The very last thing I did this morning before leaving was to weigh the bike with luggage: 18.6 kg, without the two water bottles for a total of 1.5 l. Add my weight and it all sums up to a bit less than 100 kg of meat, bones and metal that I need to push to Italy…

I wanted to leave at 5:45 to take things easy, but it was pouring rain. I waited till 6:30 and at that point it was only drizzling, so I decided to go. Eventually, the rain stopped but the road remained wet so that I ended up covered in mud by km 40… The late start also meant hitting the rush hour and a lot of red traffic lights. Thanks to a very strong wind the sky cleared completely around km 50. Obviously, the wind was blowing exactly in my face and I struggled to do 20 km/h on flat… Then, around km 90, the wind stopped and I started to climb, with the temperature reaching 33 C in a village… The road kept going up and down, with very steep hills on narrow roads (to a avoid the A2 after Faversham). Finally, at km 125 the road started going down and was doing 45/50 km/h in the last few km.

I took the 14:45 ferry as planned and I’m now in Calais.

Overall, a great day :-)! This is the GPS trace:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/544041548

And these are a few pictures.