| Day # | 31 | State of Legs | :-) |
| Distance (miles) | Distance (km) | Ascent (feet) | Ascent (metres) | Punctures | |
| Today | 34.6 miles | km | 1713 feet | metres | 0 |
| Trip Totals | 1135.7 miles | km | 40500 feet | metres | 0 |
| Today's Route |
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| Route So Far |
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Travelogue
We set off this morning in light drizzle, but luckily it didn't last for long and it soon settled into a cool, cloudy but almost windless day. The lack of headwind was a very welcome change from pretty much every other day since we arrived in continental Europe, over 4 weeks ago.
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| Look, there's a swan over there! Leaving the campsite.... |
Today's ride was relatively short though with a significant uphill trend which you can see from the profile above. It wasn't particularly scenic, passing through some fairly unexciting farmland and the greater majority of the route was on a main road, which is unusual for our routes. We vaguely recall tampering with the route that had been suggested by our planning tool, Plotaroute because we didn't like the look of the profile. The main road may be the result of our meddling!
Fortunately, the road wasn't busy. Whenever there was any traffic, it often involved a large truck, but they always passed at a safe distance. The road had a superb surface, so it made up for carrying vehicles that could squish a bike with ease, by being fast and easy to ride. Even the long uphill climbs seemed easier, partly perhaps because of the great surface but probably in the main because we weren't having to push through an annoying headwind for once!
Before long, we'd arrived in the town of Aumale, which is where today's campsite is situated.
We stopped at a bar-restaurant, considering having lunch but on seeing that the menu had nothing but meat on it, just had coffee instead. An Intermarche supermarket was a mile up the road from the bar, so we went there next and stocked up for the day and for tomorrow's breakfast. We then cycled to the campsite, up a rather steep hill.
The campsite is a municipal campsite. These tend to be rather basic, but of the ones M1 has stayed at, they're generally well run with clean and functioning facilities. There's rarely a bar or anything like that which some consider a pro and others a con. Ours in Aumale is lovely and quiet as there are only two other pitches with tents on them and a couple of mobile homes at the far end of the site.
And joy upon joys, as we pitched the tent, the sun came out! And lovely and warm it feels too!
We showered and then focused on food.
Cheese of the day is Morbier, which we would describe to be a mild blue cheese. It went very well with our fresh bread and tomatoes.
Since lunch, we've spent much of our time lying on our picnic blanket (actually a second ground sheet we brought for this purpose) in the sun, like a couple of geckos on a rock :-)
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| View from the picnic blanket :-) |
Update
M1 rigged up a sophisticated laptop mount in the tent with a piece of nylon cord cut from his clothes line. This allowed us to suspend the laptop from the roof and lie back watching videos in comfort. Simples!
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