The pneumatic drill in the room woke me up a little before 4am. Actually, there was no drill, there wasn’t even an open widow to carry the sound of a drill to my ears – it was me, snoring.

I opened my eyes and looked around the room. I felt extraordinarily fine; no aches, no pains, no nothing. Of course at that point I hadn’t moved more than my eyelids so I was just guessing, but without moving anything everything felt fine.

One, two, three, a deep breath and go for it. I bolted out of bed – and still felt fine. Maybe I was dead?

The people in the hotel had very kindly offered to lay on an early breakfast for me so I drifted down stairs and ate my coffee soaked soggy croissants. The first mouthful made my stomach howl with frustration at having not eaten for so long and then I got the first cramp which wracked through my body like I’d been shot. Not a pleasant feeling.

When I’d sipped (for lack of a better word) three dissolved croissants and two bowls of coffee I helped myself to as many portion packs of butter as I could stuff in to my pockets and went up to my room to cook.

I knew that today was going to be a bloody hard ride and I knew that I wouldn’t make it without replacing calories so I had to come up with something ‘interesting’. This was no time for designing a tasty menu – I had to make sure that I was getting calories in.

The previous day I’d stopped to pick up water and noticed a few juice bottles with very wide mouths - that was the first part of my plan. Into an empty juice bottle went one or two sachets of caramel flavour porridge oats, followed by strawberry flavoured arctic formula, some chocolate protein powder, a couple of portions of butter (mashed), some olive oil liberated from the dining room topped up with water and shaken, not stirred – Justins L2P survival formula was about to be tested.

It was gross. It doesn’t matter how hungry you are, crap food still tastes crap. However, it did have an immediate effect; as soon as I started sipping it I felt stronger. I filled 5 or 6 bottles, made up the Camelback with High 5 4:1 sports drink, stuffed some more water in various places and set off.

Today was going to be a really tough day. Not only was it going to be the longest ride of my life, but I was tired, hungry, and quite nervous about riding in to Paris.

Having slept for a few hours I’d totally forgotten my way back out of town, so I stopped to ask the night porter chappie who was still on duty. He was really helpful and gave me very detailed directions to Amiens; straight down the road, across two roundabouts, turn left, across another roundabout, 3^rd exit, follow straight on. He wrote it all down and I followed the directions to the letter. Time was going to be in short supply, so I didn’t want to lose any by making mistakes.

As the road got busier I guessed something was wrong. When three or four lanes of traffic were whizzing by at over 70mph and every car and lorry was honking and tooting I knew something was wrong. When a blue flashing light pulled ahead of me and a man in uniform put his hand up for me to stop there was no mistaking it. ‘Monsieur, why are you on the motorway?’. Oops.

The policeman was very nice, read through the directions written down for me and suggested that the man who’d given them to me was trying to kill off the British one at a time by louring them to a messy motorway death. He called up a van which turned up ten or fifteen minutes later, picked up me and Natalie, and gave us a lift across town and on to the right road, and probably a few miles, or kilometres, further on than I would have made in the time anyway.

Crossing the battlefields of the Somme was quite a sobering experience. I knew that I was very short on time so had to press on despite the draw to explore the area, but I did take a few minutes to stop at war cemetery, the first I came to.

In this one ‘graveyard’ there were in the region of 3,000 tombstones. I read, quickly, the information plaque which indicated that some 750,000 Allied troops gave their lives in the area. As I rode on I saw more ‘graveyards’ and realised that the one I’d paused at was only small in comparison. I also learned that because of the scale of the battle and the lack of available people to work, work to clear the battlefield didn’t even start until towards the end of 1919. Seeing it this close for the first time really made me realise what an atrocious waste of life the Battle of the Somme, like many others, was.

As I rode on towards Amiens the countryside was beautiful. I was joined at one point by a cyclist just out for a ride and going nowhere in particular. It was nice to cycle with someone – my pace had dwindled slightly as I contemplated what I’d just seen and riding with someone pushed my speed back up again.

I cycled through some amazing little villages and saw my first ever fresh bread vending machine, a ‘pain automatique’. You put one euro in to the coin slot, and a part-baked baguette is finished off and delivered piping hot a few minutes later.

All the time I was watching the clock and counting the minutes. By my reckoning I had about 12 hours of cycling from Arras to Paris, which meant that I really couldn’t stop. On these long roads service stations are almost non existent, so I devised a cunning method of peeing into a bottle on gradual declines so that I didn’t have to stop to relieve myself. I may not be the fastest cyclist in the world, but once I have my goal set, I’ll get there no matter what.

As I approached Amiens I’d run out of water and I was starting to suffer from it. I could see the large city ahead of me, but really didn’t want to head in to town amongst the bustling traffic and risk the delay of getting lost, again. The roads were becoming hostile and more and more people were honking and hooting for me to get off the road, although I’m not quite sure where they thought I would go.

Out of nowhere a McDonalds appeared. I wasn’t in the mood for a Big Mac (besides which I’d been quite happy with my special ‘Justin’s Survival Formula’), but they’d have toilets and in the toilets would be hand basins with taps and the taps would dispense water. Bingo.

The water in the taps was hot but I didn’t care – it was water. I drank a bottle as I rested there for a few minutes, thought briefly about the ride ahead, then thought that it really wasn’t a good idea to think about the ride ahead so thought about something else instead, and then back to the ride ahead.

I growled out of frustration, pain (my arse was getting sore, my mouth was sore, and I’d slipped on the pedals an hour or so before which left blood trickling down the back of my leg), and to prime myself to peddle again.

With Amiens behind me I pressed on to Paris.

The views, to start with, weren’t all that much different but the roads between one metropolis and the other were far busier which was causing me some discomfort. Although legal, the motorists weren’t taking to kindly to a bike on the road and would skim really close as they went by, or honk their horns just as they drew level to see if they could frighten me in to submission. A few monstrous lorries didn’t change course and passed within inches of my handlebars sucking me into their backdraft which, once I got used to it, added a little excitement to the journey and was actually quite good fun!

At one point, on a hill climb, heavy traffic in both directions meant that the lorry behind me couldn’t pass and having had just about enough of being bullied I wasn’t about to jump in to the grass verge to let him overtake. It was very, very rude and immature of me, but at that point I really didn’t give a toss. Eventually, as we crested the hill at my pace, the road widened a little and everyone flew buy, most honking horns, a few shaking fists, and many with their windows down shouting something in French which was spoken far too quickly for me to understand but I’m guessing wasn’t too complimentary. One woman actually pulled to the side of the road, got out of the car and really went to town shouting and wagging her finger; I smiled as I passed and told her I was on my way to Paris to have café, croissants and butter with a friend. She stopped, mid sentence, and just shook her head with an open mouth.

With the wind on my back, decent roads, and making the most of getting sucked up in the backdraft of juggernoughts (ok, maybe not that bit!) I was making good time. My estimation of 12 hours in the saddle was a little off, may be, but I was doing ok; I felt good, nothing was hurting too badly any more now that I was in full flow, and my ‘survival formula’ was serving me well.

I made my first cock up on the road jut outside of a small town north of Paris. I’d stopped at another McDonalds to refill my water. I came out and was so focused on where I wanted to go that I went the wrong way around a roundabout; the right way in the UK, but the wrong way in France. The face on the poor woman driving the white van (they have them in France too) was sheer terror. My face screwed up like I was chewing a bumble bee in anticipation of the smash, but she was hot on the breaks and we came to a halt tyre to bumper. I opened my eyes, smiled, waved, blew her a kiss and rode on. Far too close for my liking!

The roads were getting busier, even more hostile, and I wasn’t liking it one little bit as I approached Paris. I had no map, which was stupid, and the satnav didn’t show a detailed enough plan to use it as a map. More than a little concerned at what lay ahead I just gritted the teeth I had left and pressed on.

As I approached the first industrial belt on the outskirts of the city I realised that getting in to Paris was going to be the hardest part of the trip. I was very tired, very hungry, thirsty (out of water again), had no idea how to get to where I was going and my body was being fuelled by adrenalin.

I spotted, in a street approaching me, a fellow cyclist (but unlike me, he was on an extra-light go faster bike with a teardrop helmet and shaven legs for less wind resistance – next time I must remember to shave my legs). I stopped and called out. ‘Monsieur, how do I get to the town centre?’. ‘Head back out and get a train’ was his reply. I called him over and explained what I was trying to do. He explained, very politely, that maybe I should miss the Eiffel Tower and go straight to hospital for treatment to my head injuries which were obviously effecting my judgement. Eventually he relented and offered to guide me closer to town. ‘Follow me’ he called, and then vanished in a puff of road dust.  I muttered under my breath as I pushed down on the pedals of my rather heavy bike which I felt sure was getting heavier. Then, as if my magic, he came back. ‘Sorry Monsieur, I’ll ride slowly this time’. ‘Cheeky sod!’.

My guardian lead me through the industrial ‘bit’ and to the edge of the slums of Paris. I didn’t even know that there were slums in Paris; Paris through my eyes has always been an immaculate, beautiful and romantic city. ‘I have to go now, good luck’ said my guardian as he vanished in another puff of road dust. I suddenly realised that I was on a road, on my own, on a shiny bike with interesting looking luggage in what must have been one of the roughest areas of the city and without a clue of which way to go and no map. Now I really was getting concerned!

No map. What to do? Ah – Satmap! I knew that the Seine dissected Paris somewhere south of where I was, so if I used the compass and just headed south I should be ok – I hoped. I felt quite conspicuous and extremely vulnerable as I pulled the shiny satnav system from my pannier. I could feel eyes boring in to me, I could see curtains twitch. Children were being pulled in off the street by their mothers and I swear a tumbleweed tumbled across the road ahead of me.

The 30 seconds or so that the Satmap took to light up were agonisingly slow, but as soon as it did I was off. I’d have loved to have taken more pictures as I peddled in towards Paris, but there was no way anything was going to take my hands away from the handlebars and breaks or my eyes off of the road – this place was full of maniacs in tin cans on wheels!

In what seemed like only a few minutes I was in the bustle of the main town, and now it got really hard. Bike lanes aren’t exclusively for bikes, they’re for busses and taxis too, and anyone who get’s fed up with being in another lane, and for pedestrians who want to play a Parisian version of Russian roulette. Red lights on crossings for cars and green lights for bikes mean bugger all; there are no cameras in operation on lights in France so it’s very much a case of ‘go until something really makes you stop’.

True to Johns prediction, the batteries on the Satmap died as I neared the centre of town. I was outside of the Galleries Lafayette, so I knew I was only a few kilometres (or miles) away, but which way I had no idea. I asked directions. The guy pointed, and very firmly; asserted ‘that way’. I followed the straight road for a few minutes before stopping and asking again. This time the guy pointed me in straight line to where I’d come from. Sod it, find south. I used the sun, got my bearings, and headed south.

There it was. First Place Concord came in to view, then the river, and as I looked up stream I saw it – The Tower. I stopped at a call box and called Domi. ‘I’m here. Meet me there’. I covered the last couple of miles (or kilometres) wearing the worlds biggest grin. By the time I arrived at the first leg of the Tower I’d been in the saddle for over 14 hours with just a couple for very short (ten minute) breaks to fill up on water. I was tired, my legs were like jelly, and I was absolutely elated to be there.

A guy cycled up with a big smile on his face. ‘Hey man, where have you cycled from? London? Really? Wow – that’s cool. What way did you come? How long did it take? London? How long did it take?’ He wasn’t giving me time to answer and as soon as he repeated a question I knew it was rehearsed. I shot my head around to check over the bike leaning against my back. Sure enough, there was a figure scuttling off into the crowd and my pannier was open. ‘Grrrrrrr! ’. I turned back already knowing that my ‘friend’ would be gone, and he was. The thief had emptied one side of my pannier bags in just a few seconds. I fell for it. What an idiot.

I agreed to meet Domi under the centre of the tower and there she was. Dressed in a black dress, there was my French friend Dominique Demaret. Brilliant!

We took a few pictures using Domi’s camera and my one remaining camera (the other one is now in some back ally pawn brokers in Paris), went around the corner, sat at a little street café and I had my first glass of wine in Paris. It felt GREAT!

An hour later Domi said ‘Just, you’ll have to ride Natalie through Paris and out to the apartment. It’s only about six kilometres but you can follow me in my sports car and I’ll drive slowly’. As I stood up I could have cried. My joints were stiffening beyond belief, with no food inside me the wine was making me feel quite warm, and as far as my head was concerned the trip was over.

‘Right, let’s go!’. We were off and the first part was easy. The busy Paris traffic meant that keeping up wasn’t a problem at all and the lack of lights on my bike weren’t a problem due to the brilliant illuminations in the city. Then we left the main traffic behind and came to a hill. I swear she didn’t have to go that way, but for some unknown reason Domi decided to inflict one last burst of pain on me. My heart was pounding in my head, my lungs were screaming for more oxygen and my legs were on fire as I chased her little sports car up the hill – and to add to it I was slightly, only slightly, under the influence.

Finally at the apartment I stood under a lovely hot shower for a few minutes, then I dressed, and then we went out for my first meal in Paris… Chinese food!