Jour dix sept – le fin
Given our campsite is six miles inland from the sea and the hubbub of Nice there is not a great deal to do once we have had our hammy baguette dinner (vegetarian option also available) so we turn in for the night at the frankly ridiculous time of around 930!
To be fair we do get a half decent nights sleep and once we have collected my driving licence from “Roz” (just google “Monsters Inc + Roz” all will become clear) we head off to Monte Carlo knowing this is not a campsite befitting our achievement and not a campsite we are returning to any time soon (or ever!).
Once we have carefully negotiated the piles of refuse, barbed wire, gangs of feral French teenagers and burnt out car wrecks (I am only half joking!) we quickly return to the wonder that is the Côte d’Azur….
It really is the most astonishing place and whilst I am acutely aware that my travel recommendations are probably getting a tiny bit wearing for all of you, not too mention unnecessary, if you have not been to Nice and followed the coast road to Monaco DO IT NOW!
It is almost comedy beautiful, a bit Disney like if I am honest, it doesn’t seem like it can all be real….
We stop briefly in Beaulieu for cafe creme (and a comfort break if truth be told!) and then we press on for the final 10 miles.
My rather poetic statement yesterday (“there are no more hills, we did them all”) turns out to be utter garbage, there are still a good number but it feels like there is nothing that we can’t now handle.
What I had not really prepared myself for about our arrival into Monte Carlo is the number of tunnels! We are in and out of the daylight several times before we pop out at a corner I very excitedly recognise “this is Portier, this is where Senna crashed in 1988”
It’s a short climb back up around the Loews hairpin and Mirabeau and after 17 days, over 1100 miles and countless feet of climbing the trois hommes have arrived in Casino Square, Monte Carlo……we have actually done it! We have actually cycled from my front door in London all the way across France and on to Monte Carlo, we have cycled up Mont Ventoux, we have cycled through the Gorges Verdon, through the lavender fields of Provence, across the northern plains and we have done it all and whilst carrying our selves, our worldly possessions and our accommodation….it is A-MAZ_ING!
We linger around in casino square drinking champagne, hugging, taking photos, whooping and hollering and just generally making a nusiance of our selves for about an hour and yet surprisingly we don’t get arrested even once!
When we finally decide we have properly finished our adventure (two bottles of champagne seems about the right amount) we drop back down to Portier and cycle through the famous tunnel.
It was my dad that first gave me the Grand Prix bug and so this is simply off the scale amazing for me. When we emerge into the daylight I look back over my shoulder and can see that Marc and Dan are a little overwhelmed as well, although it might also have been the champagne I suppose!
We decide to have our final trois hommes “pique nique” at Tabac right on the harbour front…
There is a final photo opportunity at Rascasse…
…and then we all agree that our incredible journey is officially “fin”.
It feels strange to retrace our steps for the first time in 1100 + miles but that’s exactly what we do. This time though we head straight through Nice and Cagnes St Mer to a new campsite further south and west and we are rewarded with something much more like what you would wish for. I mean let’s not go crazy, it’s still a campsite but it is probably, and fittingly the best site of our adventure.
Given two of us are of a certain age and the fact that we have travelled somewhere just over 1100 miles in 17 ish days it’s really, really hard to remember each of the campsites we have stayed at over the course of our adventure. So much so that we now have turned recalling each of them into something of a dinner time memory challenge. Obviously we are incapable of doing proper place names and so we conjure up visual images to help us, each with a very specific memory or story. Tonight’s winning game, the final one, looks like this….
Ferry
Wall
Free
Long grass
Misty Lake
Flowery
Rocamadour
River
Crazy hill then car chase
Sandy
Leopard skin thong
Picnic bench
The view
Rabbit
Monsters Inc
Fab
We declare today’s event an honourable draw (although really it was pretty clear that I won!)
This has been the most amazing, incredible adventure and it has exceeded every single one of my expectations, and let me tell you I had a lot. France is simply stunning and seeing it by bike must surely be the only way to do it properly. The France en Velo route, despite the fact we “bent it” a couple of times is brilliant and I am stunned it’s not more well known and more well used.
The company has been better than perfect and I simply cannot imagine a better couple of guys to share such an amazing experience with. The laughs, the traumas and the memories will be with each of us forever and I would not change a single thing.
It would be improper not to end our blog by reminding you all why we did all of this. Yes of course there is a self serving element and it would be disengenous to pretend otherwise….we wanted to do something seemingly crazy and impossible and have some fun doing it. …..and we absolutely did all of those things!
Winstons Wish though is, as I hope you all now know so important to me personally and to Marc and Dan who have been amazingly supportive of my desire to help them, the real reason we have done this and we hope we can in some small way make a difference. We are so proud that through our endeavours and your kindness we are able to make a real difference to bereaved children….it genuinely and truly means the absolute world to all three us.
I have thought long and hard about using this blog as a way of trying to convey in some way what it means to lose your parents so young and then perhaps use that as a way to explain first hand why it is so so important that you donate even if it’s just £10.
The fact is though that even after all this time, over 37 years, I am just not really ready to put it out there on the web. It was truly truly horrific, and tragic and devastating and much as I sometimes like to deny it, something that I did well into my late thirties actually, it was an understandably polarising event that totally changed who I was, who I became and who I am now.
I was, as I have already said, so very very lucky to have people around me who loved me and cared for me but there is no doubt that had Winstons Wish been around then I might, as might Andrew and Neil my two younger brothers, been able to get help to process what was happening and why and more importantly deal with what we were feeling.
In the 1980’s there was still very much a “stiff upper lip” approach whereby emotions or feelings were not really discussed. Winstons Wish make sure that children are allowed and helped to remember the loved ones they have lost talk openly about how they are feeling.
It’s an amazing charity so please make sure you don’t deny their help to someone else and go ahead and make a donation…..
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/nick-white24
I really hope you have enjoyed following us and our blog, we have had an absolutely amazing time.
London to Monte Carlo….. Le Fin!