La Rallye Malmaison

I rode 110km on Saturday with the expats, it was quite hard, as we had some new guys so I was going for it on the hills, but I still wanted to ride this randonnée on Sunday. I couldn’t persuade any of the others to come along. It’s a bit annoying, they consider randos beneath them, just because old guys on bikes with mudguards and (god forbid) women ride them. They don’t seem to get it, that you ride them as fast as you want to. You get the route all mapped out for you, you get a snack on the way and a snack at the finish, and it’s a grand day out.

Anyway, I got up dead early (again), to ride up the hill to the start to meet Neil (who is the best expat rider I know, and thinks randos are great when he isn’t racing, so I know he has the right attitude). He was fairly late, and arrived with a tale of snapping his chain right outside his house and having to nip back for his spare back (as you do). It was a very popular ride, and all the route maps were gone, but no problem we would just follow the arrows.

We set off, saw an arrow and rode through the forest. We had agreed to ride the 75 (km) as I was knackered from the day before and it would be another 100+ day ride for me anyway. I knew the first of 2 stops would be at 25km so I felt good as we belted along, and even got in with a couple of riders from the Croissy club. Then they stopped at a ravataillement, but when we asked, they said it was for the randonnée de Marly (not our rando), not to worry, we pressed on, following the arrows. We were sure to hit Thoiry and our stop in a minute. 30 gone, no stop, 35km no stop, 40km no stop. And Neil says to me, “we are nowhere near Thoiry”. We then realised right from the start we had been following the wrong arrows! Fortunately, Neil knows these very pleasant, green and damn hilly parts and said he would find our way to Thoiry. Which he duly did about another 12km later.

We tucked in to our overdue cake and chocolate! It had been a fine ride to areas I had never seen before, even if it wasn’t the right way. The stop was the same stop for 50km, so we decided to head back from here. We got in a nice group of riders, and went up the stupidly steep climb at Mareil instead of Maule hill. Neil was easily first, I was 3rd up it, not bad on a tired set of legs. I got dropped to 4th a bit later on the second part of the climb, but we all came back together for the ride back to the start.

We had a good chat with these guys we had ridden the last part with, they worked for Citroën (Neil works for Peugeot), and they hoped to see us again on a rando. It would be good for my other expat friends to see that randos are for everyone. I rode home pretty tired to complete an 103km ride and a 215km weekend!