Distance: 12 miles

And so it begins. In the sunshine, with a strong southwesterly and the taste of Cornish ice cream: Land’s End.

Apparently I had been here before, or so my Dad told me, back in 1991. My four year old self, though I loved my pink bicycle with teddy bear strapped on the back seat, would have failed to foresee that I would be back some 24 years later with my Dad for another ice cream. This time though I didn’t have to suffer in the backseat with two brothers kicking and poking me while I felt sick from too much Ribena. This time I would cycle from Penzance station until one of us, my Dad this time, would call out in the way we had on family holidays for years and years: “I can see the sea!!”

That beautiful, dark blue smudge on the horizon became sparkling and white foam smashing against the rocks as we approached. In touristic mode, we parted with £10 in order to have our photograph taken under the “famous Land’s End signpost” and celebrated the start with the first ice creams of the trip. Here it begins, where the rock meets the sea. Over a thousand miles lie ahead before these two Rocks will meet the sea at John O’Groats.

Steve’s tapering week

Not this…

Sitting in a hospital ward for 10 hours recovering from a general anaesthetic is no one’s idea of fun. Even less so on the hottest day since 2006 when the ward has no air conditioning. Especially less so three days before the start of LeJog when the reason is the extraction of a piece of glass from one’s foot.
The incident had its origins over a month ago when I was sweeping hedge trimmings in the garden and felt something go into my foot. There was a piece of glass about 3 inches long sticking out the side of my trainer. I pulled it out instinctively. Back in the house I examined the wound, saw and felt nothing further, washed and cleaned it and covered it with a plaster.
For three weeks all was well. Cycling back from Mid Wales after the last stage of LeJog training I felt an occasional pain in the foot. Back at home, walking around in slippers that provide a lot of instep support, I realised all was not well. It was painful whenever I put weight on it, which made me think there was something still there.
Since then things have moved surprisingly quickly, all with great credit to our sometimes maligned NHS.

Monday
Phoned our local surgery for advice. The duty doctor called me back, advised an X-ray and treatment at the  Minor Injuries Unit. Drove to the MIU, where the X-ray confirmed suspicions and the nurse attempted unsuccessfully to remove it. This was the professional version of trying to dig out a splinter, but she was limited in what she could do, to avoid damage to nerves or tendons. She made the decision to refer me to the “Virtual Fracture Clinic” at the main hospital (Virtual because it’s online, not because it wasn’t a real fracture).

…but this

Tuesday
Received a call from a real person at the Fracture Clinic, well within their promised  time period. Their assessment was I should attend the real Fracture Clinic first thing on Wednesday with a possibility of having the extraction under general anaesthetic in the afternoon.
Spent the rest of the day packing, worrying and hoping.

Wednesday
Breakfast at 6 am just in case. By 9:30 the real Registrar in the real Fracture Clinic had marked a big arrow on the side of my foot, labelled it FB (Foreign Body) and sent me off to the surgical ward to be prepared. At noon I drifted woozily off under my first general anaesthetic for nearly 60 years and woke up an hour later feeling remarkably comfortable.
The one piece of bad timing was that I has to miss a family night out at our favourite gastropub and so wait for the merry revellers to pick me up on the way home. Special thanks to Lois who made the round trip from home to hospital three times during the day.

So today  (Thursday) it’s more rest and recovery, then a visit to the surgery tomorrow for a more practical wound dressing and train to Penzance with Dino on Saturday.

It’s almost July and preparations are being finalised for the grandest of all cycling’s Grand Tours. Bikes are being fettled, carbo is being loaded. Saturday 4 July sees Le Grand Depart, when the intrepid cyclists set off on their gruelling three-week parcours. C’est Le Tour de France, ne c’est pas?

Mai non, c’est LeJog (Land’s End to John O’Groats).

While the Tour de France riders are preparing to pootle 13.8 km around the flat streets of Utrecht, intrepid father and daughter combo Steve and Dino will be heading to Cornwall ready to take on their first stage of 62 notoriously hilly miles from Land’s End to Padstow. The professionals’ route may take in higher mountains than Shap Summit (1393 ft), but they will be doing so on bikes weighing only 6.8 kg, instead of solid British steel touring bikes with a loaded weight of 35 kg.

From Cornwall we will be taking in these famous locations:

• Cheddar Gorge
• Severn Bridge
• Ferry across the Mersey
• Shap
• The isles of Arran, Mull and Skye
• The Skye Bridge (not sponsored by a satellite TV company)
• Cape Wrath (maybe, if we feel up to it on a rest day)

before finishing at John O’Groats on Sunday 26 July – the same day as the professionals will be swigging their champagne en route to the Champs Élysées.

We hope to be blogging (as well as possibly blagging) our way, and subject to the vagaries of mobile telecoms reception and tiredness you will be able to follow our progress here. You can also enter your email, so you’ll get notified of updates as soon as they are posted.

On y va!

Day 4: Cancale to Binic (116km)

I arrived at the sea with four minutes to spare. I parked Monty on a railing, walked fifteen steps down the sea wall and with my sixteenth step I felt the wet sand sink between my toes. At 7:56pm I waded into the warm water of Binic bay as the high tide began to nibble the bottom step. Finally: after 116km the salt water lifted the weight from my tired muscles.

At 7pm I heard the church bells. At the time I was skidding down a steep sandy slope. My day-long hope of reaching the sea by high tide was not yet diminished despite the fact that the Veloroute signs had disappeared and I now appeared to be following the GR34 – a coastal footpath. The warm singing of the church bells told me I must be close.

So far my “route planning” has underestimated distances. (I use the term “route planning” loosely as I cobbled together this trip at the last minute and was printing off maps until 2 hours before I jumped onto the train to Portsmouth). Today’s ride was supposed to be 100k or so. And hilly. And I realized yesterday that I had run out of paper map. Last night I tried to download the digital map onto my iPad but by the time I received one smidgy bar of wifi connection I’d forgot why I’d logged on and then the internet conked out again. I departed the campsite at 9.30am knowing I had over 100km to ride but not where to go!

It had gone noon by the time I eventually found the bike path. With barely 20km logged all morning I was not amused to find the bike track 10ft below me under the bridge I was standing on. A very steep descent buried in trees barred my access. I backtracked again. By this point in the day I had at least succeeded in acquiring two maps. One shows the bike paths but not the road. The other shows the roads but not the bike paths. Go figure.

Neither map had the sort of scale that could explain to me how I could access the bike path below me. And I had already established that where path met road had been sealed off by a high wall of construction work. I found another wall – could I climb this? At the first heave of Monty a vision of me with a bulging disc in my spine popped into view and I realised I’d forgotten my European health insurance card. Don’t do it, Dino. Don’t do it. Eventually, and with language more colourful than a meadow of wild flowers in late spring, I unloaded Monty’s pannier and lowered him down a rocky embankment to the track. Phew.

The track followed another disused railway line for a few kilometres and then it swerved out into the countryside. Sometimes it followed quiet lanes. Sometimes dusty farm track, or gravel, or grass, or sand. Sometimes it choose to take me on what I suspected was three sides of a square. Sometimes it choose to take me on what I knew must be seven sides of an octagon. The kilometres wore on. Occasionally I could glimpse a view of the sea but always I smelt the scent of the fresh sea breeze in the air. I passed wheat fields, cows, horses, donkeys, two goats, old stone farmhouses, dusty red tractors, hay bales and poppies. Swifts screamed over the roofs. The road dipped down a 15% gradient hill, crossed a bridge and then immediately climbed again. By the third such climb I was almost smiling.

I stopped for a quick lunch – it was 4pm and I had done 80km. My road map didn’t show the track I was on and my bike path map didn’t have the scale to show me, well, anything useful. I was at the mercy of the small green and white signposts to guide me along Veloroute 4. I listened to Canadian pop music in a zen like trance while scanning every corner for a signpost. I followed it successfully until the last 5km when the signposts disappeared and were replaced by a footpath. The steep sandy descent meant I was near the sea. The church bells told me I was near the town.

Finally I got my swim. Three kids were playing ping pong in the water. I swam out across the beach towards the clock tower. A small lighthouse stood by the harbour. One, two, boats were still sailing out in the sea. A smudge of land lay on the far horizon.

I swam up and down three lengths along the beach. Slips of seaweed brushed against me. The salt water tasted tangy.

By the time I returned two of the ping pong players were wrapped in towels. The third snorkelled in the shallows. The sun faded behind the chimney pots. I sat on the top step brewing hot chocolate. I watched as the surf departed from the bottom step and retreated slowly down the sand.

Day 3: Carolles to Cancale (86km)

I discovered previously in life (while pottering alone around Siberia) that I require at least one conversation per day to keep sane.

A conversation for this purpose is defined as a verbal dialogue with both parties speaking in turn. It must contain another person (not just the voices in your head) and preferably be in person rather than on the phone. It must contain an exchange of opinions rather than merely an exchange of facts. This is to differentiate it from a formulaic exchange such as “please can I have a fish and a beer” (which one day in deepest Russia is the only thing I said to another living being).

Having only spoken briefly to the man in the tourist information yesterday and uttered “bonjour” to some passing cyclists then by mid morning I was bordering on the edge.

Down the road I spied two touring bicycles neatly packed with Ortliebs and, across the road, a couple of cyclists sipping coffee.

“You’re German aren’t you?” I offered by way of greeting.

They nodded. Yes! I congratulate myself on having been able to identify the cyclists’ nationality simply from the look of their bikes. I grasped, in a combination of bad English and worse French, that the two Germans had spent the last fortnight cycling from Amsterdam and were now headed to Nantes along Veloroute 4. With enough enthusiasm anyone can talk to anyone. I recall a long conversation I had with my cabin-mate on the ferry to Japan. She spoke no English. I spoke very, very limited Japanese and yet we chatted somehow for an hour, learning about each other’s lives. The German tourers were not such conversationalists and, having realised that my school girl French had disintegrated into a stuttering mess, I pedalled off the wrong side of my definition of conversational sanity.

From the edge of the poppy field this morning, Le Mont St Michel was only a grey outline of a jagged triangle. I headed south along the coast of the the Baie de St Michel, before hopping over a bridge to a cross the estuary and continuing west along Veloroute 4.

Though my legs felt strong and were pedalling well it was slow going on account of having to navigate so much. The path cut in and out of crop fields, past verges of thick wild flowers, under skylarks, along a river and over crumbling bridges. The further west I pedalled the clearer the view of Le Mont became: first a shadow, then a line of wall, the details of St Michel were gradually sketched in as I approached.

Morning view of Le Mont

Two hours later and Le Mont was only a grey shadow behind me when I pull up on the side of the road to swap my drink bottles around. It is late afternoon and the water in my bottle had warmed under the sun.

On the other side of the road another cycle tourer pulled up. He wore a small beard and John Lennon glasses. Definitely French, I thought, eyeing up his panniers. He waved from across the main road.

“Where ‘ve you cycled…” Zoom. A car whips by.

“I started in…” Zoom. Another car. “Er..” Zoom. A van. “And now…” Zoom.

A tractor rolls by. We stare blankly at each other across the road.

“Eh?”

After five minutes of hearing ever other word he rolls across the road. (Why didn’t I think of that?) The Frenchman’s bike is neatly packed with panniers full to the brim. Stuffed inside his bottle cages are white school-boy sport socks.

“Does that work?” I ask, nodding at the sock covered bottles.

“Yes, it works,” he beamed. “You need metal bottles and you need to put the socks in water. But it works.” I make a mental note to try it out one time. I reckon that it could be handy if/when I cycle across Australia.

We discuss important cycling topics: kit, the respectively weight of our panniers, the kilometres travelled, the weather. Before he turns to go he pauses and adds one more thing:

“Brittany. It is more…” He waves his hand up and down like a diving fish.

“Hilly?”

He laughs.

“Bon voyage!”

My sanity has been restored.

Day 2: St Germain-sur-Ay to Carolles

“The ocean will be open at 6.52,” he replied, conjuring a beautifully idiomatic vision of steel gates around the sea ceremonially swinging open at high tide. His pronunciation was heavily accented but the message was clear enough: “From five o clock it will be good for the swimming.”

With a map to guide me back to the sea, I trotted out the tourist info and straight into the camping municipal opposite. It had just gone 4pm and I’d decided that after 73km I’d done enough cycling for the day. For the whole day I’d been following the coast. Even when the road ran inland I would catch sight of the inviting glimmer of turquoise as I crested a hill. For elevenses I pushed Monty up a sand dune and munched grapes and M&Ms overlooking a vast vista of sea salt, sea weed and bird-filled estuary. A lapwing flapped overhead. For lunch I pulled into the beach at Granville and ate my picnic watching the stone-walled lido slowly fill with water as the tide rolled in. I stopped to buy a baguette which I then strapped onto the top of my rear rack. I noticed as I pedalled off that the end of the baguette was poking me in the left buttock so, while still happily pedalling along, I pulled off a bit and ate it. And then another bit. And so I continued pedalling past wheat fields and poppies munching thumbfuls of fresh bread. The day gave me quiet roads, sea views, sunshine and a tailwind. The only thing that could make it better was a dip in the sea to wash off two days’ worth of sweat and suncream.

Tent pitched and valuables scattered and hidden in a variety of locations, I donned my swimming costume, packed up by wetsuit, and (literally) coasted 2km down the steep Route de la Plage. At the end of these road a strip of soft sand and the glistening Baie du Mont St Michel awaited.

There was certainly no need for a wetsuit. The water was a better temperature than many heated pools and the late afternoon sun still warmed my skin. The messy, thumpy waves were opaque – presumably because of the amount of sand caught up in it. Each stroke disappeared into the cloudy drink as if the water had amputated my arms above the elbow. I swam back and forth along the shoreline. On one side I caught my breath to look at the sun and the face of the next lemonade wave. On the other side I kept an eye on Monty, parked by a railing on the sea wall, and my stash of clothes in a pile by some rocks.

Having swum back and forth sufficiently I returned to the beach to let the cooling sun dry my skin. I could see half a dozen kite surfers speeding along the water. That looks hard. How on earth can you control a power kite with your arms while battling the waves with the board on your feet? While the others skimmed gracefully back and forth one kite surfer kindly did a demonstration – or rather several demonstrations – of just how hard it is to mount a board on a wave while also flying a kite. First sploosh: falling back off. Second sploosh: flipping overboard. Sploosh sploosh sploosh and then – almost a trick – he rolls vertically in the air before… Sploosh. Eventually the poor man relented and came into shore.

I lingered at the beach until 6.52 just to see if any gates would appear. Then, as the waves swallowed the last child’s sand castle, I pedalled back up the Route de la Plage.

Day 1: Portsmouth to St Germain-sur-Ay (77km)

The Tour de Manche (tour of the channel) is a new bike route that only opened last year. People hearing that I was about to cycle the channel gave me perplexed looks (does she know it’s a body of water? Has she got a pedalo?) their furrowed brows only deepened when I admitted I was packing my wetsuit. But no, I am not swimming the channel bits. Having hopped on the Portsmouth to Cherbourg ferry this morning, I intend to relax my muscles after each day’s cycling by swimming in the sea. This week I shall be following the north shores of Normandy and Brittany. Next week I shall catch the ferry from Roscoff to Plymouth and then cycle home along the south coast of Devon and Dorset.

Navigating out of bendy roads of Cherbourg I took more left and right turns than I think I did across the whole of Canada. After 15km I was out of town and ascending yet another fiendishly steep climb while mentally tossing out clothes and kit from my pannier. Three tshirts? A body warmer? What was I thinking? Monty weighed a ton. The Devon-esque lanes were a fearful reminder that this time next week I will be wheeling this hefty load across Dartmoor. How on a earth did I cycle across Canada with all this stuff? (Answer: I didn’t. I posted it to Montreal!)

Today is National Grass Cutting Day in France. Or so it would seem. For all day I heard the buzzing of mowers and the air was coloured by the green scent of the fresh grass. I cycled up and down, up and down the windy lanes of Normandy. Cycling here needs to be done with one’s mouth firmly shut in order to avoid a lungful of bugs.

It was gone 3pm by the time I stopped for lunch. It was like being in Canada again: out comes the tent to flap in the breeze and, for the first time this season, I get an avocado stain on my bike shorts. Ah yes, the bike shorts. Nearly all the kit I have with me is the same as I had in Canada. Except the bike shorts.

One pair, to be fair, should have been chucked out well before Halifax. For the elastic had gone the way of a grandmother’s knickers and the lycra resembled a gone-over swimming costume. The other pair however (which were near new in Vancouver) had great sentimental value. Though they had been bleached by the sun I kept wearing them. That is, I kept wearing them until both my dad and my girlfriend independently informed me that they could read the label and see the curve of my butt cheeks. Hence new shorts.

The afternoon led me down a long disused railway that had been converted into a gravelly bike path that slices between the shaded trees. My pace had slowed on account of the gravel and the fact I’d been up at 5.20am to catch the ferry. It wasn’t until the church bells chimed 6.30pm that I turned off into St Germain-sur-Ay and commenced my hunt for the campsite. It was gone 7pm by the time I found it, hidden several miles away, and I arrived to find the office closed. Nobody in sight. Well, I wasn’t going anywhere else so I pedalled in to find the tent spots. Caravans. I pedalled further. More caravans. I pedalled round a corner. More caravans. Pedal on. More caravans. After about 5 minutes I found a washroom. It was locked. After 10 minutes I found another washroom – with one toilet cubicle unlocked – and a nearby tap. The other problem was I hadn’t the foggiest idea where I was. Lost in the labyrinth of empty caravans I took a bearing off the sun (yes, really) which was now firmly in the western sky and traced my way back to entrance. And then back to the washroom to find a rough patch of caravan-free grass on which to pitch my tent.

Finally, by 8pm I lay on my back and listening to a chiff chaff calling while the seed heads fluttered in the evening breeze. The hues of the sky dulled. The clouds blew over. Sleep came easily.

Back on the road following a disused railway line

“Unknown artist?” James scrolls down the list on his iPod looking for the right track.

The tall trees outside the car are backlit by the dregs of light from the sunken sun. The road is quiet. An hour earlier we’d bumped down this rough track signposted “no access to unauthorized vehicles” and pulled up on the verge by the clearing in the trees. We’ve sat here for an hour with the cool evening air drifting in through the wound down windows. I don’t know if either of us is holding out much hope. James heard nightjars here before once – several years ago. I have never heard one before.

James locates the track “Eurasian nightjar” on his iPod and checks the volume. Then he stops, we listen.

And we hear it: eerie and unearthly. The weirdest, most synthetic sound nature provides is the vibrating churr of the Eurasian nightjar.

James looks at me. “I didn’t press play.”

We jump out of the car to see two nightjars shoot out the tree right next to us. They fly over the clearing and disappearing into the shadowy trees beyond.

We are left in the dark, grinning and jumping around like children in a playground. James climbs back into the car to press play on the iPod track. Nightjars are territorial, he explains, so the sound of one is likely to attract the attentions of another. We stand in the dark with the noise emitting from the car stereo. As the track slips onto the noisy opening bars of Peter Gabriel one nightjar comes back and swoops low directly over my head before disappearing again into the dark.

“Don’t drown. Because it will really ruin the party this afternoon.”

This comes from my mother as I pick up my whitewater helmet and scurry out the front door.

My destination: Hurley Weir. A mecca for whitewater kayakers and a former haunt of mine which I used to frequent in my younger days when I was a ‘pro’ kayaker. The last 5 months I’ve been lost in work and worry. I thought I’d find myself again somewhere on the river. So I head out with my kayak to start the search.

Today I have struck lucky. There are only another two paddlers out. The wave is powerful, retentive and very, very fast. The sun projects the curve of a rainbow on the crest of the wave. Cormorants flap overhead. I spin, surf, spin, surf, cartwheeling in my kayak until the water pushes me under. I roll up and paddle up the eddy grinning.

The next day I am back in my kayak. This time I am at the top of the Thames with my tiny kayak is loaded with an unimaginable load. I have stuffed in my tent, sleeping bag, therma rest and ‘some’ clothes. I should point out I paddle a playboat designed for mucking around on waves. So this is like bike touring on a BMX.

I paddle 9 miles past patterns of raindrops, reeds and shifting grey clouds. The river is silent except for the drizzle, the sound of my paddle stroke, and the tune of reed warblers (or are they sedge warblers?) I pull up at the lock and pitch my tent. Then it’s off to the pub to meet my friend for chips, steak and beer. I walk home in the drizzle. The sun is a fiery, fuzzy orange chopped out a Turner painting. Four curlew fly home with bubbling cries. I sleep soundly. For 11 hours.

The next morning I load up the kayak with my meagre possessions. The sky threatens rain. 18 miles of paddling lie ahead of me. Playing on the weir has taken its toll on me: my torso is a knot of muscle and ache. Holding your body erect is not supposed to be an effort like this. I paddle in solitude for several hours. The first boat I see calls out “you’re the first person we’ve seen in a day and half!” We are less than 20 miles from central Oxford. I paddle on, sharing the silent river with only the constant drizzle, the uncomfortable cold, and the tune of reed warblers (or are they sedge warblers)?

I am beginning to fantasize about blankets and hot chocolate. Are my teeth chattering? Was that a shiver? At each lock portage my legs have stiffened with cold and the leap in and out the kayak becomes more like stirring ice. The quiet is disturbed by a lone cuckoo: the first I have heard for two years. The rain persists. I paddle the final mile back to Oxford. Then home. I sleep. For 11 hours.

The next day I am back at the weir. The cormorants are back and now joined by a grey wagtail that bounces on the railing like a ping pong ball meeting the ground. The grin on my face widens as I curve down the wave and the back of my boat spirals against the rushing flow. Whatever I’d lost I’d just found again.

Did I mention it was raining?

After 33 miles I started running again. I was approaching the sixth checkpoint but I feared that my walking pace – by now an awkward struggle – had dropped below 3mph.

At the start of the day I’d been in high spirits. I, along with 100 of so other runners and walkers, had filed off the bus at Overton Hill and stomped up the chalky spine of the ancient Ridgeway. Our destination, Goring Village Hall, lay 40 miles east.

For the first few hours I fast walked uphill and gently ran downhill. On the downhills I was overtaken by lithe ultra runners wearing super-lightweight backpacks and calf compression socks. On the uphills I was overtaken by 6 foot tall men striding with great seriousness. It was a fashion show of oddness:  nylon gaiters, floppy hats, heavy duty waterproofs and plastic map cases. One senior gentlemen sported bright red knitted calf warmers of that sort that my grandmother would have darned. Probably old enough to be my grandfather he overtook me at the 10 mile mark and I didn’t see him again. On I plodded.

From the top of the ridge you can see for miles. You can see the weather come and go: here, the sun shone in bright patches over the rape seed fields. There, the jagged blur of grey joined the sky to the land (that’s what rain looks like from a distance). A young foal followed its mother nibbling the thick grass in the paddock. The sky above reverberated with the sound of skylarks. The occasional shot of a rifle echoed off the side of the hills. And on I plodded.

Miles 23 to 33 were a struggle. Being on top of a ridge meant being exposed to the elements: one moment the cow parsley was jingling in a light sky-blue breeze, the next the grass was flattered by a blowing gale. The wind was so strong it pushed me off course as my feet searched for a sure landing in between the ridges of chalk, mud and puddle. The rain drummed on my waterproof hood, reminding me of camping evening spent listening to the rain on my tent. As quickly as it started, the rain ceased. And a rainbow spread across the ripening fields below.

At mile 26 I treated myself to a bag of M&Ms and a fresh pair of socks. The socks were instantly sodden by a new wave of rain. So far I’d stuck to my schedule, based on a 3.5 mph pace, but now my speed slowed ever more as the muscles and joints in my legs protested the distance. On I plodded.

At mile 33 I put on my third pair of socks and my iPod. I swallowed two painkillers. Come on, Dino, you can finish this now. It was nearly 6pm by the time I tottered into the sixth and penultimate checkpoint. I was only 10 second ahead of schedule. Eurovision started at 8pm. Eurovision! I gulped some squash, pushed my earphones back in and began running again.

As I approached the final checkpoint I saw the cheerful outline of a lone walker coming towards me: my mother. Last year she’d walked the Ridgeway 40 and this year she’d come out to meet me for the last 4 miles. We ran together down the rocky path through the woods. Occasionally we’d overtake a stray walker, wobbling awkwardly on their legs like a bird with a broken wing. Do I look that bad?

Then: the last mile! We picked up speed, pushing as fast as my legs could go. Each stride felt like lifting an iron weight. Each stride was another punch against the ground for my tender feet. After 39.9 miles I was halfway over the bridge and the village hall was in sight. Come on, Dino. Sprint! Sprint! My legs found one more drop of energy to speed me to the end. I’d made it!

40 miles in 11 hours and 28 minutes.

It was the furthest I had ever walked or run. Finally, beyond shattered, I crawled the final metres from the front door to the bucket of ice awaiting me. By 8pm I was lying on the sofa, feet up on a pile of cushions, Prosecco in hand, and watching Eurovision. What a day.

The last mile

40 miles later and still smiling