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This club run to France is very popular with our members, considering that
you have got to get up and out of your house by 5.00 in the morning to catch
the ferry at 7.35 am. We have only about 15 members riding bikes in the club
we had 9 on the trip.

The format of the run is to leave your car in Dover and ride your bike on to
the ferry. I was told of a very safe place to leave your car about 2 miles from
the ferry. This was safe but on the way back you had to climb to a little
cluster of houses at the top of the cliffs. I was knackered

This club run was combined with the San Fairy Ann club but only 3 turned up.
One was a lady called Heather, who had not ridden her bike for 6 weeks. We
had Charles who is a tourist and we had a vet world champion, Roly Crayford.

I said to the guys to keep the pace steady as we have a mixture of riders
with an old boy of 81 with us – me! I noticed that Steve Carter Smith and
Roy Savery where getting into racing mode up the front so I let him go off
course and then told them to come back.

Our first stop was the village of Guines for refreshments or a few beers.
The ride to the restaurant at Ardres for lunch was a steady run and no one
fell into the canal.

The restaurant we use is the Le Fregate. We have been using this restaurant
for a few years now. They are used to a noisy lot of cyclists especially as we
are drinking a lot of their wine.

As far as the weather goes, we had a dry run and the best bit was a strong
tail wind going out and no wind on the return. When our so-called racing
section had a sniff of the way back we did not see them until we got back to
the ferry. Our lady, Heather was finding a bit hard at the end and she said,

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