Warminster to Portsmouth

Day 2

A great start to the day, with big bowls of porridge and hot toast courtesy of Sue and William Neville. Incredibly, we managed to hit our 7:45am departure time, despite having a number of the "biggest faffers" in the firm on board. Led by William in the yellow jersey, we set off for a stunning ride through the mist from Warminster to Salisbury , arriving at Salisbury Cathedral in time for an early morning hot chocolate. Soon after Salisbury , we picked up one of William's friends, Ed Martin, who was responsible for leading us safely across the New Forest . Ed did us proud with a stunning route passing through the village of Nomansland and a minor diversion to take in the sight of the wild New Forest ponies being herded off for transportation to France . Would we be able to beat them there?

Having been challenged at the breakfast table with accusations that he had "shot his bolt" the previous day, Chris was in inspired form and set the pace for the morning, although there were suggestions that his speed was more to do with the table he had booked at the Ship Inn at Lymington, rather than any natural speed.

Having established the motto of "it's not about the bike, it's about the food", we maintained our stunning performance by tucking into a fantastic spread of enormous burgers and chips (the athlete's lunch) before jumping onto a ferry across to the Isle of Wight . On departure, the team's ability to "faff" was shown in its true light as Rich Stovell waited until we were already leaving to go to the little boy's room. We all cycled off the ferry, expecting Rich to join us. 15 minutes later, we discovered that he had been locked into the toilet and only just managed to escape before the ferry turned round and headed back to Lymington.

The route across the Isle of Wight was unfortunately straight into the wind and the team took up its (until then unpractised) peloton formation. The heads went down and the miles were churned out with only the thoughts of the flapjacks and brownies waiting for us in Portsmouth to spur us on.


On arrival in Portsmouth , we headed off to Cannons Gym, who had very kindly offered to allow us free use of their facilities to warm down for the evening. Our research had shown that the gym was just round the corner from the ferry port. Unfortunately, we discovered 30 minutes of riding later that our research was not quite as accurate as we had hoped! The warm welcome we received at Cannons and the massaging hands (for those who indulged) made it more than worthwhile. A big thank you to everyone at Cannons for their support, it really was fantastic for us to be able to relax and wind down after the hard slog across the Isle of Wight .

Another session of carbo-loading before we jumped on the ferry across Le Havre . A final highlight to the day was Alyson's face when she discovered that the cabins on the ferry did not have their own facilities and she would have to join the masses down the corridor for her ablutions.