Lyon - An End of Sorts

The End!

On Monday 24 July 2006 the three riders of the Tour de Fat Part 2, Dave Sewell, Jon Wadelton and Andrew "Choc" Royal completed the formal part of the adventure. After 18 stages over 21 days, four countries, 5 major climbs and countless smaller ones, a total of 1867.3km, 5 bottles of sunblock lotion and hundreds of litres of uniformly revolting sports drinks, we rolled into Lyon and settled in for a well-earned rest.

The final day was another scorcher and we all cracked a little in the heat with the end in sight. Things got a little strange when at our first break of the day after 53km uninterupted by a traffic light, stop sign or any stop whatsoever, Choc developed a craving for tinned sweet corn and anchovies, which he duly bought and scraped into his mouth by any means possible. Jon and I fueled on the nutritional goodness of a couple of ice creams and we remounted to continue our progress up the valley of the Rhone. Unsurprisingly after such a recuperative break I began to feel quite faint in the heat and had to take a few minutes out to catch my breath, but catch it I did and we pushed on in the direction of France's second biggest urban metropolis.

After passing the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone where one can see the two distinctly coloured rivers meet and blend into one, we pulled up outside the Smoking Dog Pub in the old part of town, Vieux Lyon and immediately downed a well-deserved pint of beer.

Stage 18 - Tournon sur Rhone to Vieux Lyon = 103.4km

Now the Tour is officially over, but we must all make our own ways to Paris; Choc and Jon departed on Thursday for four days' riding in the direction of Dijon and then Nancy before picking up a train service to take them the remaining kilometres into Paris as we all felt the risk of heavy traffic and the rewards of the flat and uninspiring terrain surrounding the capital are not worth the effort. I will follow in their wheel tracks some days later after the wedding of my good friends Joel and Aurelie in a chateau east of Lyon.

When we have all met up again I will add a final entry or two to conclude the entire Vienna to Paris odyssey, but until then good riding and goodbye.

Dave, Jon and Choc.