The Tour de France has a prologue – so if it is good enough for them to have one, what the heck, I am too!

Let’s face it – travelling from Devonport to London is not particularly enjoyable – unless perhaps you have a bank account with six zero’s and can afford one of those nice looking first class seats that totally recline – ooooh, total jealousy!

Unfortunately I am a cattle class traveller – although lash out extra dollars to upgrade to an exit row seat, upstairs on the Qantas A380 where the economy seating is 2/3/2 versus downstairs of 3/4/3.  So no random strangers and plenty of leg room to stretch out.

Notwithstanding that it is a seriously loooong flight – one hour to Melbourne, 14 hours to Dubai and around 8 to London – with all that hanging around time in between.  You arrive looking like something from the apocalypse, feeling like the walking dead.  The travel experts say to live the day of where you are arriving – so you have to stay awake for a good part of the day!  Oh my, that is not easy!

So this year we will be allowing one full day of jet lag recovery as that is all we have available prior to getting the legs turning over again.  We arrive on the Saturday afternoon and will be collected by Ian who did LeJog with us in 2013.  We will spend Sunday with Ian and his wife Fiona, but sadly not their canine Rupert who has passed away since our last visit.

On the Monday morning we will head off for a 2 day, self supported ride – first night at an Air BNB at Lane End, and the second night at John’s home in Benson – John was a tour leader on both of our previous trips, and will be doing part of our London to Venice trip.

The Free Dictionary defines a prologue as “an introduction or preface” or ” an introductory act event”.  That is precisely what my prologue will be – it is an introduction to riding again, post the traumas of long haul flying, reawakening the senses and stretching those muscles out, getting the lungs to expand, and huff and puff.

With both of the previous long distance adventure trips, prologues of around 200 km over a couple of days were completed, and we felt it to be a very worthwhile thing to do – you also get the added advantage of seeing more of the surrounding countryside.