| Day # | 36 | State of Legs | :-) |
| Distance (miles) | Distance (km) | Ascent (feet) | Ascent (metres) | Punctures | |
| Today | 59 miles | km | 600 feet | metres | 0 |
| Trip Totals | 1702 miles | km | 64670 feet | metres | 0 |
| Today's Route |
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| Route So Far |
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Travelogue
Five weeks and one day into my trip and what have I done? Have my aspirations shriveled in the sun? Am I crippled by guilt? Blinded by science? Or have I been waiting for this cycling trip all of my life?
With abject apologies to Matt Johnson and The The
My aspirations are fine by the way. Not sure about other bits that have been exposed to the blistering sun of the last couple of weeks though! There may have been some shriveling here and there.
Anyway.....
Today was a mixed bag. Kind of nice. Then quite excellent. Then fairly horrendous. And finally.... pretty good once again!
I left the excellent municipal campsite of Sallèles-d'Aude at the relatively civilised time of 7:37. It was warm but not hot. The sky was overcast. With clouds. What's this? No blue sky? No furnace of a sun? No indeed. I think today was the first continuously cloudy day I've had so far. And it was very welcome as it kept the temperature to a manageable level, mostly in the high twenties but probably peaking at about thirty Celsius.
An hour later, I arrived in the town of Narbonne where a market was in full swing, presumably arranged just to slow me down. Outrageous :-)
I didn't see a lot of Narbonne, but what I saw looked nice. The Canal de la Robine runs through it and there are lots of boats moored there. I joined the path that runs alongside the canal.
Further on, the geography gets really interesting as the path traverses a narrow strip of land with the open sea on the left and lagoons or canal on the right.
This was the section I liked best today. The scenery was unusual and impressive.
There was also an abundance of wildlife, including this fearless yellow-legged gull, which didn't seem to care how close I got to it.
There were flamingos too!
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| Flamingos don't look as though they should be able to fly... but.... |
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| A sole flying flamingo reflected in the water |
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| A flamboyance of flamingos. I kid you not. For that is the collective noun for flamingos! |
This section was over all too soon and I found myself back on the road, following EV8 towards Perpignan. I stopped and photographed this colourful building which I think just housed local electricity distribution equipment or something equally mundane.
And this brings us to the section I really did not like. I found myself by the sea again but in a strangely bleak, wilderness of a place. It went on for miles, smelled of rotting vegetation and the trail was just awful. Bone rattling bumpy, gravel with large stones that fly up and clang your wheels or on one occasion, a pedalling foot and patches of deeper gravel which insisted on grabbing my front wheel and taking over steering duties from me. It was unpleasant and at times a struggle to stay upright. I always worry about my rear wheel in these kinds of conditions too, loaded as it is. Rims do crack.
But if that wasn't bad enough, the trail changed and I exchanged the stones and bumps for deep sand I had to push The Mule through and that was a huge struggle in itself.
I was glad when this bit was over and I was back on boring old tarmac once again!
I reached my destination in Peripgnan without incident. Tonight and tomorrow night I'm staying in an AirBnB apartment once again and tomorrow is a day of rest. I was met by the two owners who, speaking no English, showed me around and explained everything to me. I am pretty sure I understood the gist of what I was told and responded appropriately. But don't ask me for a word for word translation! Either way, they were lovely, welcoming people and I have somewhere comfortable to spend the next couple of days.
It was only about 2pm when I arrived so after unpacking and showering, I washed pretty much all my clothes by hand and hung them out to dry. I also washed my panniers and rack pack bag that contains my tent etc. The bags were filthy having picked up so much muck from the trails and roads of the last few days. The Mule is filthy too but that will get sorted out tomorrow.
I needed groceries of course, so headed out on a much lighter bike to the nearest supermarket. But whilst here in Perpignan, I also really, really wanted to find and buy a suitable spare tyre. My rear tyre is wearing quite quickly and whilst I am sure it's going to be fine for a while, I have my doubts about it lasting another thousand miles. So, as a precaution at least, I wanted to have a spare tyre with me for when the time comes to replace the current rear tyre.
I'd shortlisted every bike store in Perpignan that wasn't too far from where I'm based and happily, the two largest of them were only a couple of minutes further away than the supermarket, and on the same road. So before grocery shopping, I visited Intersport (no luck) and then Decathlon. I had low expectations of Decathlon but was wrong to. I wanted a foldable tyre (easy to carry) with high puncture resistance and one which was at least marginally wider than the current 37mm tyres I'm using. With all that weight over the rear wheel, despite everything having worked well so far, with hindsight I think a wider tyre would be better. I also wanted to avoid the Decathlon own brand because I've read very mixed reviews about them.
Anyway.....
Result! A 40-622 gravel tyre! It's a Hutchinson Touareg and whilst I don't know this tyre, it seems to get good reviews and is rated by Hutchinson as having high puncture resistance. So, I bought one. Let's hope it does the job when the time comes.
This means the one chore that would have required me to cycle on a rest day has been dealt with and tomorrow I really can put my feet up and rest! And of course wash and lube The Mule, plan the next week and so on.
Meanwhile, I can't be bothered to cook so it's Large Sandwich O'Clock instead!
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