The three days heat wave has stated today. I thought of leaving earlier around 6 am but that would mean waking up at 4 am. I decided not to do that and so I left the camping place at 7:20 am.
Yesterday at the campground I’ve met Matt who is riding EuroVelo 6 with his 9 year old son Harry. They are from Canada. Matt writes about their ride at the blog here. They started from the Atlantic ocean a week ago. They ride 70 miles every day. That’s a very impressive daily distance!
Today I caught up with them at around 15th mile and we continued the rest of the ride together. In addition to the high mileage they also ride at a good pace. Harry trains at a cycling club at home and he is a super strong and experienced rider, especially considering that he is only 9 years old!
Today’s ride was a mix of the paved trails along canals and just road riding. I actually prefer the riding on regular roads more because the roads usually pass through small villages and towns which are so interesting to see.
At the end there was a very nice campground near a lake. It was awesome to swim in the lake to cool off!
Yeah, sometimes the trail gets a little boring compared to the towns. We usually took a hard look at the map the night before and plotted where we thought we would be next and decide next route there. Sometimes that involved the route and other times we found more interesting places to go through. It is the spontaneity that I love most about cycle touring. You have no idea where you are going to sleep next and what you’ll see along the way. Optimize for the experience, not just following the official route – that’s my unsolicited advice! 🙂
Good advice. We actually deviated from the official route today. But in this part of France any small local road you take you’ll see something interesting. This is a great place for bike touring.
I never get tired of the beauty of the countryside. It is really fun to follow you from the comfort of my ergonomic office chair. I will not even complain today about the suboptimal air-conditioning in our room. And hey, don’t blame the poor guy for photobombing in his outfit, he needs to deal with heat :-).
I’m actually glad that that he got into the picture. Candid shot of the local folks 🙂