Custom Reynolds 853 completely inappropriate London-to-Paris mobile

just awesome, the ones that seem the shittest at the time end up the most memorable

Agreed. I'm a climber and most of my most cherished memories are things like getting stuck near the top of a climb in the rain at night and my mate's forgotten his head-torch. It's the trying times that stick with you most and you look back on most fondly.

I'm writing a thank-you letter to Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the internet with a link to this thread. This is the best thing I've read for a long time. Love that you had to hacksaw of the seat tube by the side of the road.

I can't believe you didn't just fabricate your own boat out of waste, and gather from the internet a cursory familiarity with navigating the world's busiest bit of sea at Dover, so you weren't forced to wait for a couple of hours. You twat.

Legendary tale. As people have mentioned already, you look back on the miserable rides with most fondness.

If im available in the spring, I'd love to join you in this ride.

As an aside, its hard to tell from the pictures, but is the frame lugged? Looks like its been brazed but I cant see any lugs.

I bet next time you will pack overshoes, base layers, waterproofs etc etc and halfway think to yourself, "why the fuck did I pack this much crap, it weighs a tonne!"

if anyone is interested in joining in the terror

Erm, yes. But could we borrow your oxy-acetylene? Or just get our own MAPP gas? I'm determined to build, one day soon, a Newvex lugged retro effort, with Scoblesque touches front and rear, and a date might be a good spur. Training regime to be matched to the reccy, but the 24 hour bit stretched out a little. More steak, less hail.

Hope you're back safely now.

If we join you in the spring do we all have to build our bikes, or can we just use the oxy-acetylene kit to flash cook a pre departure steak frite?

Why must everything on this forum make me want to either buy or build something?!

I'll come along in the new year...

Can you imagine the palaver that a forum ride to France would cause where the only stipulation is that you must have built your frame from scratch in the week proceeding the ride.... Forget puncture repair kits and CO2 cylinders, it's going to be Mapp gas refils in the bottle cages and silver brazing wires in the saddle bags.

In.

Rep! First rate thread. Would read again.

crappy roads of northern France

Any idiot with legs can pedal to Paris, it takes a special kind of (lfgss) idiot to try to build a bike from scratch for the first time to do so.

The roads in norvern France are better than most of the insipid flange packets that London has to offer.

+1 to the second bit

This has become my favourite thread on the forum.
Chapeau!

^This. If I ever meet you sir I will buy you a beer.

Amazing!

This is fantastic! Quality write up. What an ambitious project. Well done sir.

I'm back in the uk for a couple of hours so have the chance to upload some photos from France. There are admittedly very few, as from the outset it wasn't at all enjoyable and I didn't feel like documenting my misery. As such, most of the photos revolve around food.

This was the breakfast that greeted me on the Pride of Kent. The sight of it was enough to make one man vomit into his shopping bag, and I did have to hold onto the tray while eating to stop it sliding around, but the fried bread was very good.

This is dover while I was settling down to my fry up. You can tell by how bright it is outside that I was very, very late, and we hadn't even set off at this stage (I was literally the first person on the ferry). I also forgot to mention in the earlier write up that I had bought a ticket for the friday, not the saturday, so had to purchase a new one at the port, which was annoying. I had also got it in to my head that the ferry was at 8.30, when I was travelling at 6.30 (supposedly) although fortunately I realised this before I went to bed on Friday night.

I have no photos of the vile weather in Calais, you will just have to take my word for it.

This was my lunch, veal steak, white wine source and freedom fries. It was just what we needed after the snow and hale of the morning, although the main thing that sticks in my memory from lunch is the short but catastrophic (to the ride) spell of sheet rain that fell the moment we left.

This is the hotel room that we stayed in in Ameins after giving up on reaching Paris. It seemed quite apt that we had to give up in no small part due to the condition of our feet, and ended up in the Somme.

This is the ride of shame that escorted us, heads heavy with shame in to Paris. The reason we had to stay in Amien is the last train leaves at 6.00pm. Not quite sure why, but it does.

Here is the (filthy) bike in the lovely apartment that we were staying in in Paris. The photo isn't too clear, but I can assure you that it is in one piece.

There was one more small problem to overcome before I could return home. I met my wife in Paris, and she had brought with her our eight month old daughter. I was returning to England with them on the Eurostar. After booking my bike into the luggage hold I took my daughter from my wife, placed her in her sling on my chest, where she fell asleep. We then went to board the train, on the way going through passport control. When I had boarded the boat at Calais the French border guard stationed there had laughed at me and told me not to slow down whilst comically waving me through the car lane I had ended up in, so I had not shown my passport, nor crucially had it been scanned. When I got to the UK border force checkpoint at GdN this was a problem, as it seemed I had never entered the country, and I also had a large lump attached to my chest (my daughter) which I didn't want to uncover. After proving that it was a human child under my jacket, I had to prove my bike was on the train, and try to explain why I had ridden the first leg of my journey rather than catching the train with my wife (I couldn't) and why I hadn't shown my passport. This was finally smoothed over and I went through to baggage scan. Unfortunately I had forgotten my new tool purchase in Calais, a Bahco hacksaw! Fortunately the french customs people found the whole thing much more amusing, and I got to keep the hacksaw. I boarded the train, baby still asleep, got into London, left my wife and daughter to ride the final leg of the journey home, and got a puncture. When I find my digital camera I will take some proper photos of the bike, but thats all I have for now.

saw a very similar looking bike cycling along cheapside today - wouldn't have been you would it?

saw a very similar looking bike cycling along cheapside today - wouldn't have been you would it?

Good chance that it was, post puncture.

This thread is a royal flush.

It's a great thread, and a great story.

I'll happily buy a bunch of tubes for the 2013 "build it and ride it to Paris" event.

Beautiful looking frame too.

That was a great read, shame to heard of all the bad luck, hopefully it will be better in the spring. Also the frame and bike look really nice, one of few road frames i would like to own.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a "build it and ride it to Paris" event.

September 2013 anyone? Minimum entry requirement is a frame, as that can be built a lot more easily than a frame & fork?

This thread need putting on the back of this can as the instructions. Awesome stuff indeed!

That 853 bike should be painted in this colourway.