Ride To Refuge | Cycling through France 85 years after my family fled Paris during World War II

Ride to Refuge follows me (Sam) and his friend James as we cycle over 1,200km across France retracing the perilous escape route taken by my family, the Smiths, who fled Nazi-occupied Paris during the Second World War in June 1940.

As a child I first heard about this incredible true story thanks to a handful of black and white photos that were (and remain) in a frame at the bottom of my grandparents stairs which prompted me to ask my family about them. While my Grandad understandably found sharing his own experience very difficult throughout his lifetime, his younger brother who was 11 in 1940, was able to recall and write down his own memoir with thanks to their fathers pocket diary that included an accurate daily description of the route they traveled and the towns and villages they stopped along the way. It is thanks to these two accounts that enabled me to plan the journey with such accuracy.

It has been my childhood dream to retrace their journey one day, but life kept ‘getting in the way’! Until 2025 when my wife and I discovered we were expecting our first child! This prompted me to finally ‘pull my socks up’ and get on with it! However, I never imagined I would have not one, but three friends willing to accompany me on this adventure that has enabled this incredible short film to be produced.

I am so grateful to James, Rory and Sam for their time and energy they have put into making this possible.

My hope is that this film helps keep the memory of my families remarkable escape ‘Fleeing Hitler’ alive for many generations of my family to come and that it also shares a light on the often forgotten stories of War, those of the refugees who are caught up in them at no fault of their own, but at a great expense to them and their families.

Dedicated to Laurie, Bobbie, Derrick and Philip Smith.
With love, your grandson, great nephew and great grandson!

To hear more about my Great Uncle Philip’s story watch the series of videos below thanks to a project with Bartlett’s care home and St Mary’s Primary School in Dunmow.

🔗 https://peverelcourtcare.co.uk/meeting-life-an-intergenerational-project/

I hope you enjoy the film, if you have you may like to know that it is my intention to edit an ‘extended version’ that sheds more light on the Smiths that unfortunately was tricky if not impossible in 20 minutes! This will be

Special thanks to: Musee le Bunker: https://www.bunkerlarochelle.com/

Archive Footage from: https://archive.org/

🔗 Follow me on Instagram 📸: sammyboyadventures
🔗 Follow Rory on Youtube: @roryandthemountain
🔗 Follow Professor Hanna Diamond on Instagram 📸: @hdiamond2010

A big thank you to our local bike shops who have supported us, check them out:

📸 https://www.instagram.com/skinnergatecycles/
📸 https://www.instagram.com/cyclewise_ltd/
📸 https://www.instagram.com/finetunecycles/

🎥 Shot on: Sony A640, Go Pro Hero 10 & DJI Mini 4 Pro.
🎵 Soundtrack: https://www.epidemicsound.com

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] Well, 85 years later and probably about 15 for me once I first heard about the story, we’re about to set off 19th of July. And hey, someone’s behind me. This is my mate James. We met 12 years ago in the Lake District when he was a chef and I was a pot washer. We bonded over mountain biking, but somehow I’ve convinced him to follow me through the back end of France for 2 weeks. I don’t know, maybe he’s secretly training for next year’s tour to France. So, we’ve got about 100, not 100, about 1,250 km to come. Um, hopefully James, they have a professional assistant behind me. It’ll keep me right. What’ you say? Uh, cut. The plan is to cycle from Paris to Son Jean Deloo via Larashell, following the route my family took as closely as possible, traveling through all the key towns and villages. my great-grandfather recorded in his diary. But first, we had to leave the city. [Music] Yoohoo. [Applause] [Music] Oh jeez. [Music] Should I just go around? Go. Hey there. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Pleasure. [Music] And with that, the excitement of Paris was behind us and the open road beckoned. Oh god. [Applause] So, we’re currently charging through Quantum Blue Woods, and there’s probably a perfectly good road next door. When we got to our first sort of big checkpoint, which was for the Blair, yeah, my family, it was a tricky day for them. and they spent an entire day waiting there for for friends that never showed and they had to make a really tough decision after waiting 24 hours to go on without them and that decision would later prove to actually end up making them need to cycle much further than they might have had to. The French army was you know withdrawing was escaping. So it was very much a kind of people reacting to the circumstances they were experiencing at this time. families in the chaos of the streets and the machine gun families got separated. Children, thousands and thousands of children were separated from their family. So it’s clear that the Smiths as a family unit were perhaps in a something of a better situation than some. the whole of society sort of French society in these places just disinc integrated and that’s really rather frightening [Music] Oh, good morning. Sorry, Bonjour. I’ve looked at the route and managed to make it a lot more direct. When I planned the route from home, I was kind of yeah relying on more modern technology to pick most popular routes, which actually is not that helpful. So, I’m looking at a more direct route, but still on country roads that my family would have uh definitely done cuz they were enjoying the scenery they were cracking on. Our next destination was the Lir, France’s longest river and a lifeline for Parisian refugees fleeing Hitler. Or so they thought. From there, we continued to Larishell, crossing through the heart of the French countryside. Most of these refugees had no no idea where to go except away. They wanted to get away. Um, and they were aware that the Germans weren’t very far behind them because sometimes they could hear the bombardment and they could hear the noise of fighting. So they wanted to get further and further south. But they did feel drawn to the river. [Applause] And people sort of thought, well, there’ll be a new front. The French army, it can’t be possible. They can’t possibly have collapsed completely. There’ll be a new front at the Lir. We’ll cross the Lir and then we’ll be safe because the there’ll be a new front and they’ll push back the Germans. I bought my uh my early flight home. I’m riding straight to the airport from here and I really wish Sam next 10 days. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d make it as far as day two. So, I’m really proud of you, mate. Oh, wow. Thanks. Get that jet two book, man. Flight jet now. Every person gets £50 off. That’s a saving £200 for a ball. It’s wet. Very wet. I regret saying it’s nice cycling in the rain. So we start at day six, not far from camp really. about another 100 km today. And just that first little hill, I’m already feeling it in my legs. Trying to stretch and keep on top of it. But I don’t want this to be a little moan about me. what I want to I don’t know how I can just kind of explain how on earth you know granddad at 14 I guess you fit like at 14 Phil was just 11 years old you know it’s it’s one thing me and James doing this trip having just 5 months to prepare for it both in terms of logistics and you know trying to train on weekends and some stuff. But, you know, my family had hours to get ready. There’s four of them. And they’re not on a modern bike like this. You know, they were on the steel frame single gear bikes. So, it’s just remarkable what they did. We’ve also been lucky to have cooler weather still really today. We’re setting off at 8:00 in the morning. They were setting off at 5 to try and escape the heat of the day. Think we’ve got some heat to come. But yeah. Well, anyway, on to Shaven again. Butcher the pronunciation. Dosel to the French. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] there. And that was it. Or so my family thought. The day they waited in Font and Blur would prove costly. It meant they missed the last refugee boat out of Larishelle and still had another 500 km to cycle to S Jealoo. The Nazis were moving fast. Thankfully, so were they [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I wanted to ride the rally. Thought that was a cool way to connect with my family a bit more. So they they didn’t have carbon gravel bikes like James and I had. They they rode steel framed bikes with one gear. Excuse. Absolutely had to go hard up hills. I wasn’t getting up at all. And uh and then coming down them, it was it was a little bit terrifying cuz the brakes were shocking and I had didn’t have enough time to maybe work on them and maintain them. So, I just use my feet to try and stop before I hit a car, which managed to thankfully. For them, it was getting refuge from what they feared most, which is the invasion, wasn’t it? [Music] For me, uh, it was completing 1,250 kilometers of riding with, you know, one of my best friends and being able to share that with him and and complete that ride. [Music] I think it’s really important to remind ourselves of these individual stories like those of the Smiths and the distress um that these kind of events bring to people’s lives. [Music] We decided to call it Ride to Refuge because for my family it was it was getting home um to England. For me it was always safe. I didn’t experience what they did. I think it just reminds me of how lucky I am and the majority of us are, at least those who live in this country, how we are safe all the time and we’re lucky to have a lot of us to have family around and [Music] All right, sweetheart. There you go. That’s very good. Long ago. It was 85 years ago. It’s a long one, isn’t it? 85 years. Of course, the funny thing is it was very exciting. My brother and I each morning we’d get back on our bikes. It was good fun. [Music]