here comes the rain. today is an absolute scorcher. hottest day of the year. drink, drink and drink. en route, we'll speak to athletes competing in the french capital. some of the really big decisions are the ones about where you will hold the olympics in the future. we'll hear how climate change is affecting sport for everyone, from the grass roots... nearly every game was called off. it was really frustrating. ..to the elite. i think it's important that we talk about leaving a world that our children can grow up in because being outside in nature is something we shouldn't ever take for granted. and we'll be joined by some famous faces to help us along the way. i don't know how he does it! i find it hard to even . run100m, let alone... go. if you just take some positive action in your own life, life is much healthier.

the national cycling centre in manchester — home of great britain's cycling team and the start location of pedal for paris. chris and his team are getting ready for the journey. i'm actually pretty fit at the moment. when you're covering that kind of distance — 550 miles — there's things that are going to happen, we're going to have to manage, so, it's a dynamic adventure is the way i'd like to think of it. the paris games are hoping to be the greenest in history. from cardboard beds in the athletes' village to plant—based menus, organisers want to halve the carbon footprint of the world's biggest sporting event. back in 2012, london constructed six new stadiums and rio built ten four years later. but paris has focused

on existing and temporary infrastructure with only two new venues in the city. but there will be challenges to that environmental legacy. extreme heat, air and water pollution are still huge concerns. you realise that climate change is already here. you can't go out and ride bicycles when it's a0 degrees heat, which is happening more and more frequently, so we haven't even realised it. en route, we're going to be looking at projects that are already happening to protect our environment, which is the purpose of this — to spotlight environment and particularly its impact on sport. it's finally time to go. all: five, four, | three, two, one! go! local cyclists have joined chris to see him off and all along the route to paris, guest riders will come and go, but we'll be there the whole way.

ok, this is it. we have started. it's a bit daunting for me. i'm not a regular cyclist but i like a challenge, and it means we can film every mile, all the way to the french capital. we're a few miles in now, chris. how are you feeling? six. six miles? six miles. six miles, you make it? 10%. the flat 10%, to be fair. flat 10%. there's a few hills to come. it's quite a relief to get us going, really, isn't it? yeah. the first day of the ride takes us from manchester in the north of england to ashbourne in the midlands, over the hills of the peak district, which have a reputation for unpredictable weather, and it's not long before we get caught in it. we're about three hours into the cycle now and the rain

is really coming down now. uh... not entirely sure my waterproof is waterproof any more. it is very wet. while conditions like this are expected up here, extreme rainfall events are increasing, and they're affecting sport. earlier this year, chris visited a local cricket club in south manchester who are trying to cope with the effects of climate change. they play cricket here every week and they've been subject — they had once—in—100—year flooding back in 2016. and then 2017, it wasn't once in 100 years, it was again. and so on and so on — it became the norm. i've never known anything like this. we've just not been able to get on the ground because it's been so wet. it's been unrelenting. when it gets rained off, it's really annoying. -

last year, it was just — nearly every game was called off, it was really frustrating. there was six games, at least, in a row, back to back, rained off. and there are examples of professional clubs suffering as well. this is new road, home of worcestershire county cricket club, which they've occupied since 1896 and are now considering leaving because of flooding. football is also heavily affected. the fa have found that there's 120,000 games cancelled every year because of flooded pitches. sports clubs are now receiving investment packages to help them battle climate change and become more sustainable. and this club is leading the way with solar panels on the pavilion roof and a rewilding programme on the boundary.

we have to think very hard about how we keep this cricket club going as a place to play sport for the next 20 or 30 years, and one of the things we do is we plant all these trees and have this biodiversity because these trees actually soak up the water in the summer, which means we've got more chance of being able to play the game. there are questions over whether money should instead be spent on all—weather facilities. either way, there is now no doubt that climate change is having a huge impact on physical activity in the uk. well done, boys. 0h, hello! aw! so, we're coming to the end of day one. we're about to reach our first overnight stop. it's been a challenging day. we've covered over 1,000m

of elevation, hours on end of torrential rain — i'm absolutely soaked. i'm also covered in mud. at one point, i couldn't feel my fingers or my toes. but it's also been great. we've got 60 miles in the bag. just a50 more to go! 0h, your camera! i've got it! we are going to loughborough. slightly sore, slightly tender but we've got a better day. nice weather today. at the other extreme, i think — it's going to get pretty warm. see you in a bit! spirits are high. a little enforced break, waiting for a train. but chris is taking matters into his own hands. does that mean

i have to join them? looks like it. ok, here we go. we've ended up on the wrong side of the wall. are we insured for this? with yesterday's rain behind us, we arrive to a sunny loughborough university, which is a hub for athletes from around the world. after a warm welcome, it's time to get some rest before the biggest day yet. it's day three. we're just about to set off from loughborough. got some new guests joining us today, which will keep spirits high, but the legs are definitely starting to feel it. day three — the longest stretch in the uk. we're travelling 71 miles from loughborough to milton milton keynes. and after a quick blast to get our legs going, the fun begins. should have gotten him in one of these skin—tight tops.

0h, mate, i've got my own! i packed my own. mike tindall, former england rugby star and now british royalty. he's married to the king's niece, zara phillips, and isjoining us on the ride. and he's not alone. former team—mate james haskell will be in the driving seat of a tandem. not everyone is confident they'll make it. i'll be surprised if they're not in the first hedge we come to, to be honest. their training has been extensive — they've done a good 50m together, i think, so they're totally prepared for this journey. having been someone who rides a bike way more thanjames- does, i'm a little bit nervousl that he's in control of brakes. but when he drives a car, we call him 'slowjames'. '0n the brakes james'. so, it will be steady away, i think. - yeah. they're less than two minutes behind us and we've been

hammering it, so my ego is severely dented now because i'm not having an easy day and this ton of meat precariously balanced on two wheels has been keeping up with us. 20 miles covered today. how are the legs feeling? awful. i'm pretty certain half the time — half the time he wasn't pedalling because when he did pedal, we honestly went to orbit. i've never experienced anything like it. we honestly almost set the land speed record at one point. we were flying. but it was good. it was a positive trip, wasn't it? we've bonded. we've become closer. yeah, we've got nervous nelly on the front steering. - every corner, - he's like, "argh!" there is a message behind pedalfor paris — we're using it to talk about climate change, sustainability. as former athletes yourself, why is it more important for sport to try and do more? well, look, ithink, to be honest with you, sportspeople and being healthy and exercising, going out and enjoying nature, is so important in life for so many reasons and i think that at the moment, we're quite clearly destroying the planet, we're quite clearly doing things that, you know, we shouldn't do — deforestation, whatever it

might be — and for me, you know, we want to encourage people going out and climate change is affecting the weather, it's affecting people's ability to play sport, it's affecting people's, you know, ability to go out and cycle, for example — hence what we're doing today. so, i think raising that awareness, doing a little step, you know, each individually, makes a profound difference. it's day four and it's a scorcher. hottest day of the year. drink, drink and drink. fortunately, it's the shortest day of the ride. we're heading 52 miles from milton keynes to bisham abbey, near reading. but the temperatures are due to hit 30 degrees celsius. keeping on top of drinking is absolutely everything on a day like this. chris is due to visit more grassroots sports today to spread his sustainability message and he's on a tight schedule, which means the peloton and our team needs to keep up the pace. ok, so we've got a bit of a confession to make about the bikes that dave the cameraman and i are using. we are using electric bikes for this cycle.

there's a couple of reasons why we've decided to do this. mainly because we've got so much kit to carry with us so that we can be live from this cycle and bring you as much coverage as possible but also, we're trying to keep up with a former tour de france and olympic cyclist all the way to paris, and that is no mean feat and often, dave here has to try and get ahead of him to get all the shots that we need. when you're cycling at this speed, the wind rushes by and you don't feel the heat. it's a real danger to life. we know that when we get to paris, it's likely that the olympic athletes are going to face even higher temperatures than we've experienced and we're just breaking records to the point that breaking records is stopping becoming news. the french national weather service says this summer is likely to be warmer than average and, over the last few years, it's got as hot as 42 degrees celsius in paris. athletes have had to learn to cope with this changing climate.

my name's eliza mccartney. i'm a pole vaulter from aotearoa, new zealand. i did a degree in environmental science and that year has reallyjust like been a platform for me to get a bit more involved in sustainability initiatives, particularly when it comes to sponsors and sport. it has become a really important part of what i do and who i am. what's it like, as an athlete, competing in those high temperatures? well, in pole vault, the heat and its physiological effect on us is really important. when it's hot, if you're not prepared, you're going to struggle in the heat. you know — you might be fatigued, you might have more lethargy. concentration is really important. you don't want to be fading and not making sensible decisions when you're doing something like pole—vaulting. and if it's a really humid, hot environment, i can slip on the pole, and that's not safe, either. do you think the world of sport is doing enough to tackle climate change?

i mean, ultimately, i don't think any industry is doing enough right now but there are some good things that sport, particularly in recent years, has been doing. i think it's just become a bit more apparent that sport and sustainability and climate change are related but, of course, there's a lot of things that go on in sport that mean that there's a lot of emissions, particularly around major events, of course. yourjob as an athlete requires you to travel all over the world — are you comfortable with that? that's i feel like is the problem with sport — i have to fly to places and i don't have much control over that if i want to be an athlete right now, so you do feel like you're kind of forced to make these decisions if you want to carry on in your career that you're doing. i think some of the really big decisions are the ones about where you will hold the olympics in the future. if it's the right place to be holding an event at that scale that has sport involved. where people are pushing themselves to their physiological limits, you know, is it a safe place for them to be doing it? we're more than halfway through this journey. today, our destination is central london, following the river thames.

along the way, we're calling in to see the british rowing team and we're also here to pick up another guest rider, dame katherine grainger, former rower, who has five 0lympic medals, including two golds. katherine, you are joining us today. you're coming all the way to paris. why did you want to get involved? so, i was always going to be in paris during the games. i'm wondering myself! and then, obviously, i know chris very well. there's very rare opportunities you get to actually cycle to an olympic games. it's such an incredible opportunity. and like chris said, there's so many amazing projects that we're kind of aware of but we probably can't highlight and showcase enough, so we're meeting some fantastic athletes who are already speaking out on issues that are so important to them but also, some wonderful venues that really bring to life, like, just how amazing these places are and how we need to protect them and promote them and make sure that our waterways and our cycleways are as good as they can be for everyone. as an athlete, katherine used to train here. so, before we set off,

she wants to talk to the current crop of rowers who will be heading to paris. imogen, last time we caught up was actually at the 0xford—cambridge boat race in london. we always talk about conditions when it comes to any outdoor sport. normally, it's the weather. this time, we talked a lot about the water quality. yeah, and it meant that the coxes weren't thrown in, which is absolutely the traditional celebration of the boat race — something that i've got to experience every time — and, you know, river quality was suddenly a talking point for the first time in a long time. you know, it sort of felt like that's when it came to everyone's really public awareness, public knowledge, but something you've been aware of for a while now? yeah, absolutely. i'm an ambassador for the rivers trust and working with them has really opened my eyes to the significant deterioration in water quality over the last decade or so. so, when i was training here — a few years ago now — i don't think it was something we even talked about or were aware of about how bad the water might be. has it changed that much in a short space of time, do you think?

you ask any rower, any other river user, like swimmers or anglers, we all know someone who's gotten a tummy bug, who's been sick, who's got an infected blister, and we're pretty sure it's from the water itself. not a single river in the uk is classed as being in good overall health and, really, we're asking the new government and the charities to step up and regulate the water companies better. if we stop putting sewage in the rivers, things are going to change pretty quickly — and we see it in sport as well, you know, once you have momentum, things really pick up steam really fast. and i really hope that speaking about this — whether this is about the thames, whether it's about rivers in the uk or whether it's about the seine in paris as well — talking about it is the first step to action. you're obviously a fantastic athlete and yet, you're also using your ability, the platform you have, to speak out on issues that are really important to you. some say, you know, the games in front of you. isn't that what you need to focus on? why is it that you think you also want to use this

moment to speak out about the water quality? yeah, i think, being an athlete and being a high—performance athlete, it's such a selfish job a lot of the time, you know? we miss so much because we have to recover and have to be at the top of our own personal game and i think it's a responsibility as an athlete to speak up and use the voice that we have, and that's why i want to use my voice to highlight river quality and highlight sustainability worldwide. the next stop is the city of london and suddenly, we're sharing the road. whoa! this is home to nearly ten million people and 2.5 million cars. we'll be spending the night near st pancras station, terminus of the eurostar. many british athletes are travelling to and from paris by train, rather than flying, to make theirjourney more sustainable. like all huge cities

around the world, london has its problems with air pollution. it's causing a lot of ill—health and we need to act now. another guest on our ride is dr heather lambert. she's a campaigner focusing on improving the quality of the air we breathe. how serious is the problem of air pollution? it is responsible for so much ill—health. about a third of asthma in children is caused by air pollution. there's good evidence that children living in high pollution areas have more respiratory illness. it's actually killing children. we need to get rid of a lot of the vehicles that are causing the air pollution and replace them with other forms of transport. we got across london so much quicker today on our bikes than the vehicles that were following us — electric vehicles — but following us with baggage and equipment. and so, i think people can

change their own ways of getting about. and one of the messages of this trip is somehow, we've got to think about the way we design our cities and how we get across them and how we design public transport and things like that. the next day, we're making the most of london's extensive cycle lane network as we head out of the city. i love these quiet streets. it actually makes moving around a city like this so much quicker on a bike, and more pleasant. it's 69 miles to the south coast and britain's greatest—ever paralympian, dame sarah storey, is taking a breakfrom her training tojoin us. it's great to be part of a group. i don't often ride in a group any more and — i'm racing in groups, obviously but most of my training is done solo. i'm very single—minded when it comes to training rides, so it's nice to do a ride like this in a group. obviously, we started out in central london and utilised all the infrastructure that's been built over the last 10—15 years.

sarah's come along because, as it turns out, the idea for the whole trip was hers. i really liked the idea of riding to paris because it's so close compared to all of the other games and so, i've held on to that. and then, last year, i was — towards the end of last year, i was chatting to chris boardman about the fact that no—one had arranged it for me yet! somebody needed to sort this ride to paris out! so, yeah, now we're here and you guys are riding all the way to paris. i'm joining you for this leg and then, going back to my training and then, going to work out how i ride to paris for the paralympics. well, we made it — newhaven ferry port. finally, france beckons. we have made it to france! it's hard to believe, isn't it? bonjour! so, we've got 73 miles to do today.

it's the longest day of cycling of the whole journey so far. we're on the avenue verte and it isjust miles of uninterrupted cycle lanes. glorious! this e—bike has a speed limit of 15.5mph and after that, you're on your own and we're currently going uphill at about 18mph, so there's a lot of work to do. we're really going fast now! after a quick overnight stop, paris is finally within touching distance and the excitement is growing. whether it's because we can sense the finish line, i can't decide, orjust the fact we're in an amazing country, which is the home of the olympics in a few days' time, and i think there's just so much to get excited about now. there's just one last visit to make in saint—germain—en—laye, on the outskirts of paris, which is where some british

athletes and their coaches are based this summer. it's a chance to catch up with old friends. i don't know how he does it! i find it hard to even run 100m now, let alone ride a bike... it's the class of �*92. ah! - good grief! well, it's saddle sore, though, huh? little bit. let me tell you, you've still got it up those hills, so he hasn't lost it. ah! steadier now, a bit slower, i would say. well, you know, they say it's not for the swift or the strong but the one who endures to the end. the one that's still there, the one that's still there. he's still going to be there. with impressive facilities, these camps are crucial for athletes who spend years preparing for the games. it's nice, so they can see other people training and everything else and, you know, kind of work out what they have to do, you know? it's good. and you know, now the environment starts and everything but, you know, they're not running till another week or so, so it's quite early. you've got time to join us on the cycle to paris. do you want to come with us? got a spare bike there. i'm going to go

on the tram now, so... "oh, look at the time." i'm going to run. merci. it's the final stretch into the city. the olympic games are in town and chris has donned his yellow jersey. before we know it, after 500 miles and a0 hours in the saddle, we hit the cobbles under the arc de triomphe. woo! we've made it! it feels amazing to be here. feels very special. it feels very — it's ridiculous but it's, like, what an amazing location to finish. what an amazing ride with incredible people. cycling behind chris boardman — something i thought i would never say. cycling in a peloton with dame sarah storey, dame katherine grainger, meeting athletes from all over the world — it's been absolutely brilliant. we've trundled our way down

the country, over the channel from the coast in france and that's taken just a week and it hasn't been physically too demanding. we've stopped and seen lots of stuff. it's incredible what you can do with a bicycle. now, it's time to enjoy paris and the olympic games. hello there. we'll see some contrast in temperature across the uk over the next few days. slightly fresher conditions for scotland and northern ireland, but england and wales certainly holding onto the heat and the humidity for another few days. for most of us, it is looking pretty dry and pretty sunny, as well.

but will we see a heat wave? it depends where you are. these are the threshold temperatures which we need to hit for at least three consecutive days. now, that's 28 celsius for parts of london and southeast england, 27 for much of england and wales — we've already seen one day above that — and actually, over the next few days across parts of the midlands, southern, southeast england, we could well see those threshold temperatures exceeded for a heat wave. now, through the day on tuesday, lots of dry, sunny weather. areas of cloud just floating around across parts of northern england, northern ireland, and at times of scotland — so you could just see a light passing shower here, i think. further south — long, clear spells, blue skies, lifting temperatures to between about 28—32 in the southeast. typically the high teens or the low—20s, though, as we head further north. 0vernight tuesday night and on into wednesday, largely dry, settled, humid again — so another muggy, sticky night. just a chance of the odd shower cropping up perhaps towards the south. but look at those overnight temperatures —

18 celsius in london, but we're looking at glasgow and edinburgh around about 7—8 celsius. so a real contrast as we head into the early hours of wednesday. but again, for wednesday, lots of sunshine, it'll feel hot and humid again for england and wales in particular, where temperatures could reach 30 celsius or higher. typically again, the high teens or low—20s as we head through scotland and northern ireland. but a bit of a change into thursday, because we'll start to see this frontal system moving its way in from the west, bumping into the high pressure, bumping into the hot, humid air — that could well spark off some heavy showers and some thunderstorms. so a bit of a breakdown in the weather possible for thursday, especially so for england and wales, but some uncertainty about the positioning of any of those thunderstorms. if you do catch one, torrential downpours could bring some localised flooding. with the threat of showers, it's not quite as hot by this stage in the south, but still could get close to 30 celsius. and then, as we head through friday into the weekend, eventually weather fronts will start to move their way eastwards, introducing something a little bit fresher coming in from the west. so, after a hot, humid few

days, it is looking a little bit cooler and more unsettled as we head towards the end of the week and into the weekend. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. person is reportedly dead in venezuela as thousands protest controversial election results. a deadly strike on a soccer field near the israel—lebanon border escalates concerns of a new war in the region. and us presidentjoe biden announces proposals for supreme court term limits and ethics rules, but they're unlikely to pass in congress. hello. thousands of people have taken to the streets in venezuela to

denounce the official result of sunday's residential election. 0ne sunday's residential election. one person has now died according to reporters at the right place clashed with protesters. the government says it will temporarily suspend commercial flights with panama in the dominican republic by wednesday. in the capital, caracas, protesters set fire to cars and threw stones at riot police, who responded with tear gas. the demonstrators say president nicolas maduro's re—election was fraudulent and they're demanding that he leave office. groups of mr maduro's supporters, as well as paramilitaries are also gathering in the capital. the crowd was cheering and throwing their hands in the air. in a live address to the nation... venezuela's electoral authority formally declared mr maduro the winner despite

exit polling that suggested the opposition party won.