To begin this soggy tale I need to explain the background.

Scenario:

Penelope, the post-redundancy wife, has chosen to weave her best dream and live and work in Florence, Italy, where she is bird-happy.

John, recently retired Husband, isn’t quite so keen on gardens without grass or flowers , endless rows of Madonnas and multiples of Last Suppers, and needs an active enticement to spend more time in Renaissance Italy.

Our visit to La Pietra – grandest of the Anglo- Florentine Villas

If only he had one of his bicycles on hand so he could get out and about whilst his wife is paper -marbling or painting frescos!

Great idea – it would cost us to put it in the hold, but as we had managed to get it to Hawaii for a Triathalon, it should surely be simple enough to take it on a 2-hour flight to Florence? Perhaps this was too simple?  Certainly, a greater challenge was possible and planning it would be a great project ….all that was needed was wifely cooperation as his support team – a whole month has been allocated.

The journey is from London to Florence, First leg, one hopes, will be relatively simple, bicycle in back-of-car, drive to Euro-tunnel, cross-channel stay overnight in Rouen, and next day drive to St Malo.

Then John takes to bicycle from St Malo to Dinan, Dinan to Rennes, Rennes to Bain de Bretagne, Bain de Bretagne to Blain, Blain to Nantes, Nantes to Montaigu, Montaigu to Saint Hermine, Saint Hermine to Niort, Niort to Matha, Matha to Angouleme, Angouleme to Riberac, Riberac to Bergerac, Bergerac to Cancon, Cancon to Agen, Agen to Saint Nicolas de la Grave, Saint Nicolas de la Grave to Toulouse (via an overnight stop with some friends we hope) Toulouse to Castelnaudrary, Castelnaudary to Carcassone, Carcassone to Narbonne. At Narbonne, the bike goes back in the car as he has the good sense to not try to cycle over the Alps, we share the driving from there to Turin, where we stay for two days City-break, before heading for Faenza, Faenza to Marradi, Marradi to Borgo San Lorenzo and then finally back into Florence – and home.

That is the plan anyway, but if today’s soggy story is anything to go by this might not be so easy, especially given that our starting point was our own home, we know the streets, yet we were still back, defeated, after only one-quarter of an hour.

Summary of our first trial for John’s great bike ride across France in August.

We left the house in the sunshine with our respective phones and my list of instructions. John checked that the phones were duly connected on the car’s Bluetooth and he set off on his bike.

By the time I had reversed onto the road and got to the first set of traffic lights he had called me and asked me to stop at the lights so he could pick up his rain jacket from the boot – it had indeed started to spit with rain.

He then disappeared down the main road towards Clapham, whilst I waited at the traffic lights, my first mistake!

By the time I too was on the Clapham Road I felt as if I had strayed into a car-wash, rain was pelting down with all the gusto of a flushing toilet and although the struggling windscreen wipers were giving me a limited view of the cars ahead, as far as side vision was concerned I might as well have been wearing blinkers!

Ring! ring!?

“Where the ‘expletive deleted’ are you?”

He is incandescent with rage at the weather and me, my fault is that I have driven past him without seeing him – But wait a minute! – He hasn’t actually been able to see me through the rain either!

His summons was to abort mission – my fault obviously – I had fallen with the first raindrops – not an auspicious start to a whole month journeying like this!

Well, we have round two on Wednesday – fingers crossed for some of that elusive sunshine – Just as well some of the UK’s sporting heroes have come good this weekend!

I will keep you posted!