A car, a politician and a tank bag...

Usually, our first day is spent legging it far to the south as quickly as possible in order to get to warmer climes. Such days are generally difficult to go to town about as they are pretty uneventful. Not so yesterday.

After a remarkable demonstration of punctuality and a kindly pat on the back from the gods of meteorology, we progressed to Dover which, to our horror, was being invaded by Germans before our eyes (all on their way to Wembley apparently). We have expressed concerns that Brian might be trouble on this trip and sure enough, a mere 220 miles into proceedings he took it upon himself to pit his pannier against a German gentleman's BMW. the resulting dent in his rear wing had Herr Schnitzel chasing Brian through the port of Dover. Very undignified.

It's not very often that our group gets to rub shoulders with the high and mighty but while waiting for access to the car deck on arriving in Calais we were barged through by the MP for Wokingham, one John Redwood... famous for taking on the mighty John Major and losing. He seemed taken aback by our comments and was last seen climbing aboard a bus with some old ladies.

The highlight of the ride to Reims was when approaching the finishing line we stopped for a cigarette break

and on returning to the motorway our own Eddie Kidd, Andy Reid, showed us a wheelie whilst at the same time we watched his tank bag bounce down the road in the manner of Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb. It was déjà vu... again.

Saturday night in Reims was good fun and we're all wondering if Brian has an 'off' switch. Dijon awaits on Sunday... we hope it will cut the mustard this time.