| Day # | 34 | State of Legs | :-) |
| Distance (miles) | Distance (km) | Ascent (feet) | Ascent (metres) | Punctures | |
| Today | 0 miles | km | 0 feet | metres | 0 |
| Trip Totals | 1228.5 miles | km | 43134 feet | metres | 0 |
| Today's Route |
| No cycling today |
| Route So Far |
 |
Travelogue
After a good night's sleep in our converted barn accommodation in Saint-Blimont, we started the day with breakfast provided by our host Philippe in the kitchen of the main house. Breakfast consisted of a croissant and toasted homemade bread with homemade blackcurrant confiture and homemade raspberry confiture. The jams were each delicious, especially the raspberry which was just sweet enough but had retained the tanginess of the fruit. This was all washed down with a cup of excellent coffee.
It was then time to pay some mechanical attention to The Mule.
The Mule is regarded as a 10-speed bike, but which given it has two front chain rings actually means it has a total of 20 gears, in two sets of 10. The lower 10 gears are selected by clicking a lever on the left side of the handlebars which releases the spring-loaded front derailleur so that it moves to the left, pulling the chain with it. As you pedal, the chain then disengages from the outer, larger chain ring and drops onto the inner, smaller one. This lower set of gears gets used on the steeper hills and make it possible to persuade The Mule and its heavy load to defy gravity, albeit at a snail's pace.
To shift back up to the higher set of gears, you push another lever, quite hard. This physically pulls a cable through its sheath and moves the front derailleur, which it is connected to, back so that the chain is dragged over the outer chain ring. The chain then leaves the smaller chain ring and engages with the larger one. Or at least that's what is supposed to happen. For a while, shifting back up to the large chain ring has been unreliable and it often takes several attempts to get the chain to make it far enough across to the right to make the transition. M1 had tried adjusting the tension in the cable by turning the barrel adjuster and this had seemed to help, but it had certainly not fixed the problem.
Derailleurs have two screws called limit screws. Their purpose is to ensure the chain cannot be moved so far to the right or left that it falls off the outermost or innermost chain ring or sprocket. They have to be adjusted so that they are in just the right position. M1 reasoned that maybe the front derailleur's limit screw that constrains movement to the right, away from the bike, needed to be adjusted to allow the chain to move an extra millimetre when changing up.
M2 was co-opted to assist with the procedure. With the chain on the small, inner chain ring, M1 rotated the appropriate limit screw by a quarter of a turn. M2 then lifted the back wheel off the ground so that M1 could turn the pedals with one hand and shift up at the front with the other. On the first test, performance seemed a little better but the chain still did not quite engage with the outer chain ring on the first attempt. The limit screw was rotated another quarter turn and the same test carried out. Success! The chain shifted cleanly to the outer chain ring on the first attempt.
It's possible this was not a decisive test. Riding the bike tomorrow will be the real test, so we shall see whether or not The Mule is back to full gear change health then.
England were scheduled to play Columbia in the FIFA Woman's World Cup at lunch time and we wanted to watch the game. It's not possible to live stream the game when outside the UK, using our usual broadcaster, ITV however. But luckily, M1 knows a bit about I.T. and has a Virtual Private Network (VPN) set up at home. This means that by enabling the VPN on his travel laptop, all network traffic gets routed over the internet to the house in the UK and then out using the UK broadband so that any web site accessed appears to be being accessed from the UK. M1 switched the VPN on and tested accessing ITV's live stream of another Women's World Cup game featuring France vs Australia and we watched the game to the end.
Australia beat France 7 - 6 on penalties, which was quite the nail-biting finish.
It was a lovely day and with no Trip Admin to do, after the Australia vs France game we decided to take a stroll around the tiny village.
After lunch, it was time for the England game. And England won, beating Columbia 2 goals to 1 and so are now through to the semi-finals!
The daily distance and ascent figures were then updated. The longest individual day is still the day we cycled 69 miles from Germany to Luxembourg city but the 3, 4 and 5 day periods with the most accumulated ascent has changed. The days cycling that led up to our arrival in Le Quesnoy on day 27, now hold those three records.
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