clothes, onto my sleeping bad and pooled around the entrance.

My foot was burning. Ludo was straight onto the toilet roll to mop it up. Disaster.

Miraculously, we managed to get rid of it all and dry the tent before bed.

We gladly munched through what was left of our unsalted pasta dish and reflected on the preceding chaos. Could be worse was the assessment.

Around that time (about 9pm), James and Woody, two of our friends from London, arrived after cycling up from Newhaven train station. They, and four others were joining us for the first leg to Paris.

They got lost, crashed twice, disturbed some rabbits but made it in one piece in complete darkness.

After assessing our options (Banagrams or cards), we decided to call it a night. Early start in the morning and all that.

Ludo and I crawled into our sleeping bags fully clothed anticipating an uncomfortably chilly night.

James slept naked and Woody on a punctured air mattress. Both terrible decisions that they duly paid for.

We woke at 7am to a beautifully misty morning.

Well, we also woke at about 2am, 2.30am, 3am, 4am and 4.30am, cuddling ourselves to stay warm. But I’m reluctant to moan as we will undoubtedly be complaining about the absolute sweatbox the Caucuses will be in mid-June.

The ferry was at 11am. We arrived at the terminal at 10.30 after a quick Lidl pit stop.

The rest of the gang turned up just as the terminal gates closed. Pete was blasting ‘Portsmouth’ by Mike Oldfield from a speaker…I feared for what our continental neighbours would make of us.

That completed our Paris troop. Ludo, James, Woody, Pete, Jacob, Dave and I.

We boarded the ferry to Dieppe and that was us departed from Blighty.

It felt like another momentous occasion. We were really on our way now.

The nerves and thoughts of those at home are still here, and probably will be for the whole trip.

But we were in too deep now. If this was Lord Of The Rings, we’d have just set foot outside of the shire.

The first real bit of riding stretched out before us as we disembarked in Dieppe; The Avenue Verte.

For today though, we only had 30km to ride. Thanks to the flat terrain and excellent condition of the paving, we made it in two hours to Camping St Claire for 6pm.

After some tinned vegetable chilli and rice for dinner, we headed to the local town of Neufchâtel-en-Bray to explore.

Unfortunately, it was Labor Day in France so most things were shut. Apart from the imposing cathedral.

With clouds drawing in, we retreated to the campsite. Ludo will be the first to tell you that there is no free toilet paper supplied.

As we crawled into bed, the forecasted thunder and lightning moved in. We settled in for a shaky night.