LEL

While the registration process was not the smoothest I've ever seen, it seems everyone got signed up. Robin and Amy Pieper drove up from the town south of London where Robin is currently working and were there to see Mark Roberts, Rick and Sophie off. Ole Mikkelsen was starting later in the afternoon so we tracked him down at the park/youth hostel and bid him a good ride as well.

Because LEL is so remote for the most part, there are limited facilities of any sort along the route. The "sleeping controls" have very few beds. Therefore, the organisers assign staggered start times to groups of riders with brevet cards more or less adjusted to the varied start times. Rick and Sophie had signed up for an 8 am start but were assigned to and 8:30 start. When they arrived half an hour early as requested, they discovered that the actual start was in a "car park" outside the park, on the other side of the train tracks. This meant all riders would wait for the trains going into the park for the start and to drop off drop bags, and then going out again when they discovered the actual start place. Since trains run pretty frequently accross these tracks the start times began to blur. It was pretty funny. The 8:30 start was more like 8:45-ish and the 9:00 was pretty thin because there was a large group of riders stuck behind the train so they waited for them and then invited the 9:30 group to join in!

LEL has no real qualifications requirements either. Riders are apparently not required to complete even one series as they are with PBP, helmets seemed to be optional and reflective gear requirements were limited to leg bands! Maybe there are only sheep and cows out there and they can see in the dark? Or rather sheep and cows don't care because if a bike hits them they usually win? I spoke to one rider at our hotel who had never ridden further than 250 k, and that was in the Netherlands! I hope he has a good ride.

At any rate our riders are out there. Rick is carrying SPOT, bless his heart, and seemed to be doing great as of list night. I got a text from him yesterday morning to say he was still riding with Sophie and doing well. I didn't press for details. The weather here in London has been much better than the forecast predicted. We had rain the first night and through the morning, but no real hard rain and the rest of the day was "lovely!" This morning I saw no SPOT checks since five hours ago in Dalkeith which is the stop at Edinburgh so I texted him to see if he'd forgotten to turn it on. He called me back and said they were just getting some breakfast and then would be back on the road. They had stopped to sleep at both "sleep" controls but there were no beds. Sophie finally just laid down somewhere and slept a little. Rick waited it out and finally got a bed but because of all the waiting didn't get much more sleep than Sophie. I spoke with them both and they sounded better than I would at this point, that's for sure! Sophie said, "well, we have only the way back to go!" She said the weather looked fine there today, as it does here in London.

I was speaking with Robin last night and he noted that the roads up there are steep, hilly and very twisty. This adds time since the riders can't really make up time on the downhills. Also the navigation is different. What they call a road or a lane here might look like someone's driveway. Not to mention that many lanes on this ride have no name signs at all. There wil be good stories after this, I'm sure!

After the ride start, Robin and Amy helped me pack up the mess in the hotel room and tuck it all into Sophie's van. Then they were off to Kew Gardens which had been high on my list so I took them up on their offer to go along. The gardens were huge and beautiful. They had a lot of great glass houses, too, that were very impressive both because of the plants and because of the architecture. Then my awesome hosts for the day walked me over to the Kew station and helped me figure out which train I needed to get to my hotel and waited while I bought a ticket and got to the right platform. Thank you Amy and Robin! What a great day!

My hotel is way better than Rick's. I'm liking London. It's another great city for walking and I'm doing a lot of that. Covent Gardens, all the great bridges over the Thames, Westmister Abby, Big Ben (What a sound that bell makes!!) The British Musem, all the buskers along the river walk, The Eye of London... All that on a day that was supposed to be rainy. Today is perfect so I'm off again!!