We set off from Arles to make our way to the border of France and Spain and eventually Barcelona. Our first day we had planned 90km over fairly flat terrain. However, we had our first experience of strong headwinds. The cycling I had done before this trip mostly consisted of round trips to and from home - meaning I'd usually get rewarded with a tailwind at some point of the trip. If you are cycle touring in one direction then you just get one or the other... all day. This left us feeling tired out by the end of the day and ready for an early night.
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| View from the cockpit (Dave's bike) at Aigues-Morte on the edge of the Camargue |
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| Cycleways on the Canal du Midi |
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| Cruising through the countryside |
It was windy again over the next few days with the wind occasionally being in our favour. The rolling French countryside made some nice biking and most of the roads weren't too busy and had fairly decent shoulders. We arrived in Leucate and found our campsite was so windy we weren't able to keep our tent up. That explained the masses of windsurfers and kitesurfers! Thankfully we managed to find ourselves a more sheltered spot.
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| Lunch in a vineyard - the tarp comes in handy again |
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| Selfie Leucate-styles |
For our last night in France for a month or so were lucky enough to be invited to stay with a French family. Audrey, a rockclimbing friend of Dave's, was staying with her family near the Spanish border in the foothills of the Pyrenees Although her parents couldn't speak English, and we don't know a word of French, Audrey did a great job translating and we had a really nice evening. I think the number of courses at dinner totaled six, plus some great local wines and we were very impressed by the French hospitality. Thanks Audrey and family!
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| Laroque des Alberes where Audrey lives |
We headed along the coast towards the French/Spanish border and arrived in Spain for lunch. We were mildly disappointed by the lack of fanfare at the border, (there was only one sign) but were distracted enough that we missed our 2000km of the trip point. We continued on to spend a night in Cadaqués and sample our first Spanish tapas. Muy bueno!
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| Salvador Dali |
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| Jellyfish |
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| Cadaqués |
We continued down the coast and encountered a significant amount of rain which luckily started as we were finishing setting up our tent. Our campground had a bar and restaurant, as well as soccer playing on a big projector so we got ourselves a jug of sangria and watched the soccer under some shelter. Our tent was soaked and dirty so we forked out for a bungalow at the next campground and washed and dried our tent. We were staying at an Airbnb the next night in Barcelona and we thought washing a tent there might be frowned upon. Turned out our host would have probably been too stoned to notice but that's a different story!
We caught a train from the outskirts of Barcelona and after nine days straight on the bike looked forward to a bit of city time in Barcelona
- Sarah
Great blog as ever!!
ReplyDeleteGlad to see all going well. this is charlie we had a coffee just before you crossed from Italy to France/ Good luck, stay safe
ReplyDeleteHey thanks Charlie! You were right about the French coffee!
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