Well, I’m now just a few kilometres away from the Atlantic Coast and the start of a whole new cycling adventure north towards Nantes.
With my energy reserves replenished after hitting the wall the previous day, I had close to a perfect day’s cycling from St Palais.
With the wind tending to pick up every afternoon, I got myself organised nice and early and was on the road before 8am to hopefully beat any wind dramas. And what a beautiful morning it was in the French countryside.
While the cycling was tough with many steep climbs and just as steep descents, it was a perfect Sunday morning, with no traffic and views everywhere in the Pyrenees foothills that tended to ease the strain on the legs.
As a result I made relatively good time and was in Peyrehorade – what was going to be my destination for the day - basically before I knew it. What seemed to be a fairly unremarkable town had a patisserie shop with the most amazing array of cakes, slices etc etc.
Yes and I made the most of it, after all this is France and I have been hanging out to get descent bread and those magnificent custard slices. After all, there are no such things as calories when you are cycle touring.
Full to the brim I headed off to St Vincent de Tyrosse where I planned to camp for the night. About 5kms from town and with extremely heavy traffic passing (it is a long holiday weekend here in France and everyone it seems was off to the beach) another cyclist came up behind me and shadowed me all the way into town.
At the lights he said something in French, to which I replied in English and he immediately said “ah, you are Australian”.
Anyway, it turns out that he is a geologist who worked in Australia for a few years in the 1970s and has a very soft spot for Australia and Australians in general.
And we were just one block from his house (read mansion). Before I knew it we were sitting in his back yard enjoying a bottle of wine, talking about everything Australian and French and generally relaxing after a great day’s cycling.
I was able to glean some information about the walk/cycle track north from him, but more importantly he headed me in the right direction to a fantastic campground in the next village for the night and the location of the tourist office where I will go first thing in the morning (as long as they are open on public holidays).
So there you have it. I am writing this from the side of a pool area complete with spas, water slides and more.
You certainly never know what is around the corner when you are cycle touring!!
captions. Pic 1: Views forever. Pic 2: An old chateau along the way. Pic 3&4 The fantastic patisserie shop. Pic 5. Mike, my French cycling buddy. Pic 6: The pool area at the campground
mmmm sounds idylic !! and can almost smell the bagettes If u r enjoying it so much perhaps u will become a professional traveller !!!!!!! Cathie and Ron x
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