Paris Brest Paris (PBP) 2023

I took a sleeping mat and inflatable pillow last time, so I could get my head down without booking a bed. It was very cold overnight, so sleeping outside wasn't massively practical without a bag.

If I get in this time my plan is to ride through the first night, and then get beds in controls during the day and ride through the night for the rest of it as inevitably I will end up doing that anyway.

I'm not sure if I'd bother with the mat this time as I could have done with carrying more layers, I totally underestimated how much the temp would drop and resorted to stuffing news paper in my jersey last time.

I read the organisation recommends against bivvys and sleeping bags, because the controls have dormitories. They do say that if the dormitories are full, you can still sleep in the building, so bringing a mat sounds like a good idea.

In 2019 I was in the bulge and took an inflatable mat and liner. Didn't use them once. Had three sleeps, think we had to wait a little bit for one of the beds. It was chaotic, but fine. Well, fine if you're expecting cold halls with hundreds of snoring blokes in them. Like someone else said the nights were very cold (like 0°c) so sleeping outside without proper gear wasn't an option, and it felt like almost every inch of space indoors at controls was taken with sleeping randonneurs so even if I'd wanted to use the gear I'd hauled across France it would have been hard to find a space. If I ever did it again I'd sleep during the day - I did that on the Monday afternoon last time and the control we picked was empty as we rode right through the first night and well into the day before stopping.