The Prologue, and then it really kicks off...

Today we leave for the first leg of le Tour de England.

The last few days has been full of last minute shopping and preparing, and a fair bit of needless worrying from myself. I always tend to imagine the worst case scenario and try to plan for that, but in some cases it's a bit overkill. Right now, an hour before we leave, we've got everything packed, most of the food in the fridge has been eaten, the checklists have been checked, all our accommodation has been confirmed, and we gave our bikes a really good clean (well impressed) yesterday. It's set to rain for the first few days, but at least they'll start clean.

So, 13 days, 1047 miles and 60,153 feet of climbing. The toughest days will be our first two, covering 159 miles and 11,729ft of climbing. Cornwall is either up or down, we've just been told, so we're being a bit keen (ignorant) to start with that kind of mileage, and our last day is 100 miles exactly, with nearly 6000ft climbing. Then it's a 16 hour train ride back home. We were going to drive it over two days, but now I'm glad we're taking the train. I probably would have fallen asleep after a few hours driving, and it will be nice to be able to relax and watch the scenery go by.

My knees have been loads better, and we've both gotten much stronger and fitter over the last few months, so hopefully that see's us through to the end. I won't be able to update this until I get back, but I'll have a few days before I have to go back to work when we return, so I'll do my best to get a few words and pictures up. If it's not raining the whole time, there should be plenty of good photo ops.

We'll be back on the 27th, so more to come then.

If anyone is interested, these are our exact routes for each day, in order, with elevation stats:

www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11998
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11932
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=10077
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=9856
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=10483
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11155
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11203
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11272
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11280
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11296
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11438
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11893
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11896
www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=11448