I write this in a hotel room above a restaurant amid a cracking storm. The downpour is such that the rainwater is surcharging the inadequate French drainage system and so we have the slightly distasteful smell of sewage mingling with the delightful smell of spit- roasting chickens!! Not sure I can face going out to eat at the moment !! Luckily we arrived at the hotel just before the storm started so at least we didn’t get wet! As you can see from the following video clip a boat is floating down the street on its way to the boucherie.
However, before the rains came the sun and for those of us travelling the Velodyssee from south to north this means that for the majority of the day, when the sun is out, it is shining on your back. So this requires the assiduous application of the factor 50 to the back of your legs and arms to avoid that searing back burner feeling. However,the back of my neck feels a bit over cooked as I forgot about that bit and now I now have a pain in the neck as well as having a pain in the a**e. An image of increasing familiarity on this trip is the shadow pattern cast on the ground by us northbound travellers. One spends many happy rear-heated hours looking at this view.
Had a couple of minor navigational errors today either as a result of inadequate signage, or, lack adequate attention to adequate signage. Either way we got a bit lost and at one point rode frustratingly around an industrial estate and ‘dechetterie’ (waste recycling dump) for half an hour. We also went haring along a busy road which we shouldn’t have been on mixing with hoary hgvs and thrusting BMW drivers. We were bemused during our passage along this scary road to be overtaken by two senior French touring cyclists, which at first gave us comfort that we were not the only lost idiots, but which turned to amazement when one of the oldsters got off his bike ahead of us and hitched down his fulsome Lycra shorts to take a leak on the highway verge in full view of us and the passing traffic. We sailed passed them with a gay ‘Bonjour’ as we forged onward towards Vieux-Boucau-Les-Bains and a well-earned chicken liver dinner!!
Velodyssee 