[Cyclefrance]

Cyclefrance owes its origins to my French cycling trips (now there's a surprise!)

I discovered Cellar after searching the web for more info on the giant puppets I stumbled upon in Amiens this year, at the end of my annual cycling holiday in north France. I have been doing these since 1999, usually with my cousin's now ex-husband, Paul, and they started off as a result of wanting to find a way to get around the WW! battlefields so as to appreciate the terrain but also to be able to cover a reasonable distance. Walking was too slow, Car was too fast. Cycling hit the button.

Neither of us had ridden bikes since being teenagers so it was quite an eye-opener to learn how unfit we both were (my first practise ride of only five miles saw me nearly collapsing when I got off the bike back home - my son thought I was having a coronary, but it was just jelly legs, and weak lungs!). After a few weeks 25 mile sessions were do-able, and 40 miles ones by the time we went.

The first year was the Somme, but pre digital camera days (I have plenty of 35mm pictures and still toy with the idea of scanning and backfilling to create websites for these earlier sorties). We enjoyed our first holiday so much that in 2000 we went to Ypres and Paeschendaele, then 2001 was Arras and Vimy Ridge (for the first time). We were also in France on a cycling day trip on 9/11 that year. 2002 we did two short trips: first one to the two V2 rocket sites near St Omer and the second for a spot of sand-yachting near Boulogne.

2003 saw the first digital photo record and the first website on Geocities. After a few attempts at other IDs, Cyclefrance2003 was the one that was accepted and so the Cyclefrance tag was born. Seemed only fair to use it on Cellar in view of the association with the Amiens puppets.