Day one I count as Monday evening and Tuesday (it’s my story, so I can make the rules up!). I left ‘home’ on Monday to head to London for an early start on Tuesday morning but already the trip had started badly. I was posing on Natalie (the bike!) for a picture when I toppled slightly and tapped my face against a handy post to stop myself from falling over. As I did so I chipped a tooth.

I arrived in London late, much later than expected and headed towards Mad Mags Bowling who was looking after a mate’s apartment for a few days whilst he was on holiday. The idea was that we’d get to chat about the Last Great Challenge expedition, catch up on a little gossip from the world of adventure, and then I could head off for an early start in the morning.

What actually happened was that on my way my chipped tooth crumbled entirely, followed by another, and then another. In true domino effect my lower right mastication tools were vanishing. It didn’t help that when I got off the train at Paddington I legged it down the stairs for the tube, then realised I had to be upstairs to get the train out to Hammersmith so pegged it back up again. As I bounded the last two strides the weight of Natalie, or the panniers strapped to her rear end put me off balance. I hovered for a second, and then toppled backwards in slow motion with Natalie resting across my chest. It hurt, but I couldn’t show it – too many people were looking. I stood up, laughed, got on the train without limping and then, and only then, let my bottom lip quiver – it hurt!

When I arrived at the apartment I popped up to use the bathroom and came out zipping up my zipper to see a strange man and a woman walking through the door. The strange people (who, it turned out, really weren’t that strange at all), were Chris and his partner, the people who actually lived there. As you can imagine an awkward moment followed and Chris wasn’t all that happy to find a strange man walking out of his bathroom trying to tuck his todger away as he walked through the door of his own apartment having just had a journey from hell to get back from Bosnia. Mad Mags and I headed off to the pub – safest place.

By the time Tuesday morning arrived I was in pain. My teeth, or the places where they should have been, were hurting. I need attention so Mags, bless her, marched with me, at stupid o’clock in the morning to London’s St. Thomas hospital where we were very quickly redirected to Guys on the other side of town where the emergency dental department is. Apparently you have to be very picky these days about where you get what type of illness.

Watching the clock ticking by and thinking about the long ride ahead to get to Dover in time to catch the ferry we ramped up the pace to get to Guys. The Dental A&E was on the 23^rd floor – great. Mags stayed in the foyer with Natalie whilst I took the lift to the 23^rd floor (I was about to go on a long bike ride – no way was I going to take the stairs!). The system in the waiting room was simple and one that I became used to years ago at the Tesco cheese counter; you pull a tiny paper ticket from a dispenser on the wall and then wait for your number to be called before you get served, sorry, serviced… TREATED!

An hour later (an hour!) I was taken through to meet Amil, my dentist. I laid back in the chair. He turned the light thingy on. I opened my mouth. He peered in. He frowned. The frown gave it away – I wasn’t walking out in the next few minutes.

‘You seem to have totally buggered up four teeth and you’re going to be in agony Mr. Miles’ was the simple version of what I was being told. ‘You have, somehow, got bits of tooth all over the place and we have to cut them out. Are you SURE your jaw isn’t broken?’

Bugger. More minutes were ticking by as I listened to him telling me that first I had to go to x-ray, then back for a consultation, then back for treatment.

‘I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if it hurts for a few minutes. I don’t care if I can’t eat for 24 hours. I need to be on my way!’

‘I don’t care if I don’t eat’? What a stupid thing to say!

‘You’ll just feel a little scratch’ he said. ‘Tell me when your face feels numb’. I have facial palsy; my face is always bloody numb!

Six hours or so later I walked free. Mags was still guarding Natalie (although I swear she had her eyes closed and her chin was slightly drooped when I walked out of the lift). With only four hours to go there was no way that I was going to peddle all the way to Dover. There was only one thing for it – I had to cheat. Damn.

I jumped on a train at London Bridge with the intention of jumping off again once I’d given myself enough of a start to make up the lost time. As the train pulled in to Sevenoaks station, I’d decided that two more stops and I’d jump off and go for it. And then it all went horribly wrong.

As the train came to a halt the conductor chappie came over and said ‘Jump off here mate and move up three carriages, the train splits in a bit and you have to be up front.’. The doors opened, I picked up Natalie and stepped off. The man on the platform blew his whistle. I shouted in slow motion, ‘No-o-o-o-o-o-o….’ but it was too late – the doors closed and the train took off without me. I wasn’t happy. Lack of sleep, pain, hunger and now this. The platform chappie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sorry’.

I asked for help. ‘Not a problem’ said another chap in a bright yellow jacket, ‘I’ll get you on the right train’. I should have known better because I ended up at a wrong station. Time was ticking away. I asked for help – again, and explained the situation. ‘Not a problem’ said another chap, ‘I’ll get you on the right train’. I should have known better than to believe him. And, to add insult to injury, having forgotten my spoon and mug to mix and eat my porridge with I’d bought new ones and strapped them to my luggage, and now they were gone; some thieving little sod had nicked them.

When I got off at the next station, as you can imagine, I wasn’t best pleased. I went to the information desk with two aims; first to get to Dover on time to get the ferry, and the other to complain about the shoddy service. The lady behind the counter wasn’t helpful; ‘If you call customer services on…. They’ll listen to your comments’. ‘I don’t WAN’T to call customer services, I want to speak with someone now who can get me to where I’m going please’. Apparently that wasn’t possible; train stations don’t have managers any more, and in fact they have no-one in who has any level of responsibility at all who can talk with customers face to face about a complaint. Then a voice from behind me said ‘Can I help you?’

The mythical figure of a station manager stood before me like the silver surfer, but not quite as bright. His grey suit covered a creased grey shirt and his grey skin was topped with grey hair. I explained my problem and everything that had happened with regards to my train journey that day. He shrugged his shoulders and sort of ‘huffed’ a laugh as he said ‘What do you expect me to do about it’. Uh oh: now I was tired, in pain, hungry, and PISSED OFF!

As I spoke the words my blood was boiling. ‘It must be wonderful to work for a company where you can take money from customers and supply such a shoddy service and not even have to worry about it because what difference does ONE CUSTOMER MAKE WHEN YOU HAVE SO MANY OF US IDIOTS USING YOUR SERVICE EVERY – SINGLE - DAY’ The next thing I knew I had a policeman standing next to me. He towered over me (not a difficult task given that my arse is never far from the floor) as if to act intimidating, laughed, and said (roughly) ‘why don’t you just shut up and listen because raising your voice isn’t going to get you any closer to France is it?’. As the rather rude name I was calling him was spilling from my lips I tried, hard, to stop it but I couldn’t – it came out. I’m not quite sure who was more surprised, me or him but there was no going back so I carried on complaining, talking through my little mistake like it had never happened.

Eventually I was on the right train and heading for Dover. I popped Natalie off the train, cycled down the platform like a rebellious teenager and raced through town to meet my check in deadline. With six minutes to spare I drifted across the vast car park to take my place at the front of the queue of cars. Then the wind picked up. The wind really picked up and I couldn’t hold my position resting on the saddle any more so I laid Natalie very gently on the concrete. The huge sign above the car park which minutes before had read ‘Prepare to board’ changed and now read ‘Due to high winds the ferry is delayed until further notice’. Not to worry, I was here. Then the rain started. I was in the middle of a huge slab of concrete, acres of concrete with no shelter, it was raining, and I’d left my coat on the back of my chair hundreds of miles away. Bloody fantastic.

I boarded the ferry wet, but smiling. It was warm, there were hot drinks, and more importantly, the toilets had hand driers that could be used to dry wet clothes if you were a wet a cyclist without a coat. Then I stopped smiling. The crossing was rough, which was fine by me (although the toilets were a little crammed with people trying to drown themselves in them). The reason I stopped smiling was the captains’ voice, or at least the words he spoke. Due to the high winds the ferry was to wait two miles out of port until it was safe to enter. I didn’t want to get in to Calais late. I had no idea where my campsite was, it was the first time I would have cycled on foreign turf for years, and I had no lights. Tough luck – it was happening.

I whipped off the ferry in the pitch black and followed the signs for the centre of town hoping for directions from there, but it was late and everywhere was closed. I was totally flummoxed so I did something rather unexpected – I knocked on the door of a house. ‘I’m very sorry, but I’m lost and this gale force wind that’s blowing isn’t particularly friendly’. Luckily, the woman who answered the door, was. ‘Camping Municipal? C’est sur la plage’. The beach? I had to camp on the beach? In this? I headed to the beach, pulled out my tent supplied by Cotswold Outdoor, and as I tried desperately to hold it down and worry about covering Natalies sprockets and brackets to protect them from the sand when a voice came out of the darkness ‘Monsieur Miles? Come this way’. The camp site was still very exposed, but at least I wasn’t on the sand. A short battle ensued with the tent to get it up in the wind and the darkness (I’d forgotten my torch), but once I was inside and a cable attached and one end to Natalie outside the tent and to my wrist inside the tent I drifted off to sleep almost as soon as I closed my eyes.

Day one was, at last, at an end.