Patient News: Wayne Collins' Ride To Rome Part 2

Wayne Collins, one of our physio patients, recently cycled from London to Rome with his friends Alessandro, Dot and Aileen to raise money for two charities close to their hearts. The first is The Royal British Legion, specifically for their projects supporting Admiral Nurses who work with people (and their families who are often more affected) with Alzheimers, a disease that took Wayne’s father at an early age, and the courses that they run at the Battle Back Centre. The second charity is Demelza House, which is a hospice that provides respite care and end of life care for children with severe illnesses and life limiting conditions.

Wayne has very kindly blogged his experience for us in two parts – this is the second part - the actual ride. You can read the first part: the run up to the big event, here.

Our Ride To Rome!

And we were off!

We set off from the Coliseum Theatre in London early one Friday morning in late July.

Our first delay was the raising of Tower Bridge which in all my years of living and working in London I have never witnessed!

Our route out via Greenwich effectively ran alongside the A2 along some very rough sections of cycle paths to our first stop at Demelza House in Sittingbourne. Demelza is one of the two wonderful charities that we were raising money for. We received a very warm welcome and were fed with sandwiches and some lovely homemade cake to send us on our way to Dover.

The weather was kinder to us in the afternoon as we picked up the Via Francigena Pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome. We would crisscross this route many times over our 19 day adventure.

Unfortunately upon our arrival at Dover we soon realised that we would not be departing anytime soon! We loaded the bikes into the van ready to board the ferry and then spent the next 4.5 hours waiting to do so!

Through France

We arrived at our hotel in Paris at 1am in the morning and had to unload the contents of the support van into our rooms for security.

We were up again at 6am ready for Day 2, waking up to torrential rain that stayed with us for the whole day! Thankfully that was the only any like that which was a relief as it took the next two days for my shoes to dry out.

Over the next days we proceeded south through France largely following routes that we had driven during two recces in January and March. We encountered some road closures and subsequent diversions along the way just to keep us on our toes.

We cycled through some amazing scenery with the vineyards south of Reims being particularly impressive and memorable. We did our best to support the local farmers and agricultural economy along the way which meant we had to sample the local wines with dinner each night. It would have been very rude not to have done so!

Psychologically we had one of our hardest challenges ahead of us....the Alps!

Tackling The Alps!

Due to snow earlier in the year we had not been able to drive the Alpine passes so we really had no idea what laid ahead.

Please remember we are not club cyclists, purely amateur leisure cyclists with an average age the wrong side of 60.

As we approached the Alps we cycled down the entire Eastern side of Lake Annecy to Albertville, once the home of the Winter Olympics and not normally a place you would be cycling. Thankfully these days it’s the home of a state of the art cycle shop/repair centre and some very friendly generous staff.

We had now been cycling for 9 days averaging around 76 miles a day.

Day 10 was the “rest” day before we tackled the Alps. On this day we cycled the relatively short distance from Albertville to Beaufort to find ourselves sitting at the most amazing patisserie for breakfast whilst looking at the Ski Map across the road....are we insane? Should we really be in a ski resort on our bikes?

Time for some bike cleaning and maintenance before I, Alessandro and our driver Glyn headed up the Alpine climb to see what the next day would have I store for us. Last time Alessandro and I were there it was closed due to the snow.

It took us around 5 hours for me to drive the route and return.... not quite the rest day we had planned, however I am so pleased that we did drive the route. The ladies on the other hand enjoyed a lazy girlie day in the sun in Beaufort.

Alessandro spent many days planning the routes and then modifying them following our visits earlier in the year. We, the novice cyclists, clearly had not paid enough attention to his notes though! In order to cross the Alps by the “easiest” route it was not what we had imagined it would be, i.e. a long climb up and tricky steep decent down to Italy.

Oh No! It was a long 22km climb up to Cormet de Roseland which was part of this year’s Tour de France, albeit probably a little faster than us. This was followed by a steep decent down to Bourg St Maurice before a further 35km climb up to the Italian Border. We were definitely running on adrenaline on this day!

This climb took us up over the Col du Petit Saint Bernard through the middle of La Rosiere Ski Resort. It felt very strange cycling under ski chair lifts and seeing signage relevant to being in a pair of skis, not on a bike!

The steep difficult hairpin bend decent down into La Thuile in Italy at the end of that day was very tough as we were all so tired, however, we had made it over the Alps...what a relief!

And Then Italy

The next couple of days were down through Northern Italy where our choices of road through the steep sided valley were limited and the ride got even tougher in many ways with very, very bad road surfaces and heavy traffic including lots of trucks which were not that happy to see us.

Cycling through Italy was more challenging than our route through France with steeper climbs and more and more tired legs. The adrenaline rush of the Alps had left us and at times we really struggled. Tempers got a little frayed at times too, but we all stuck together and pushed each other to keep going.

The messages from home via our Facebook page from not only friends and family, but also from others who we did not know that had started following our challenge were very important to us and certainly kept us going.

1,000 miles in

Day 15 saw us reach the 1,000 mile mark! We were all very tired and whilst relieved to have made it that far, I don’t think it really started to sink in until we posted the pictures that evening and the messages from our supporters started to arrive.

Day 15 saw us enter the beautiful region of Tuscany through which we carried on the next day. How different it looked in the blazing sun some 5 months after our drive along the route back in March. Still stunning, but so very different.

Energy levels were now very low, and even though Day 19 would see us reach Rome, we all struggled to remain in good spirits and to keep going at times. We had been blessed with overcast conditions through much of France, however we were paying the price now with temperatures in the upper 30s.

Day 19 and our final approach to Rome had a brief stop at the lake north of the City where the Pope has his Summer Residence.

And Finally, Rome!

Thankfully Rome itself was very quiet in August as it’s very hot and the residents and businesses were on holiday. There was a tiny amount of traffic compared with what had greeted us in March so we needn’t have worried so much.

Emotions were running high as we cycled first to the Vatican and then onto our final destination, the Colosseum.

We Made It!

We had made it! 1,388 miles, averaging 76 miles a day, excluding the rest day at a mere 12 miles and we made it over the Alps without having to get off and walk!!

What an adventure! One we will never forget and, thanks to our amazing sponsors, nearly £12,000 was raised for the Royal British Legion and Demelza House.

Words and images courtesy of Wayne Collins.

JUST AMAZING Wayne and team - well done!

Are you going on your own adventure and would like to share it with us? Send an email to us at info@physioremedies.com.