Leaving tonight... my weather; my equipment

I've had to delay by a day.  There was a lot of bad language in my front room yesterday morning as I was forced to recognise that if I left when planned I would get fiercely rained on for all of three entire days.  On balance, that is just too dangerous.  There's determined/stubborn and then there's hypothermia, aquaplaning, spray from juggernauts, pot holes masquerading as surface water, and wet corners...

So I'll leave 2am Thursday.  That way I only get rained on for all of tomorrow (both England and France), and some showers Fri morning... but then sunshine for the rest!!  Good to get the wet stuff out of the way at the beginning.

BUT THE REALLY GOOD NEWS is that I've been blessed with a cross/tailwind for the entire trip!!  In fact it's going to be so strong and gusty on the Friday (20kmh gusting 60kmh!!) that I am having to change my front wheel over back to a normal rim - the 58mm 'deep section' rim is great for speed and headwinds, but it is dangerous in x-wind gusts...you can find yourself blown right across the road if the wind flicks the bars over!   Not to worry though I'm a heavy lump and on a normal rim I can hold these kind of gusts...should be fun :) :)

The final irritation is the temperature.  OF course, it just had to be between clothes didn't it. 8-15degrees means too cold in one set of clothes and too hot in another.  I'll have go for the hot tops and just have to sling them annoyingly round waist when it gets cooking.  Still I have my tailwind so I'm grateful.

Here's the French weather website.  Combine it with this course plot to watch my fate.

And finally, a few snaps of the equipment I've customised for the needs of this ride.

First, a spare tyre.  It's mercifully of the folding variety - I've wrapped it in clingfilm then in gaffa tape (so the taps only sticks to the film), and strapped it on using an old inner tube cut into slices.  This is brilliant strapping as it 'sticks', binds to itself, and is elastic so very tight.  Here is the amount of strapping one racer tube gets you:

And the tyre I've tucked in dead space under my forearms on the tri bars:

NExt, a bag that normally sits on top the frame behind the stem...  but my legs were catching it when climbing hard out of the saddle, so I flipped it upside down and secured with more tube strap (the extra gaffa is to protect frame paint and cover scratchy velcro bits):

NExt, my favourite idea... daisy chaining saddle bags!:

And finally the wonderful LED 'flare' optic fibre lights - they can be constant or flashing, and are really bright. I have them strapped onto the frame but they can go on rucksacks too.