Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

He has a point

Tomorrow afternoon I will arrive in Bern.
Might very well give bananas and water to some of the riders at the back.

This made me take my road bike on the trip, BTW. And i think I am not the only one on here intending to do brevets next year.

Wakes up tomorrow to find Skinny in top 5
Hippy in top 10

Hippy's found a bar with beer from 55 countries... you might wake up and find he's still there...

@skinny massive respect, what a recovery. you're made for this kind of thing

Brilliant stuff. That said Sharknado 4 is on and so dot watching will have to take a back seat for a while.

That's one positive. At least the riders have not had to contend with a Sharknado.

@hippy is contending with Arsenado

Well, let's not rule anything out.

Is Pauline Birnie on Twitter Mummy Hippy or Sister Hippy?

Mummy, as I am told.

@skinny is now following a slightly different route from most of the front runners. The only other rider to route through plitvice national park (stunning BTW) was number 56 who had to double back on himself when he hit the Bosnian border and rejoin the more conventional route.

Did #56 mean to go that way or was it just a wrong turn? Was 56 hoping to cross the border there, only to be turned away? and is skinny planning the same thing? I can't see a road there and skinny is so thorough in his planning i can't imagine he wouldn't have checked carefully.

Well now I'm desperate to go ride out there.

Is there a mafia meeting happening on that lay-by?

Just updated the map and skinny now riding due north. Presumably looking for a quicker run across Bosnia. What does skinny know that the others don't? :-)

The alternative routes taken is one of the most interesting bits.

Hippy put a lot of kms into the chap he was near yesterday evening.

The podium race is hotting up now. Neil (no. 172) has posted here a few times and is in the middle of it all.

Gazpacho. Only place three left with @skinny second.

Skinny closing in on 6th place. Albeit current holder of 6th seems to have had a proper long sleep stop so should be able to crank his speed up once he gets going today.

Tarator obvs.

Banana Joe's gone rogue, tracker not updated for 16hrs. last seen in the vicinity of Emily and Stefan Slegl yesterday afternoon.

Some great photography out there around TC4, not just from the riders - has this been posted yet?

https://twitter.com/JamesPRobertson/status/759667042337316864

great picture. From there to smashing it into the top 5 (maybe). I wonder what his expectations were when he decided not to scratch.

David Coulon closing in on the Swiss border. May make it today.

Dead tracker battery?

And so at the back of the race, Alberto Varni and Mattia Biffi are moving. Still in France a little way north of Macon.

To their south, Christopher Davies is moving close to the Swiss border. He is about to pass Daniel McNicholas who hasn't moved for the past 18 hours.

Ahead of the northerly pair, the great David Coulon has been resting for 16 hours in Lons le Saunier close to the Swiss border.

Don't forget that Alex Wright's tracker is not working and she is riding to CP2 to pick up a new one. 19 hour ago she was near St Gengoux Le National and heading towards Louhans which is roughly where Alberto and Mattia are right now.

Alex Wright is also in Lons le Saunier. Her chain broke but luckily she was able to roll down hill to a bike shop and all is fixed. She hasn't met David Coulon. She says she is a little lonely having not seen another TCR rider for days. She sounds fairly upbeat.