Bikepacking 2024 - Rest Day #2 in La Tremblade

Day #

15

State of Legs

:-)

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	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	0 miles	km	0 feet	metres	1
Trip Totals	694.3 miles	km	17198 feet	metres	1

Today's Route

No cycling today

Route So Far

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Travelogue

A second rest day! What luxury :-)

The boulangerie around the corner was the first order of business. PaC x 2 for breakfast *and* they had one Pain Suisse left which M1 bought and shared with M2.

Both bikes now have freshly lubricated chains. Good to go.

We're way ahead of schedule. At least a week. So much of today was spent figuring out what to do with this gift of extra time to travel and explore. We've redesigned much of the route in Spain so that instead of heading more or less directly from Irun to Bilbao along the Camino del Norte or close to it, we're heading up to the coast northeast of Bilbao to see the small, photogenic island of Gaztelugatxe (as featured on Game of Thrones) and then we're looping down through Bilbao to Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city M1 had wanted to see since reading about it in this Guardian article. From there we take a different route back to Bilbao and will have a couple of days there to see the sights before catching a ferry back to Portsmouth. 

The new route in Spain

All our accommodation is booked. But we did have a bit of a surprise. We couldn't find a single campsite anywhere near to our route, either the original version or our revised version. So, we only have 4 nights of camping left (the next four nights, all of which are in France) after which it's a mixture of bed and breakfast, Airbnb apartments and hotels for us. It could be worse.

We've been for a walk in the town and had an ice cream from one of the many vendors. It seems to be the primary feature of this place that you're never more than 30 seconds from an ice cream vendor!

That's a real lighthouse and M2 is about 50 feet tall, honestly!

Oi! Baldy! :-)

That's it. Here's to the next six days of cycling!