The Eiffel Tower Was Never the Point

People often ask why I design rides the way I do. Why a Hidden Tracks route rarely takes the quickest way between two places. The simple answer is that interesting things are rarely found on the main road. It's only when you follow gravel tracks, canal towpaths and forgotten byways that you stumble across Roman walls, abandoned runways, unnecessary fords and all the other oddities that make a journey memorable.

This ride was the answer.

Learning to travel by bike

The first road crossing took several minutes. There was almost no traffic, but I still shepherded everyone across on foot. Not because the boys couldn't ride bikes, but because riding a bike and travelling by bike are two very different skills.

For the first hour I barely stopped talking.

It probably sounded less like a bike ride and more like a military exercise.

The route wandered gently beside the Kennet & Avon Canal before reaching Silchester, where Roman walls still emerge from open fields nearly two thousand years after they were built. We followed stretches of the Devil's Highway, found some unexpectedly good gravel and, because it seemed rude not to, splashed through an entirely unnecessary ford.

That little diversion turned out to be one of Sam's favourite memories of the whole week. It wasn't Paris, or even France. It was picking a line through the water, balancing over slippery stones and discovering that riding a bike could be a technical challenge as well as a way of getting somewhere.

Before we left, somebody discovered that wet disc brakes make surprisingly good musical instruments. One squeeze of a brake lever produced a mournful "Daa... daa... daaa... DAAAAAH..." Within seconds all four bikes had joined in, attempting a gloriously awful rendition of the opening to Also sprach Zarathustra. Echoing around the little valley it probably sounded more like a flock of distressed geese than a world-famous fanfare, but the boys dissolved into fits of laughter. Five minutes later we were back on our bikes, still grinning.

Later that afternoon we reached the abandoned runways at Blackbushe. Three increasingly tired boys suddenly rediscovered enough energy to sprint along the old concrete as though the previous forty miles had never happened.

Apparently long, empty runways have exactly the same effect on eleven-year-olds as they do on fifty-year-olds.

Confidence arrives quietly

The following days settled into a wonderful rhythm. The Blackwater Valley, the Basingstoke Canal and the Christmas Pie Trail gave way to a cooling swim at Catherine's Bridge before we rolled into Horsham through its maze of cycle paths, arriving from modern housing estates into a town centre that seemed to jump back five hundred years in the space of a few hundred metres.

Brighton brought another swim, this time in the sea, followed by Tom deciding it would be a good idea to challenge me to ride across the pebbles on the beach.

It wasn't.

The pebbles won.

Every day seemed to include something we hadn't planned, and looking back I think those unplanned moments became the highlights. Adventure isn't always the thing you've spent months organising. Sometimes it's simply stopping because something catches your eye.

Somewhere during those first three days, something else changed as well.

The reminders became less frequent.

Nobody needed telling which gear to use anymore.

The climbs stopped being something to fear and became something to solve.

The boys started discovering that getting to the top wasn't just about strength. It was about finding a rhythm, believing you could do it and trusting the bike underneath you.

Tom, in particular, quietly discovered he could climb far more than he had ever imagined. By the final day he was conquering steep chalk climbs that he would probably have walked at the start of the week.

Laurie, the youngest at just eleven, rode right on the edge of what was reasonable. There were moments when he was exhausted, and after one small tumble I made the decision not to let him tackle a particularly technical forest section. He wasn't especially pleased with me at the time, but my job wasn't simply to get everyone to Paris. It was to get everyone there safely.

An hour later he was smiling again.

France happens slowly

The ferry carried us to France while everyone else slept, and almost immediately the rhythm changed. Long railway paths linked sleepy villages, quiet roads wandered through farmland and the riding became less about following a route and more about settling into the day.

The boys learnt how much easier life becomes when you ride in a chain gang.

They discovered that long climbs are often harder than steep ones.

They learnt to descend loose gravel without grabbing handfuls of brake.

They stopped asking me which gear they should be in because they already knew.

Perhaps most importantly, they stopped looking to me for every answer.

The countryside kept supplying stories.

A field where goats had trampolines, swings and see-saws.

A bridge opening to allow a huge wind farm construction vessel through.

Thirty-six flavours of ice cream in a tiny café.

Cycling through synchronised fountains because getting wet seemed much more entertaining than riding around them.

A theme park overflowing with primary school children in brightly coloured tabards, creating five noisy minutes before the quiet countryside returned.

None of those moments appeared on the route sheet.

They're the moments everyone still talks about.

The final morning

The final morning began in beautiful sweet chestnut forest on the chalk hills above the Oise Valley. It was probably the best gravel riding of the whole trip, with proper technical climbs and descents winding through cool woodland just an hour from Paris.

At one point we stopped beside the River Oise to watch an enormous yacht drift slowly upstream. The owner gazed ahead from the helm, his wife was absorbed by her phone and his daughter appeared to be doing homework. It struck me that the slightly grubby cyclists on the riverbank were probably enjoying life considerably more than the family on the million-pound boat.

A little later we received our first French tut from a disapproving local. I still have absolutely no idea what we'd done wrong.

Then, almost without warning, everything changed.

The forest became suburbs.

The suburbs became the Seine.

The Seine became the Canal Saint-Denis.

Before Paris became the Paris everyone imagines, we rode through another side of the city.

Homeless encampments lined parts of the canal and life looked very different from the quiet villages and countryside we'd spent the previous six days riding through. We didn't stop or talk about it much, but I suspect it was one of those moments they'll remember. A few kilometres later we were among the cafés, tourists and landmarks that fill the guidebooks.

None of the boys had ever ridden through a major city before.

Their heads swivelled constantly. Notre-Dame. The Left Bank. Street cafés. Cyclists everywhere.

Buses. Scooters.

Life happening in every direction.

And then something dawned on me.

For the previous half hour I'd hardly said anything.

On the first morning I'd barely stopped talking.

Now I didn't need to.

Somewhere between Little Bedwyn and Paris I'd become almost redundant.

The calls of "car back" and "walker ahead" came from within the group. Gears changed instinctively. Junctions were read without prompting. They looked over their shoulders before changing position, left space for one another and threaded confidently through the organised chaos of central Paris.

Six days earlier I'd walked them across one of the quietest country lanes in Wiltshire.

Now they were riding through one of Europe's busiest cities.

That was the moment I realised we'd arrived.

Not because the Eiffel Tower had appeared.

Because they had become cyclists.

More than Paris

Along the way the boys also raised more than £5,000 for the Charlie Waller Trust, helping a charity dedicated to improving young people's mental health. It wasn't something they talked about very much during the week. They were too busy swimming in the sea, riding through fords, debating ice cream flavours and discovering just how much they were capable of. But it's an achievement they should be enormously proud of.

None of it would have happened without our support crew. While we rode, they quietly moved luggage, found lunch stops, kept everyone fed, solved the inevitable problems and somehow made the logistics disappear into the background. Every adventure has people behind the scenes who rarely appear in the photographs. They deserve as much credit as anyone who turned the pedals.

I'll remember Tom discovering he could climb hills he would once have walked.

I'll remember Laurie finding reserves of determination that surprised everyone, including himself.

I'll remember Sam grinning as he picked his way through a ford before later deciding that technical little challenge had been more memorable than the Eiffel Tower itself.

I'll remember Roman walls, abandoned runways, Brighton beach, goats on playground equipment, swimming stops, French villages, sweet chestnut forests and a millionaire looking distinctly unhappy on his yacht.