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TOUR DE FORD

The club was invited to enter this event on Saturday 14 August. This was
organised by the Ford dealership at Erith, the suppliers of some of the Sky
Team support vehicles. It was to be a ride of 55 miles with a Sky support
team car, along with a mechanic’s vehicle.

This, to me, appeared too good an opportunity to miss, plus as our club had
been invited I felt we should support it. Debbie and Mick Valentine and Alan
were up for it and so we duly entered.

Keen not to be late Alan and I arrived at around 8am (9.00am was the given
time), only to find Debbie and Mick had beaten us to it. On entering the
building we were made very welcome by the staff of the Ford dealership and
members of the Sky support team. Refreshments were up for grabs, so no
excuse for ‘bonking’ on the way round. We had a brief introductory talk, signed
the obligatory disclaimer, and given a route map. This was really of no use
as the assumption was that we would all been able to download the route to
our various gadgets (don’t they know us oldies have yet to master or even
own Garmins and state of the art mobiles). Fortunately there was a leader
for each group and we chose the slowest group. Alan wanted the 16-18mph
group in fear that the slower group would contain novice riders and would be
a bit dangerous, as it happens we only had one iffy rider and we all kept clear
of him. No it wasn’t Alan!

We assembled on the forecourt for a photo shoot, a drone was also present
to record the start. We were dismissed with a cheer and out on to the open
road we went. This was not for the faint hearted, (our only criticism), we had
to navigate through the traffic to Dartford where we took the ‘quieter’ road
to Longfield. The pace was (to me) a little brisk, yes Alan was up the front
with the leader. We proceeded up Longfield Hill and through to Meopham,
where we re- grouped. Most of the time we had to ride in single file due to
the volume of traffic, which was a shame as it would have been nice to have
a good chat with other members of our group. We made our way through to

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