How it began

A series of happy accidents led to this trip. Completing K4 in 2006 attracted a bit of attention and led to an invitation to ride some of the greatest Alpine roads in the Jeantex Transalp Tour, the appearance of a locum doc for Al's work, and the opportunity popped up to get a VIP start in the Etape du Tour de France.

We met Uta in Liverpool in 1997 and visited her family at Lake Konstanz in Germany near the Swiss border. She married Frank a few years later only to discover he was a keen cyclist. Frank was dead set to ride the Transalp Tour 7 day Tour which runs across Austria and the Italian Alps - the Tirol - but he needed a team partner and none of his friends were dumb enough to take this on. I said "yes" by email before I knew too much about it, but what an opportunity!

Andrea suggested we combine this with a SmartKiwi trip - a few of our friends have joined Greg and Jo for cycling adventures in the Alps and Pyrennees, so we emailed them and booked that in. A chance to see the Tour de France up close.

Next Chris Chambers was offered some VIP entries to l'Etape du Tour (de France) by a friend of his who had an unfilled allocation for blue-water yachties. As we happened to be booked to be in the same part of France at the time of l'Etape, this was too good to be true. I couldnt believe my luck. It all happened within a few weeks towards the end of 2006.