Croissy rando

The weekend before last was the Croissy Sur Seine randonnée. Admittedly, you might think this a come down after a Cyclosportif like the 1000 Bosses, but randos are just for enjoyment and a generally easy ride. And seeing as the Croissy rando is my local I haven’t got an excuse. I dragged myself out of bed at 6.30am, met Neil at 7 and cycled all of 400m to the Croissy clubs clubhouse and signed on. It was a damn windy day, so even if we had at one time considered riding the 150km rando, we decided it would just be the 100 today.

For a rando it went a damn hilly way at the start, up the Bandido legendary Stray Cat Hill, a short hill the maxs out at 14%. Neil as usual went dancing off, being such a show-off, and this guy we had picked up on the way (in a cycling sense) set off in hot pursuit. He got 3/4 of the way up, then blew up completely, and I eventually caught him just as we crested the hill. He stayed with us for a while longer, until we eventually dropped him on a windy section about a 1/3 of the way round. The route took us into the Vexin, before the half way stop where we scoffed as much cake, chocolate and minty drink as we reasonably could. In fact this far it had been a very familiar route to me as it was one my own club often take.

If I was familiar with the route, the route back was even more so, we actually rode past Neil’s house! And then back the usual way we take to my house, past the radar station across to St.Gemme, through the forest and back through Marly instead of L’etang la Ville. So much for seeing new places on a rando. We got a good soaking on the way back for 15 minutes too.

We got back to the clubhouse and started chatting to a guy in French. At which point he says to us in English, “that’s not a French accent”. To which we admitted we were English as was he. He said where was I from and when I said “Southport”, he said he was as well! Small world. OK, Southport is not the greatest town in the world, but it was nice to meet a fellow Sandgrounder so far from home. He was impressed as we were the first back from the rando, we had done the short route after all, but he still proudly told his fellow clubmates that les Brittaniques sont les premiéres arrivants!