Hi All

I recently read one of the most hilarious books “Blazing Saddles – The true story behind the Tour de Farce”. It is an adventure involving six men in various stages of decrepitude, who, on a sudden whim, decided to embark on a 1000km cycle ride down the River Danube. The team includes five well-know South African editors – Harvey Tyson, Rex Gibson (both currently residing in Hermanus), Richard Steyn and Peter Sullivan. The fifth newspaperman is the author, James Clark also known as “The L*E*A*D*E*R of the Tour de Farce. He is a columnist on The Star in Johannesburg. The sixth man on the team, a bewildered non-journalist, is Alan Calenborne, a retired company director who was later designated the ‘official photographer’.

The Tour de Farce became an annual institution and takes us through 5 Tour de Farces:
I Germany : The Danube : Passau to Vienna, Vienna to Budapest.
II France : The Dordogne Valley: Gramat to Bordeaux.
The Canal du Midi: Toulousse to Sète (Mediterranean)
III Italy : Tuscany : Certaldo to Sienna.
Umbria: Todi to Assisi.
IV North and Western Ireland: Ballygally to Sligo, Sligo to Westport.
V England: Eton to Gravesend.
Western France: Chinon, Saumur, Hommes, Azay-de-Rideau and back to Chinon.

Chapter One
We were old enough to have known better. Well, all right, Richard was only 58 but the rest of us were certainly old enough. Here we were, six grown men whose ages averaged 67, about to set out on a nearly 1 000km cycle ride down the River Danube. Perhaps it was nearer 900km but I am speaking of genuine kilometers, the sort they have in France. We planned to follow the Danube from Passau in Germany, across Austria, across the tip of Slovakia and into Hungary, and on as far as Budapest.
I had been led to believe the ride would be downhill all the way.
‘Anyway it’s logical,’ I explained to my prospective though hesitant companions. “River courses are famous for running downhill; ipso fatso, as they say in my local cake shop, the cycle track along it must do something similar.
It was the first of many assumptions that proved to be not terribly accurate…….

Check out this link to book a tour similar to the ones described in the book. http://www.satravelguide.com/tourdefarce/tellus.html

I can highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys cycling and traveling.

Erna