There it is, London!

I am on top of Shooters Hill … I see from the top the London Eye, the Big Ben, the Tower Bridge … the City is there waiting for me … like I was already for the arrival in Cairo the euphoria for the arrival cancels all the tiredness and all the small pains accumulated in these 8000 and more km … since the suburbs of London there are signs of the Olympics and Paralympics … what strikes me immediately is the number of cyclists and cycling paths … it is not by chance that the United Kingsom has won Tour de France and many medals in cycling … Wiggins, Froome, Cavendish are the top … having champions helps to create … and vice versa … at the traffic lights there are groups of urban cyclists who remind me of the start of a Sunday race … Continue reading →

It is beautiful to start on a downhill!

From Cassel you go down towards the sea which is still more than 40 kilometers far, there is no wind, there are cyclists training, I had not seen so many from Moncenisio, arrived in Bourbourg a lady on a bicycle with two lateral panniers slightly smaller than mine shows me where to get the road to Calais … the directions are only for the highway … even though Calais is only about twenty kilometers from here when I ask for directions it seems to be part of another world all together … it made me laugh that the lady, maybe aware of that, made a sprint through a shortcut and all red in the face came out from a lateral road to make sure I had taken the right direction … arrived almost to the sea with Dunkerque in the West and Calais East … I take a wrong road … a cyclist … annoyed because I overtook him … and a jogging guy later … give me completely wrong directions … so I pass by a nuclear plant … yes I am heading towards Calais, but since I cannot fly I have to stop when the road ends and I find two sort of basins formed by a canal … full of fishes and fishermen … one of these leads me back to the right path on his Renault 4 … Continue reading →

The paved uphill one kilometer long at the end I was not expecting it …

I understood almost immediately that I would have to wait another day to see the North Sea which I like very much, the adverse wind stronger than yesterday, the usual roller coaster ride and the cold slowed me down since the beginning … there was a moment when I thought I could make it but a few wrong roads took me back down to earth … Continue reading →

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Where have the water fountains gone?

‘You want to go to Laon? By bicycle? … it is not possible it is 50 km!’

During this journey it has happened to me often to ask street directions, and to receive a not required feasibility judgment, it matters little that you explain that you come from Zambia, that on average you cover 130 km per day, on the face of these people remains an expression sure that you will not make it, accompanied by a sympathetic smile … they are sure it is not possible … like the guy I met this morning in Reims …

The adverse wind has come back together with the cold!

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Armstrong …

This surname will remind us just jazz, the moon landing … and a fraud facilitated by those who closed their eyes …

I left Langres with the idea that justice triumphs, sure late, but it has won … cycling has lost … probably the gold book of the tour will be retouched … some seconds of those long seven years have themselves run up against disqualifications … some were allowed doping others no … this I was thinking in the first kilometers … Continue reading →

The behind wheel too has left me …

The first kilometers pass by among the country side, houses with pitched roofs so much to almost reach the ground, many posts ‘a vendre’ on houses and businesses, many petrol stations, I do not know if it is the crisis, but since I entered France this is a constant, many businesses and houses are for sale … I assume they are good deals for who buys and sad stories, or relief, for who sells … between the Italian and French farms and the African ones there is the same difference between the room of a very tidy child and a messy one …

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But were the uphill not supposed to end in Moncenisio?

Up and down, with two tough uphill the first of 6, and the second of 8 kilometers … the first I took it right between midday and one when the heat was at its maximum … I would have dived in one of the many lakes I met today …

Today I clearly perceived one of the big differences there are between cycling here and in Africa, the absence of people on the road, in Africa, apart from the desert, the road aggregates people chat, play, work, cheer the musungu passing on that strange bicycle … here on the road there are no people … and if it is true that at the end of Ethiopia I would have liked a bigger privacy … it is also true that here it seems to me to be busy in a closed door time race … to make the exception some drivers and children who wave greatly from the windows … in Africa almost every day somebody would stop, get off the car, ask me information, and take a picture on the mobile …

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May the bicycle have slept badly?

As soon as I started off, the bicycle started again with the same problem as yesterday! The chain had no intention to keep still on one of the crowns fixed to the behind wheel …

The about four kilometers from the pass passed quite quickly … I was even chased by the house keeper of the refuge because I had left the keys in an unconventional place, then down to Lanslebourg Mont Cenis there is a bicycle mechanic, but he tells me that it is too complicated for him … I have to go to St Jean de Maurienne 57 kilometers far!

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Tough stage, with mechanical problems, and rain!

I am at 1876 meters and I have almost completed the Moncenisio!

As soon as I left the ‘Albergo delle Miniere’, I immediately understood that the bicycle was not going to last long, the gear was changing automatically, the behind crowns, the so called freewheel are finished, the teeth of the crowns are by now too short for the worn out chain shortened in Egypt … Continue reading →

At the end let it be Torino, Val di Susa, Moncenisio, Albertville …

… to take me to London!

I did not want to start off early, nut not even so late!

At four in the afternoon … luckily here it becomes dark around nine!

There is not one particular reason for this late departure, simply a sum of many things, which caused me to be still at home when Kwesha arrived from Zambia to start her path at the Faculty of Political Science of Milan, at that point I could not say bye and go … so between an advise and an ice-cram … I only started moving at four! Continue reading →