Tea for two

Attempting to get another 40 miles or so in before the football. 18 down and time for tea!
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Three minus one

Another fine day of cycling - Stafford via Shugborough, Gnosal, Norbury junction for elevenses. Then back via the usual route home. Mr Kelly sadly missed - but served us a fine coffee, squash and malt loaf (2 for 1 in Morrisons).

Fit for france

An excellent morning ride mapped out by James taking

us through Eccleshall, Maer, Ashley, Cheswardine and 

back home via 'The Bell' in Eccleshall.  Averaged around

12.8 mph. 

James looks into the future - not the near future hopefully  -

at the top of a churchyard in Maer.  Apparently Darwin

was married there.  How odd that the missing Welsh link

should turn up 150 years later. Shortly afterwards, we

tried swapping bikes for a bit, which was fine until James

tried to get onto Jeff's.  He had to ride side saddle almost

due to his Ernie Wise-esque legs.

Much needed tea and cereal bars (James always has
fancy organic ones) at a pub in Cheswardine.

Well, not quite, 4 weeks to go, getting on for optimium
 fitness - 50 miles today. Sent from my BlackBerry®
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Congleton cycling action

A Cycle from Barlaston to Stoke, Congleton, Rode Heath, Alsager, Betley, Bridgemere, Eccleshaw, Yarnfield and Stone, 62 miles in total! Mr k had decided to go for a big ride today, probably do 50 miles, which would have made it Mr kelly's big ride for a while but even bigger for Jeff as his furthest to date had been 35 miles so to end up doing 62 miles is a good effort. So the med men can relax take it easy their fit strong and ready to go, not, all we've got to do is be capable to do the same distance for 10 days in a row. Even though Mr K and myself have done this before on the Le Jog that was 2 years ago and although the mind knows we can do it the body needs a little more convincing

Getting Stronger!!!!!!!!

So with just over 7 weeks to go before the big ride, the Med Men are pumping Iron, legs and tyres to turn them selves into real athletes. Its always difficult to try and arrange a suitable day or time for us all to meet up for a training run so you can end up doing solo runs. Jeff has been cycling home from work which is some 20 miles away, which is a hard thing to do at the end of the day considering thats going to be a 3rd of our daily mileage. Mr K is continuing with his rides into work and back and getting the odd ride into the Shropshire Hills, hang on Shropshire doesn't have hills!!!!!!!
Jeff and I went for a ride accross North wales over the weekend putting 36 miles under our belt and although North Wales is not supposed to be anything like France, the weather was so hot 28C in the mid day sun, so it gave us a taste of what could be the Med Heat!!! Me thinks we'll do Siesta if that happens in France.

Eccleshall Loop

Just got back from an early morning ride, started at 6, wanted to get a few miles in as the weekend is really hectic. I've created an extra dimention to the Norbury junction loop by going north from Eccleshall, and then doing a loop to take in the Norbury loop. Good bit of 'C' roads a few climbs going to loggerheads/Ashley. Tea stops on the way everything for a good ride. It takes about 4 hrs to do plus tea breaks and makes nearly 40 miles.If you were to come from Stone you would probably hit the 55 mile mark so in a way its a days ride.

Resource for campsite finding.

http://en.camping.info/campsites

A variant to the plan would be to drop a little further south from Bergerac, west of Villeneuve to Agen and pick up the canal du midi through Montauban and Toulouse to Carcassonne. Anyhoo, here's a handy campsite finder I've just discovered.