Charles de Gaulle airport - Paris, France

Clive arrived at Gate E34 first and was munching a ham ciabbata when I got there, having been detained in the Virgin mobile phone shop! He reports that no iPad 2's were to be had in eithe Heathrow or Paris cdg. Equally, I can report a dirth of Motorola Milestone XT720's, which I am told is the latest smartphone to arrive from the USA.
Read the first few pages of China Road, by Rob Gifford on the plane from Bristol. He tells me that the Chinese have emigrated in their millions from the countryside to the cities - and we are going in the opposite direction, with a bit of luck. I haddn't fully appreciated that we as a nation seem to have behaved rather poorly during the colonial days when Shanghai etc were colonial outposts. Clive takes his pragmatic view that in those days we did as we thought appropriate. Doesn't hold with retrospective apologies. What does he think about slavery, I ask
To be continued!

2011 Trip 2 China

Depart Bristol Sunday 15th May for Paris - there to meet Clive and catch the connecting flight to Guangzhou, where we are scheduled to land at 1655 Monday 16th. First night at Hotel Canton, 374 Beijing Road - tel 020-83189888

Start of another long bike ride!

This is the itinerary!

2011 Trip 1 - South Africa

Suikerbosse

The Cape Argus ride 2011 was cycled in perfect conditions, as can be seen from these pictures. 68 miles through heavenly views, beside the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, and starting and finishing under Table Mountain, one of the world's most iconic sights. The pictures show two of the climbs - Suikerbosse, which came at the end of the ride, shortly after Chapman's Peak. There were tens of thousands of riders, with about a thousand from overseas. We were given a favoured start time, in the middle of the pack. The other local entrants were all seeded, in accordance with their prowess in earlier seeding events up and down the country. Prior to the schedulede ride, we trained in Franschhoek, Montagu and Swellendam, with a day ride on the Bainskloof Pass that we'd ridden on three years ago. We cycled that twice in the same day, for good measure!

Chapman's Peak

Cyclemeter record of the actual ride (route was clockwise)

Started and finished with Clive - 4hrs 40 mins

Training schedule leading up to the Cape Argus ride