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Travelogue
There was thunder and lightning in the night at about 01:30. M1 watched the lightning flashes illuminate the tent and wondered what the next day of cycling might be like! It rained, but it was only a light shower which lasted no more than about 5 minutes. "If tomorrow is like this" thought M1, "it will be OK".
It wasn't like that, unfortunately :-)
It was raining persistently when we woke up and continued to rain for much of the morning. Full waterproofs ended up being put on as we cycled along a mixture of cycle paths and roads.
It's a Sunday, so absolutely nothing is open. And this is a very rural part of France so there's not much to be open anyway. This includes bakeries. We had no Pain au Anything at all. And no coffee!
Fortunately, we'd reviewed the availability of supermarkets en route the day before and noted that of the very small number that open at all on a Sunday, by the time we'd have reached them, they would be closed. So, that meant there would be nowhere to buy food today. So, in a stroke of brilliance, we bought it yesterday along with the mush ingredients for the evening. Tonight's camping mush will be a sadly inferior version of the full mush experience but we shall not go hungry. And as we checked into the campsite an hour ago, we learned that there's a pizza machine in the village.
The middle of the day was dry. We removed our waterproofs and were optimistic that the wet spell had passed.
10 km from our destination campsite, we cycled up the biggest hill we've encountered on this trip yet. The total ascent for today was barely any different to yesterday, but it all happened on this one hill, so our tired legs really felt it.
We were of course rewarded with a big decent and this took us down to the River Doubs.
About 3 km from our campsite it started to rain hard. Really hard. Hammering it down. We screeched to a halt outside the campsite reception and left our bikes in the downpour. Inside, we checked in and bought hot coffees from the vending machine. The lady at reception was friendly and funny and spoke pretty good English. Apparently, French people think it rains all the time in England. How dare they! Yes, it looks like it might rain pretty much all the time but it doesn't actually rain all the time. It's an important difference :-)
We sat outside reception and drank our coffees, sheltered by the overhanging roof. We hoped the rain would stop so we could put the tent up. It didn't.
M1 once watched someone on YouTube put our MSR tent up fly sheet first so that the interior could be sorted our from inside the frame of the tent, protected from rain by the flysheet. For literally years, he's been saying "I must have a go at that technique in the garden" and has never quite got around to it.
No problem though. M1 and M2 worked together to get the fly sheet standing on the frame made by the tent poles. M1 crawled inside and spread out the ground sheet, which would now stay dry. The corners were then pegged out. M2 passed the interior part of the tent to M1 and between the two of them they attached it to the poles from under the flysheet. It was a fiddly procedure but worth the effort as the interior stayed dry. Result.
We're now in the tent listening to the rain hammer on the tent. The forecast is better for tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
One consequence of the rain today is that the solar panel had to stay in a pannier out of the rain. So, M1's phone and watch will be charged from the power bank as usual, but it will now be one day in deficit in terms of replenishing its energy from the solar panel. Usually, hanging the solar panel on The Mule on a sunny day has always resulted in the power bank being "full" again. With two charges having been drawn from it now, it will be interesting to see whether the solar panel can bring it back up to full capacity in one day or whether it will need two.
That's it. Time to read and relax.
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