Day 8 - Chataureux to La Chapelle St Mesmin

Planned Mileage: 83.75 miles
Actual Mileage: 89.52 miles
Temperature: 21.5C
Top Speed: 32.7 mph (20mph average for the day)
Start Time: 08:07am
End Time: 13:42pm
Total Saddle Time: 5hr 35mins (4hr 32mins ride time)

The ride north continues to pose no problems for a bunch of riders who are getting stronger by the day. Yet again, the terrain and conditions were rider friendly and conducive to strong group riding - they worked well together and sped through the miles.

They completed 30 miles, without a break, by 9:40am and this section was incident free. The team then headed further North and during this stage Phil decided to go for a toilet break, as the team are now cycling as a unit, some of the riders slowed down to allow Phil to rejoin the group - this is great teamwork - except in the eyes of Phil! His toys well and truly got thrown out the pram for the second time on this trip, and when he caught up with them he was yelling at them to close the gap and not to have waited for him - plenty of expletives later, the rest of the group reacted furiously to this ungrateful behaviour with one throwing his water over him and others leaving him in no doubt that he was bang out of order.

As we reached the lunch break, a few more words were said and then it was agreed to leave it at that. Phil asked the group to leave him behind in future! All heat of the moment stuff I am sure.

We then approached Orleans and had some issues navigating around the French equivalent of Birmingham's Spaghetti junction, which led to them losing myself. I then caught them up at a crucial moment as we had our first mechanical failure of the day - Phil who was at the back of the group was the victim as his chain fell off for the 1000th time on this trip. This meant that he has to donate £10 to the charities as he bet everyone that it would not happen again! Karma came knocking once more.

As he put the chain back on, the rest of the group did as he previously instructed and carried on without him. Due to the number of traffic lights he was able to catch back up. The riders were then led down an underpass, which Phil refused to go down, and instead opted to take the route over the top. This led to him being left stranded with just Dan, the motorbike rider, left to direct him to the hotel.

In the meantime, the rest of the riders located the hotel, which happened to be right next door to the Computacenter Orleans office so a photo opportunity was called for.

The team now had some time to clean their bikes and rest up before we were joined by a colleague who works in the Paris office - Michel Dormoy cycled down from Paris and will be cycling back with the team tomorrow. Oh, and I nearly forgot, Phil finally turned up and was extremely cheery - we will take this version any day.

Shortly after finishing cleaning the bikes, the heavens opened and we had a huge electrical storm.

As I conclude writing this blog in the hotel, the rest of the team are huddled around a laptop screen watching the docu-film 'Cycling Legends' - tomorrow I expect them to go even faster now they have studied how the pros do it!