Day 3 P4P: Counting Down The Miles

>

7:00am: Vicki and the team set off on their third day of cycling from the Holiday Inn Express in Sheffield. The first 55 miles went ok as they pedalled through Solihull, Warwickshire and Leicestershire with ease. It was when they hit Derby that the really hard work began as the hills seemed to go on for ever and ever and the road conditions were horrendous. Vicki and Sandra had some problems with their Tandem as they couldn’t get into 3rd gear so it was hard work gathering speed on the flat or when going downhill.

As the team finally hit Chesterfield they discovered it had the most awful drivers! They obviously didn’t like cyclists and were very dangerous and rude. With 10 miles to go they hit the Chesterfield / Sheffield bypass. Vicki said: “looking up at the dual carriage way ahead at 5.30pm in the cold wet and damp conditions, my heart sank at the very long big climb ahead. The next 10 miles would be the longest ever.”

Dean Hoyle and Graham Stead (from Card Factory) pulled in and gave the team some encouragement, after the 5 mile hill, and cheered the team on as they set off on their last 5 miles into Sheffield, which was thankfully all downhill.

7:00pm: The team finally arrived in Sheffield and quickly pulled up at Halfords to see if they could get the tandem mended for the following day. Vicki said: “thank you to Stefan and Dan at Halfords for taking a look at our bike as they did a quick repair without any charge – Thank you guys!!!”

Just one more mile to the hotel – Yippeeee!

Unfortunately half of the team were a quite a way behind Vicki and Sandra. The police had decided to close the A61 dual carriageway and they had to detour around the hills of Dronfield – finally arriving at 9pm.

Once the team had all arrived, they celebrated with bottles of fizz – although Vicki said “we knew we should not under estimate the last 25 miles on Saturday as we had already done a trial run on a training session a few weeks before and knew it was no easy feat.”

To track the team’s progress click here.

Or to visit the Town’s Tandemettes sponsorship page, click here.