We left Aix-les-Bains early, trying to avoid getting caught in the imminent thunderstorm that was lurking above the mountains to the west of our hotel. Breakfast was at least a thousand calories chocolate muesli croustillant (basically granola) eaten out of a plastic plate. As you can imagine, it took several helpings to get a satisfactory amount of cereal in my stomach. I actually preferred this to the usual French patisserie for breakfast, it kept me fuller for longer and was a far denser form of energy. While I'm still unable to eat porridge (after daily over consumption of it during the TDA), I will definitely note that cereal is the ideal touring breakfast.
We head off in the direction of the storm, i.e. Chambery. The road wasn't overtly uphill but, like the general trend of the day, was a gruelling slog along moderately busy D roads. Our optimistic routing again tried to take us off into several footpaths but we elected not to cut the corner and actually made it through the centre of Chambery very quickly with a slight tailwind and a short descent.
This tailwind helped us for the rest of the day but, as we're passing through the Alps, it was generally uphill all the way, despite the D1009 which we took essentially following a river all the way. It is a surreal road too, running alongside a major motorway (the A14) and never really looking like an uphill road. Phil and I speculate that this is because of how wide and relatively straight it is (compared to normal windy mountain roads) and the fact that it is bordered by tall mountains, both of which mask its true incline.
We reached our original destination of St. Etienne de Cuines pretty quickly, at just after 11am over approximately 46 miles. As we were getting close to the village, we saw a large convoy of yellow vehicles blaring Daft Punk come past on an adjacent road. When we got to the village, the road was shut - for the Tour de France nonetheless! We saw the commercial convoy go past (they threw free samples of some, 'sirop' concentrated drink at us and sprayed us with Vittel water) and struck a conversation with a well informed tour follower from the Netherlands who had been trying to catch the riders at certain points on his motorcycle this week. After an hour of the occasional motorbike and team car coming through, the helicopters flew closer and eventually the riders came past at incredible pace. Besides the obvious physical challenge of the Tour, I can imagine it must be extremely tedious cycling amongst so many vehicles, especially if you become separated from the main peloton. Still, it was enjoyable to see.
After they'd all come through, it was only 1pm, so we went to our hotel to see if we could possible cancel our reservation and head on to the next hotel a say early. A couple of ladies smoking outside of the closed reception said it was possible if we cancelled before 2pm. Unfortunately reception was shut until 2pm. We called the booking office where I spent far too much of my phone credit speaking to a nice Indian call centre worker who eventually redirected me to the hotel (whose phone I could hear ringing). A lady eventually picked up and, having passed the phone to Phil since she didn't speak English, told us abruptly that reception was shut until 2pm and that she would not help. We went to pick up some food from the nearby Intermarche supermarket to fill the remaining time.
Inside the market, I ran into a rather sour looking cyclist who, Phil later informed me, was British. He seemed extremely pissed off at something. I can only imagine he must have had severe saddle sores. Either that or he was a Tour competitor on a budget who was having to buy his own water refills from the supermarket.
Today's lunch followed the usual pattern but I went a little more budget than usual. The baguette and brie were absolutely fine but buying cheap American style chocolate chip cookies in France was an error I will never forget.
At 2:05pm we began to panic because there was no one at reception and our boundary condition had obviously been breached since it was well after 2pm now. Phil had already secured an extra night's stay at our hotel in Modane and all we needed now was to cancel our stay at this hotel and get going.
A couple eventually turned up at 2:15pm and spent sometime trying to unlock the front door to the hotel. We thought they were just guests who were locked out but eventually the man with a moustache set himself up behind the reception desk. After double checking that we were absolutely sure that the reservation would be cancelled, he made it so. It remains unclear whether this cancellation incurred a cost to us in the end. I hope not.
The 24 miles to Modane we had eventually planned a separate day for because of the 6,000 feet of climbing. However, our actual hotel is located in the lower part of Modane, which saves us about 2,000 feet. With at least 5 hours of sunlight left, we were confident we could handle the 24 miles.
This turned out to be true but it was as misleadingly difficult as the first half of the day. Despite the road seeming flat, we were actually climbing throughout. We also passed an abnormal number of cyclists, many of whom had beautiful kit and bikes but were surprisingly slow! We were also overtaken by many cars and caravans with bike racks, most likely following the tour.
When we reached Modane after 72.79 miles on the road over 4.53.05 hours (an average of 14.8mph), we were pretty tired. Luckily we've bought ourselves an additional rest day tomorrow - which should help get us ready ahead of the planned 8,000 feet of climbing on Sunday. Additionally, my parents are coming to spend the weekend here with us to celebrate my mother's birthday - so there will be lots of cake!
Dinner this evening was a duet of crepes (technically one was a galette) accompanied by a glass of kir. It's hard to describe these well so I suggest you check out the photos that may eventually upload.
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We're coming to the end of our rest day in Aix-les-Bains. It's been a very laidback day, filled with copious amounts of sleep, not one but TWO hot chocolates (the first was awful, the second was much better), some great pastries and a waffle with a caramel butter and salt sauce. Generally gastronomically great.
For the last two dinners we've been patronising the local 'Geant Casino', a hypermarket which is rather like the Asda to Carrrefour, France's version of Tesco. Each time as we've walked back from the store along the 'hippodrome' (a local athletics / recreational area) to our hotel, we've experienced the opening salvos of a series of impressive thunderstorms. Carrying a bag full of bread, cheese and miscellaneous salads and desserts, we were unlucky to get a good soaking yesterday - Phil was quite depressed by the soggy bread. Today's baguette (a campagne - i.e.brown bread from the countryside, a novelty) survived much better and Phil was much happier.
Yesterday's ride was deliberately short - being the last of our first section - intended as a warm down. What was meant to be just 34 miles ended up being over 40 as we decided to follow our planned route accurately instead of sticking to the direct road into Aix-les-Bains. This proved to be our folly though when all the planned elevation gain that had yet to appear that day suddenly appears in a steep ascent up a mountain to the left of Aix-les-Bains. It's a little tricky to make out the exact nature of the road on our Garmin units and we didn't notice until we arrived there that half of the section of the route which lies parallel to the road going into Aix was actually a footpath. Unwilling to attempt a steep off-road descent with 23c tyres and a touring load, we elected to go around the hill, a nice fast descent and then quick bash down another D road.
Hotel Campanile, where we are staying, is a motel without any pretenses of being anything greater. It borders a golf course, which gives a pleasant backdrop and the rooms are comfortable. Our room is one of the few ground floor rooms that has a table with two chairs outside the front entrance. We made extensive use of these - for making various adjustments our breaks ahead of our section across the Alps, to sit somewhere within wi-fi range and for eating our huge Casino dinners
Aix-les-Bains itself is a quiet town that appears to be a gateway down to the Alps. It is also on the shores of the stunningly blue Lac du Bour and is a popular summer holiday destination for French tourists.
While yesterday was consumed with the chores of laundry, we walked down to the shore of the lake today and down to the main port. At this point an incoming thunderstorm made itself known and we fast walked up to town where numerous restaurants rejected our custom for lunch because it was past 2pm. I also visited a pharmacy and, in a groundbreaking acceptance of the fact that I probably do actually suffer from hayfever, purchased some antihistamines. I later connected to the matronly head waitress at a waffle restaurant when she admitted to using the same medicine (which I had left out on our table)
We're hoping to head off early tomorrow morning. The rain and thunder is forecast at 2pm and we calculate that we should be able to escape that. However, given the geography of this area, I suspect we might find the next microclimate doesn't respect the forecast we are relying on. Oh well, all part of the adventure
In other news, my 'technology stack' here is starting to annoy me intensely. Perhaps it will teach me for buying a cheap keyboard but it is struggling with my rapid typing speed. I have to type at a maximum speed of 2 characters per second or it will skip characters or insert duplicates. Highly frustrating. Additionally, turning Bluetooth on seems to interfere with my phone's ability to hold a connection to a weak wireless network. The lack of a reliable wi-fi connection is also limiting the speed at which things can be done on this smartphone and I have yet to find good way of managing photos locally and being able to upload them to both Facebook and Google+ in a way that can handle dropped connections. I may just wait until I get back home.
I've been trying to debug my knee pain. The main culprits look like either my saddle height or my cleat positioning, both of which I've tweaked. Let's see how it does going into some tough climbing.
Onwards over the mountains to Italy!
For the last two dinners we've been patronising the local 'Geant Casino', a hypermarket which is rather like the Asda to Carrrefour, France's version of Tesco. Each time as we've walked back from the store along the 'hippodrome' (a local athletics / recreational area) to our hotel, we've experienced the opening salvos of a series of impressive thunderstorms. Carrying a bag full of bread, cheese and miscellaneous salads and desserts, we were unlucky to get a good soaking yesterday - Phil was quite depressed by the soggy bread. Today's baguette (a campagne - i.e.brown bread from the countryside, a novelty) survived much better and Phil was much happier.
Yesterday's ride was deliberately short - being the last of our first section - intended as a warm down. What was meant to be just 34 miles ended up being over 40 as we decided to follow our planned route accurately instead of sticking to the direct road into Aix-les-Bains. This proved to be our folly though when all the planned elevation gain that had yet to appear that day suddenly appears in a steep ascent up a mountain to the left of Aix-les-Bains. It's a little tricky to make out the exact nature of the road on our Garmin units and we didn't notice until we arrived there that half of the section of the route which lies parallel to the road going into Aix was actually a footpath. Unwilling to attempt a steep off-road descent with 23c tyres and a touring load, we elected to go around the hill, a nice fast descent and then quick bash down another D road.
Hotel Campanile, where we are staying, is a motel without any pretenses of being anything greater. It borders a golf course, which gives a pleasant backdrop and the rooms are comfortable. Our room is one of the few ground floor rooms that has a table with two chairs outside the front entrance. We made extensive use of these - for making various adjustments our breaks ahead of our section across the Alps, to sit somewhere within wi-fi range and for eating our huge Casino dinners
Aix-les-Bains itself is a quiet town that appears to be a gateway down to the Alps. It is also on the shores of the stunningly blue Lac du Bour and is a popular summer holiday destination for French tourists.
While yesterday was consumed with the chores of laundry, we walked down to the shore of the lake today and down to the main port. At this point an incoming thunderstorm made itself known and we fast walked up to town where numerous restaurants rejected our custom for lunch because it was past 2pm. I also visited a pharmacy and, in a groundbreaking acceptance of the fact that I probably do actually suffer from hayfever, purchased some antihistamines. I later connected to the matronly head waitress at a waffle restaurant when she admitted to using the same medicine (which I had left out on our table)
We're hoping to head off early tomorrow morning. The rain and thunder is forecast at 2pm and we calculate that we should be able to escape that. However, given the geography of this area, I suspect we might find the next microclimate doesn't respect the forecast we are relying on. Oh well, all part of the adventure
In other news, my 'technology stack' here is starting to annoy me intensely. Perhaps it will teach me for buying a cheap keyboard but it is struggling with my rapid typing speed. I have to type at a maximum speed of 2 characters per second or it will skip characters or insert duplicates. Highly frustrating. Additionally, turning Bluetooth on seems to interfere with my phone's ability to hold a connection to a weak wireless network. The lack of a reliable wi-fi connection is also limiting the speed at which things can be done on this smartphone and I have yet to find good way of managing photos locally and being able to upload them to both Facebook and Google+ in a way that can handle dropped connections. I may just wait until I get back home.
I've been trying to debug my knee pain. The main culprits look like either my saddle height or my cleat positioning, both of which I've tweaked. Let's see how it does going into some tough climbing.
Onwards over the mountains to Italy!
1 comment posted so far
Anish wrote at 1:23 am on Fri 19th Jul -
Nice work - these blog posts are surprisingly entertaining! Was the bad hot chocolate just powder in hot water? Shambles.
The last couple of days have been pretty tough going, partially due to the lack of promised internet access (both hotels have had 'technical issues'). Phil managed to track down the wireless router at the first and reboot it but it didn't seem to help. I suspect that sheer overloading was responsible for it being so unresponsive. (It used WEP encryption which suggests that the router was outdated at best and delinquent at worst.) Luckily today we managed to get online at lunchtime at an awesome sandwicherie in Bourg en Bresse. Besides the proprietor being (readily) willing to speak to us in English, she also had a vegetarian option and super fast wi-fi. Sadly I'm writing this post retrospectively so unless the Wi-Fi at this hotel fixes itself, it might be a while before you see it!
We intended to wake up at 6:30 and leave Nitry at 7 to make the most of the cooler morning but a combination of latent fatigue and a late previous night meant that we didn't get on the road until just after 8. Our first priority was to find breakfast (Nitry was small enough to not have a boulangerie but surprisingly sported a rather nice restaurant). The first one we found about 5 miles down the road was shut. Supposedly being open on Sunday means they are shut on Monday. France being France though, we soon found another after 3 miles and I bought two pain-au-chocolat.
Riding on further, around 20 miles in, we came across a bike shop - which, despite every sign suggesting it should be open, was shut. By this point my knee was consistently giving me issue and, convinced that there were no other variables that could be a problem, I decided to look at my cleats. It turns out that the cleat on my right shoe was pointing inwards slightly which would have caused my cycling position to be slightly 'off'.   My bike gave me almost no ergonomic problems since Africa (aside from considerable saddle issues) and I had since only changed the saddle and my shoes. I fixed the cleat and we were off again but the knee pain was still there - a twinge just above my right knee which made it extremely painful to put any weight on it.
Phil had another couple of punctures in the next 10 miles which slowed us down and by the time we hit the road again, it was 11:40 and we had only managed 30 miles of the intended 85 miles. The rest of the day was tough going, lots of 'rolling hills' down long, straight 'D' roads. These are the French analogues of Britain's A roads. Most of the time these are single carriageways, but occasionally the road would widen to accommodate three lanes and the middle lane would alternate as an overtaking lane for each direction of traffic. This was both a blessing and curse for us - it gave vehicles more space to overtake but near the point of alternation, they would overtake at much greater speed, no doubt feeling rushed by the lane suddenly coming to a close.
The D road we were on appeared to be a major freight road for France and there were a substantial number of lorries overtaking us. Luckily French lorry drivers are very courteous to cyclists and often pulled well out so as to minimise the impact of their draft on us. This must have been nervewracking for drivers coming the other way - especially on the single carriageways!
Additionally, there was a fair amount of resurfacing work going on where the holes had been 'repaired' by filling them with loose gravel. This led to quite a few small stones getting flicked in our direction by passing vehicles - painfully bouncing off our torsos and heads.
Our optimistic routing took us off-road yet again and feeling adventurous, I suggested to Phil that we take it. He grudgingly went along with it for a few hundred metres after which it became apparent that we would have absolutely no traction going uphill on the loose rocky surface. One of his reasons against taking it was that we would probably get a puncture and sure enough on our way back to the road I picked up a pinch puncture in my rear wheel, much to Phil's chagrin. On the plus side, both of my tyres are fully inflated now!
Lunch was a soporific many many calorie combination of bread, cheese, salad and these desserts called 'Paris Brest's which are named after the PBP ride Phil completed. They were seriously sticky but so awesome. I also picked up these chocolate butter biscuits and have slowly been working my way through them...I intend to try as many types of biscuit as possible before we leave France.
Not long after lunch, Phil suffered another puncture. Luckily we had picked up new inner tubes at the Atac supermarket we bought lunch at and it was an easy fix by the entrance to the quarry. I took the opportunity to catch some sleep perched upon two rocks and using my helmet as a pillow.
We hit the road again and after a few stops to fiddle with my saddle position, reached Chalone-sur-Saone (there's a little hat accent missing somewhere there - sorry) at about 6:45 after 6:39:27 hours of riding. We decided to visit the local Decathlon and Phil finally managed to pick up some genuine 'good' inner tubes and patches. I bought myself a bottle cage.
All in all it was a long day - 96.31 miles with an average of 14.4 mph. Chalon is a lovely town and we ended up eating at a pizzeria just behind the 'Cafe Piccadilly Pub'. The (South Indian?) owner spoke good English and made me a calzone with the ham swapped out for mushrooms. It was good and was followed by a creme brulee - my favourite dessert. A good day.
This morning we actually managed to wake up at 6:30 (as painful as it was). Chalon being a bigger town than the last two, we were able to pick up breakfast before leaving and I had a lovely almond pastry called a 'Jesuit' with a hot chocolate. Phil finally managed to get his morning coffee - something which he hadn't imagined would be so difficult to find in France!
We left Chalon at about 7am with a tough day ahead of us. Luckily there were no punctures today! (Ironic too, given that we are currently better prepared for punctures than we ever have been.) Most of the day was the same sort of straight D roads over rolling hills and sadly many lorries. These were relatively quick though and took us through some lovely farmland and the occasional section lined with evenly planted trees. At about 55 miles we entered a forest and then it became clear the terrain was changing as we turned into a road that switchbacked straight up hill. We had just entered the 'Rhone-Alpes', the French county that, I believe, includes the Alps themselves.
Climbing was hard work and I was worried how my knee would hold up, given its aversion to putting the hammer down. My Ti bike was overgeared for the hills in Ethiopia but I hadn't learnt my lesson and it is still running the same gearing - albeit with 10 kilos of additional load. Basically - tough going.
My knee survived though - there was no significant pain as long as I stayed seated. Soon enough my other knee started aching from the strain and it was much easier to ignore the original painful knee! This flattened off slightly but soon became steeper as we climbed up onto the plateau where Hauteville-Lompnes was. We pushed on though at a steady speed (usually between 5 and 7 mph) and soon reached 'Corlier', a hamlet at the beginning of the flat-ish plateau. Feeling pretty thirsty, we looked for water at a campsite there but no operator was in sight. Eventually we snuck into a kitchen block and filled our bottles, hoping that no one would mind.
The last 10 miles were reasonably flat, having climbed 1500 feet to get up to the plateau in just over 15 miles. We reached Hauteville-Lompnes after 80.69 miles at 4:30pm, ridden over 6:04:37 hours - with a respectable average of 13.2 mph. Amusingly, the hotel was shut when we arrived with a note saying that reception will be open at 6pm. Phil acquiesced and cleaned himself up with some wet wipes and changed into his non cycling gear. After my Tour D'Afrique adventures, I was more content staying in my (sweaty) cycling gear until a proper shower could be had.
While waiting for the hotel to open, we raided the local Carrefour and picked up some fruit (surprisingly lacking from our diet here). I took my biscuit experimentation further with some chocolate florentines and a litre of 'demi-creme' milk. We gorged on these on the tables outside our hotel and I managed to polish off all of the biscuits and a fair chunk of the milk -- almost a thousand calories worth! (It probably doesn't need saying but I am a big fan of these biscuits, light, crispy and with the perfect amount of chocolate - they were sublime.)
For dinner we wandered around looking for the restaurant most able to serve a vegetarian meal, settling on a brasserie near the middle of the town. Amusingly, for me at least, there was some confusion when Phil ordered a meal for me and we both received vegetarian salads! Poor Phil.
Tonight will be an early night ahead of another early start tomorrow as we descend into Aix-les-Bains where we will spend a rest day.
We intended to wake up at 6:30 and leave Nitry at 7 to make the most of the cooler morning but a combination of latent fatigue and a late previous night meant that we didn't get on the road until just after 8. Our first priority was to find breakfast (Nitry was small enough to not have a boulangerie but surprisingly sported a rather nice restaurant). The first one we found about 5 miles down the road was shut. Supposedly being open on Sunday means they are shut on Monday. France being France though, we soon found another after 3 miles and I bought two pain-au-chocolat.
Riding on further, around 20 miles in, we came across a bike shop - which, despite every sign suggesting it should be open, was shut. By this point my knee was consistently giving me issue and, convinced that there were no other variables that could be a problem, I decided to look at my cleats. It turns out that the cleat on my right shoe was pointing inwards slightly which would have caused my cycling position to be slightly 'off'.   My bike gave me almost no ergonomic problems since Africa (aside from considerable saddle issues) and I had since only changed the saddle and my shoes. I fixed the cleat and we were off again but the knee pain was still there - a twinge just above my right knee which made it extremely painful to put any weight on it.
Phil had another couple of punctures in the next 10 miles which slowed us down and by the time we hit the road again, it was 11:40 and we had only managed 30 miles of the intended 85 miles. The rest of the day was tough going, lots of 'rolling hills' down long, straight 'D' roads. These are the French analogues of Britain's A roads. Most of the time these are single carriageways, but occasionally the road would widen to accommodate three lanes and the middle lane would alternate as an overtaking lane for each direction of traffic. This was both a blessing and curse for us - it gave vehicles more space to overtake but near the point of alternation, they would overtake at much greater speed, no doubt feeling rushed by the lane suddenly coming to a close.
The D road we were on appeared to be a major freight road for France and there were a substantial number of lorries overtaking us. Luckily French lorry drivers are very courteous to cyclists and often pulled well out so as to minimise the impact of their draft on us. This must have been nervewracking for drivers coming the other way - especially on the single carriageways!
Additionally, there was a fair amount of resurfacing work going on where the holes had been 'repaired' by filling them with loose gravel. This led to quite a few small stones getting flicked in our direction by passing vehicles - painfully bouncing off our torsos and heads.
Our optimistic routing took us off-road yet again and feeling adventurous, I suggested to Phil that we take it. He grudgingly went along with it for a few hundred metres after which it became apparent that we would have absolutely no traction going uphill on the loose rocky surface. One of his reasons against taking it was that we would probably get a puncture and sure enough on our way back to the road I picked up a pinch puncture in my rear wheel, much to Phil's chagrin. On the plus side, both of my tyres are fully inflated now!
Lunch was a soporific many many calorie combination of bread, cheese, salad and these desserts called 'Paris Brest's which are named after the PBP ride Phil completed. They were seriously sticky but so awesome. I also picked up these chocolate butter biscuits and have slowly been working my way through them...I intend to try as many types of biscuit as possible before we leave France.
Not long after lunch, Phil suffered another puncture. Luckily we had picked up new inner tubes at the Atac supermarket we bought lunch at and it was an easy fix by the entrance to the quarry. I took the opportunity to catch some sleep perched upon two rocks and using my helmet as a pillow.
We hit the road again and after a few stops to fiddle with my saddle position, reached Chalone-sur-Saone (there's a little hat accent missing somewhere there - sorry) at about 6:45 after 6:39:27 hours of riding. We decided to visit the local Decathlon and Phil finally managed to pick up some genuine 'good' inner tubes and patches. I bought myself a bottle cage.
All in all it was a long day - 96.31 miles with an average of 14.4 mph. Chalon is a lovely town and we ended up eating at a pizzeria just behind the 'Cafe Piccadilly Pub'. The (South Indian?) owner spoke good English and made me a calzone with the ham swapped out for mushrooms. It was good and was followed by a creme brulee - my favourite dessert. A good day.
This morning we actually managed to wake up at 6:30 (as painful as it was). Chalon being a bigger town than the last two, we were able to pick up breakfast before leaving and I had a lovely almond pastry called a 'Jesuit' with a hot chocolate. Phil finally managed to get his morning coffee - something which he hadn't imagined would be so difficult to find in France!
We left Chalon at about 7am with a tough day ahead of us. Luckily there were no punctures today! (Ironic too, given that we are currently better prepared for punctures than we ever have been.) Most of the day was the same sort of straight D roads over rolling hills and sadly many lorries. These were relatively quick though and took us through some lovely farmland and the occasional section lined with evenly planted trees. At about 55 miles we entered a forest and then it became clear the terrain was changing as we turned into a road that switchbacked straight up hill. We had just entered the 'Rhone-Alpes', the French county that, I believe, includes the Alps themselves.
Climbing was hard work and I was worried how my knee would hold up, given its aversion to putting the hammer down. My Ti bike was overgeared for the hills in Ethiopia but I hadn't learnt my lesson and it is still running the same gearing - albeit with 10 kilos of additional load. Basically - tough going.
My knee survived though - there was no significant pain as long as I stayed seated. Soon enough my other knee started aching from the strain and it was much easier to ignore the original painful knee! This flattened off slightly but soon became steeper as we climbed up onto the plateau where Hauteville-Lompnes was. We pushed on though at a steady speed (usually between 5 and 7 mph) and soon reached 'Corlier', a hamlet at the beginning of the flat-ish plateau. Feeling pretty thirsty, we looked for water at a campsite there but no operator was in sight. Eventually we snuck into a kitchen block and filled our bottles, hoping that no one would mind.
The last 10 miles were reasonably flat, having climbed 1500 feet to get up to the plateau in just over 15 miles. We reached Hauteville-Lompnes after 80.69 miles at 4:30pm, ridden over 6:04:37 hours - with a respectable average of 13.2 mph. Amusingly, the hotel was shut when we arrived with a note saying that reception will be open at 6pm. Phil acquiesced and cleaned himself up with some wet wipes and changed into his non cycling gear. After my Tour D'Afrique adventures, I was more content staying in my (sweaty) cycling gear until a proper shower could be had.
While waiting for the hotel to open, we raided the local Carrefour and picked up some fruit (surprisingly lacking from our diet here). I took my biscuit experimentation further with some chocolate florentines and a litre of 'demi-creme' milk. We gorged on these on the tables outside our hotel and I managed to polish off all of the biscuits and a fair chunk of the milk -- almost a thousand calories worth! (It probably doesn't need saying but I am a big fan of these biscuits, light, crispy and with the perfect amount of chocolate - they were sublime.)
For dinner we wandered around looking for the restaurant most able to serve a vegetarian meal, settling on a brasserie near the middle of the town. Amusingly, for me at least, there was some confusion when Phil ordered a meal for me and we both received vegetarian salads! Poor Phil.
Tonight will be an early night ahead of another early start tomorrow as we descend into Aix-les-Bains where we will spend a rest day.
2 comments posted so far
Anish wrote at 10:08 pm on Wed 17th Jul -
Don't worry, soon you will be in Italy and the vegetarian food will be EPIC! Enjoy! :-)
John & Jean wrote at 11:10 pm on Wed 17th Jul -
Best of riding to you both. Enjoy your rest day!
Up early on Saturday, I was worried we would miss the train out of Kings Cross. It didn't turn out to be a legitimate concern. We got through the Eurostar security check and the French immigration without much delay and found ourselves waiting in the departure lounge at about 06:55 with at least 3 other tourist groups (one American, one Asian and one French). Boarding was initially delayed as they were cleaning the train and when it was delayed further at 07:30 (the departure time was 07:31) they announced that it was broken and they were replacing it with another train.
We eventually rolled out of London at 08:30 and arrived in Paris after an uneventful journey at 11:30am local time. I managed to get a couple of brief naps on the train - Phil and I had both barely slept that night as we made last minute preparations and tried to load routes onto our GPS devices. Phil's device hadn't quite liked the map though and so I surrendered my SD card to him - his Garmin is considerably more modern than mine and hence we would use it as our primary navigational aid. I also managed to lose my Fitbit on the train, most likely when changing from mufti into cycling lycra. Argh.
After arriving at Gare du Nord, we proceeded to the Geoparts office to pick up our bikes. There was no one in the office outside and an outwardly calm tall English chap with a bike back. When we spoke to him though, it was clear he was panicking somewhat. He had a train in 10 minutes and they refused to let him on with his bike. When the Geoparts employee actually arrived, he was so unwilling to actually perform his job that our poor fellow cyclist was forced to try again. I hope he didn't miss his train!
Luckily our bikes had arrived undamaged and we got moving pretty quickly. It was a beautiful day in Paris and (possibly due to today's Bastille day) there was not much traffic. On the whole I've found French drivers to be surprisingly tolerant of cyclists. Moreso than British drivers - perhaps due to a considerably more prominent and established cycling heritage. Equally the roads are better planned for cyclists and are generally wider and with lower traffic. All this leads to calmer drivers and safer cyclists.
We left Paris pretty quickly and after about 18 miles from the train station, Phil had his first of many punctures in a slightly suspicious looking banlieue. He fixed it without incident and we were off again.
At about 25 miles, we stopped at a boulangerie. It had just gone 1pm and we were a little hungry. Outside the store was a table with a variety of sweets including baklava, and, would you believe it - jalebis! After deciding what we wanted, I committed a faux-pas and severely annoyed the proprietor of the shop by serving myself. (To be fair, she had left everything - paper bags and tongs - out!) I picked some extremely sticky desert that was basically an elongated and less dense baklava that was absolutely dripping in syrup. Phil picked a jalebi and we proceeded down the road to find a place some way away from the angry baker to sit.
As we rolled on, Phil suffered another puncture where the tube split in his front wheel. I took this opportunity to gorge on my lunch-dessert. He repaired this and we left, only to have to stop about 20 metres later when it went flat again! After he had fixed this, he noticed his rear wheel was flat...and was not happy at all. Around about the same time, my body's insulin response had kicked in and I was feeling extremely sleepy. Lying down on the long, unkempt grass in the mid-day heat, I shut my eyes.
I woke a short while later, extremely sweat and feeling a little faint. Phil had fixed both of his tyres and was eager to get going again. It took me a couple of kilometres to wake up but then all was good! We stopped for an actual lunch in a small village at about 40 miles in where Phil had a nice quiche and I bought some cheese and a demi-baguette.
With about 10 miles left to go Phil suffered another couple of punctures. We had hoped to visit the Decathlon in Montereau where we were staying. Phil wanted to pick up some tubes that had slightly better production quality and I wanted to pick up a bottle cage (my last one being a casualty of the Tour D'Afrique). Sadly, the punctures meant we reached Montereau at about 8pm - and Decathlon shut at 7:30pm :-(. Total moving time was 4:25:56 and we cycled 65.82 miles in total, giving us an average of 14.9 mph.
The hotel itself was fairly budget but clean and with the exact 'pod' bathrooms Fitz provided for its undergraduate accommodation - where the shower curtain smothers you while you shower. Hungry and tired, we showered and then went searching for food, initially coming up empty handed. We eventually tracked down a cluster of restaurants actually just behind Decathlon and ended up at a restaurant called 'La Patatarie', an astonishingly popular French chain restaurant that just serves baked potatoes. After some initial confusion ordering a vegetarian meal, I was served an extremely large potato topped with three cheeses. Meanwhile, Phil had a plate which had three types of tartiflette - a gratin dish. Dessert for me was two (not one) delicious profiteroles.
I managed to get into bed by 11pm and we woke at 8am, giving us a reasonable amount of sleep - well received after the exhausting previous night.
Today we cycled considerably further - 80.97 miles over 5:23:39 hours (an average of 15mph). Having left early-ish we arrived in a small village called Nitry at 5:30pm.
The initial plan was to leave at 9am but as we went to leave, Phil noticed his rear wheel was flat. We decided to go to Decathlon (it opened at 9:30am) but upon reaching it, noticed it wasn't open on Sundays! Phil used my spare inner tube and we hit the road shortly later. We stopped 10 miles down the road at a roadside bakery, filled up on brioche and motored down the long, flat and straight roads east and then south.
The weather has been absolutely baking here, approaching 30 degrees at the hottest parts of the day. Lacking a Camelbak (a casualty of the unfortunate struggle against carrying too much weight with me), I found it hard to stay rehydrated and found a headache creeping in pretty early. Despite having water in my bottles, it was much more of an effort to reach down and drink from them - made harder still when riding in a (mini) peloton. Lacking a second bottle cage makes access to all of my water tricky too.
At 30 miles we passed through a 'centre de commerce' called 'Sens'. Our hopes raised by seeing a Decathlon sign, we eventually stumbled across the Carrefour that was, sadly, showing absolutely no life. In our attempt to get back on track, we took a footpath, rode over a grassy bank and thought we were lost. Eventually we took a road that we thought would intersect with our route - and luckily turned out to lead us straight past a Netto supermarket. This is a super budget food and grocery store where we (quite literally) filled our panniers with tasty food and water to get us through the rest of the day. Being a public holiday and a Sunday in France, it was almost guaranteed that nothing would be open in the afternoon. I bought yet more bread and cheese (folding a baguette in half to get it to fit in my pannier), an 850g knock-off Yop yoghurt drink (which I drank all at once) and 12 own brand cereal bars.
We moved on but drinking such a large quantity of yoghurt had put undue pressure on my bowels and I told Phil to keep watch for any toilet facilities en route since Netto didn't provide any. We eventually passed through a small town where there was a public WC - and without going into too much detail, I can say that (as is apparently common for French public toilets) - it shared a LOT in common with the toilets we came across in Africa.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I took my first (pinch) puncture of the trip when our slightly optimistic routing took us over a gravel road and my underinflated tyres rolled over one rock too many. I tried repairing the puncture but failed - most patches are far too large for 23c tubes.
I'm very proud of how fast my bike still is. It just rolls and rolls - which I suppose it has always down. Since bringing it back from Africa, I haven't ridden it an awful lot, being more afraid of theft in England than I was in the whole of Africa. When I brought it back, I refurbished most of it, replacing the wheel bearings and upgrading the bottom bracket to use ceramic bearings. I also replaced the venerable steel Surly Crosscheck fork with a Kinesis Carbon fork that performs absolutely beautifully. I'm running some Continental Ultragator Pros - these are 'reinforced' lightweight racing tyres. Perhaps a bit too fragile for this trip but I'm hoping that the road surfaces will remain good and that it won't be too wet. We'll see.
Phil also kindly rebuilt my front wheel since it was knocked out of true and the spoke nipples had corroded enough to make it impossible to true. Finally, I replaced the cassette with a wider 11-27 range cassette to support the (terrifying) section through the Alps.
My legs are tired today, as expected but on the whole this trip is proving to be quite manageable. The luxury of having hot showers and all the food I could possibly eat (albeit mainly cheese based) is making all these miles more palatable. My right knee worries me slightly - it's probably not used to pushing the load of panniers on top of just the bike and has been feeling ache-y. We'll see how it does in the mountains.
We eventually rolled out of London at 08:30 and arrived in Paris after an uneventful journey at 11:30am local time. I managed to get a couple of brief naps on the train - Phil and I had both barely slept that night as we made last minute preparations and tried to load routes onto our GPS devices. Phil's device hadn't quite liked the map though and so I surrendered my SD card to him - his Garmin is considerably more modern than mine and hence we would use it as our primary navigational aid. I also managed to lose my Fitbit on the train, most likely when changing from mufti into cycling lycra. Argh.
After arriving at Gare du Nord, we proceeded to the Geoparts office to pick up our bikes. There was no one in the office outside and an outwardly calm tall English chap with a bike back. When we spoke to him though, it was clear he was panicking somewhat. He had a train in 10 minutes and they refused to let him on with his bike. When the Geoparts employee actually arrived, he was so unwilling to actually perform his job that our poor fellow cyclist was forced to try again. I hope he didn't miss his train!
Luckily our bikes had arrived undamaged and we got moving pretty quickly. It was a beautiful day in Paris and (possibly due to today's Bastille day) there was not much traffic. On the whole I've found French drivers to be surprisingly tolerant of cyclists. Moreso than British drivers - perhaps due to a considerably more prominent and established cycling heritage. Equally the roads are better planned for cyclists and are generally wider and with lower traffic. All this leads to calmer drivers and safer cyclists.
We left Paris pretty quickly and after about 18 miles from the train station, Phil had his first of many punctures in a slightly suspicious looking banlieue. He fixed it without incident and we were off again.
At about 25 miles, we stopped at a boulangerie. It had just gone 1pm and we were a little hungry. Outside the store was a table with a variety of sweets including baklava, and, would you believe it - jalebis! After deciding what we wanted, I committed a faux-pas and severely annoyed the proprietor of the shop by serving myself. (To be fair, she had left everything - paper bags and tongs - out!) I picked some extremely sticky desert that was basically an elongated and less dense baklava that was absolutely dripping in syrup. Phil picked a jalebi and we proceeded down the road to find a place some way away from the angry baker to sit.
As we rolled on, Phil suffered another puncture where the tube split in his front wheel. I took this opportunity to gorge on my lunch-dessert. He repaired this and we left, only to have to stop about 20 metres later when it went flat again! After he had fixed this, he noticed his rear wheel was flat...and was not happy at all. Around about the same time, my body's insulin response had kicked in and I was feeling extremely sleepy. Lying down on the long, unkempt grass in the mid-day heat, I shut my eyes.
I woke a short while later, extremely sweat and feeling a little faint. Phil had fixed both of his tyres and was eager to get going again. It took me a couple of kilometres to wake up but then all was good! We stopped for an actual lunch in a small village at about 40 miles in where Phil had a nice quiche and I bought some cheese and a demi-baguette.
With about 10 miles left to go Phil suffered another couple of punctures. We had hoped to visit the Decathlon in Montereau where we were staying. Phil wanted to pick up some tubes that had slightly better production quality and I wanted to pick up a bottle cage (my last one being a casualty of the Tour D'Afrique). Sadly, the punctures meant we reached Montereau at about 8pm - and Decathlon shut at 7:30pm :-(. Total moving time was 4:25:56 and we cycled 65.82 miles in total, giving us an average of 14.9 mph.
The hotel itself was fairly budget but clean and with the exact 'pod' bathrooms Fitz provided for its undergraduate accommodation - where the shower curtain smothers you while you shower. Hungry and tired, we showered and then went searching for food, initially coming up empty handed. We eventually tracked down a cluster of restaurants actually just behind Decathlon and ended up at a restaurant called 'La Patatarie', an astonishingly popular French chain restaurant that just serves baked potatoes. After some initial confusion ordering a vegetarian meal, I was served an extremely large potato topped with three cheeses. Meanwhile, Phil had a plate which had three types of tartiflette - a gratin dish. Dessert for me was two (not one) delicious profiteroles.
I managed to get into bed by 11pm and we woke at 8am, giving us a reasonable amount of sleep - well received after the exhausting previous night.
Today we cycled considerably further - 80.97 miles over 5:23:39 hours (an average of 15mph). Having left early-ish we arrived in a small village called Nitry at 5:30pm.
The initial plan was to leave at 9am but as we went to leave, Phil noticed his rear wheel was flat. We decided to go to Decathlon (it opened at 9:30am) but upon reaching it, noticed it wasn't open on Sundays! Phil used my spare inner tube and we hit the road shortly later. We stopped 10 miles down the road at a roadside bakery, filled up on brioche and motored down the long, flat and straight roads east and then south.
The weather has been absolutely baking here, approaching 30 degrees at the hottest parts of the day. Lacking a Camelbak (a casualty of the unfortunate struggle against carrying too much weight with me), I found it hard to stay rehydrated and found a headache creeping in pretty early. Despite having water in my bottles, it was much more of an effort to reach down and drink from them - made harder still when riding in a (mini) peloton. Lacking a second bottle cage makes access to all of my water tricky too.
At 30 miles we passed through a 'centre de commerce' called 'Sens'. Our hopes raised by seeing a Decathlon sign, we eventually stumbled across the Carrefour that was, sadly, showing absolutely no life. In our attempt to get back on track, we took a footpath, rode over a grassy bank and thought we were lost. Eventually we took a road that we thought would intersect with our route - and luckily turned out to lead us straight past a Netto supermarket. This is a super budget food and grocery store where we (quite literally) filled our panniers with tasty food and water to get us through the rest of the day. Being a public holiday and a Sunday in France, it was almost guaranteed that nothing would be open in the afternoon. I bought yet more bread and cheese (folding a baguette in half to get it to fit in my pannier), an 850g knock-off Yop yoghurt drink (which I drank all at once) and 12 own brand cereal bars.
We moved on but drinking such a large quantity of yoghurt had put undue pressure on my bowels and I told Phil to keep watch for any toilet facilities en route since Netto didn't provide any. We eventually passed through a small town where there was a public WC - and without going into too much detail, I can say that (as is apparently common for French public toilets) - it shared a LOT in common with the toilets we came across in Africa.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I took my first (pinch) puncture of the trip when our slightly optimistic routing took us over a gravel road and my underinflated tyres rolled over one rock too many. I tried repairing the puncture but failed - most patches are far too large for 23c tubes.
I'm very proud of how fast my bike still is. It just rolls and rolls - which I suppose it has always down. Since bringing it back from Africa, I haven't ridden it an awful lot, being more afraid of theft in England than I was in the whole of Africa. When I brought it back, I refurbished most of it, replacing the wheel bearings and upgrading the bottom bracket to use ceramic bearings. I also replaced the venerable steel Surly Crosscheck fork with a Kinesis Carbon fork that performs absolutely beautifully. I'm running some Continental Ultragator Pros - these are 'reinforced' lightweight racing tyres. Perhaps a bit too fragile for this trip but I'm hoping that the road surfaces will remain good and that it won't be too wet. We'll see.
Phil also kindly rebuilt my front wheel since it was knocked out of true and the spoke nipples had corroded enough to make it impossible to true. Finally, I replaced the cassette with a wider 11-27 range cassette to support the (terrifying) section through the Alps.
My legs are tired today, as expected but on the whole this trip is proving to be quite manageable. The luxury of having hot showers and all the food I could possibly eat (albeit mainly cheese based) is making all these miles more palatable. My right knee worries me slightly - it's probably not used to pushing the load of panniers on top of just the bike and has been feeling ache-y. We'll see how it does in the mountains.
2 comments posted so far
Nayan wrote at 11:37 pm on Sun 14th Jul -
You lost another Fitbit!?! Enjoy the cheese n bread, cu soon. Nayan
Aamod Mishra wrote at 12:05 am on Mon 15th Jul -
Nice work!
It's been a hectic last few weeks. Besides trying to sell all of my possessions that can't be taken with me to Berkeley (and hold insufficient sentimental value), I spent a considerable amount of time working on another social network analysis paper with my friends from Kings College London, a colleague from Last.fm and two professors from Iran and Korea. Once that was all done and dusted, Phil and I belatedly started planning in depth our proposed short (but actually not that short) cycle tour.
Phil is an accomplished audax rider. Friends of the Geek on a Bicycle will note that he was the person who first motivated me to get cycling and if not for him inspiring me to start cycling to my high school, I'd still be as obese as I was as a teenager. We first got to know each other at the back of the field during a mandatory school cross country run. As plump 11 year olds, we were terrified of the consequences of being lapped by a considerable number of ours peers. Phil's eldest sister was training to be a lawyer at the time and I have fond memories of him threatening to get her involved if we were punished for being too slow!
During sixth form we both commuted by bicycle each morning and evening. In our holidays we would cycle together around Hertfordshire, and into London occasionally. For one week in Easter 2005, we took our bikes to his parents' holiday home in France and spent our days reading books, trying to get a pirated copy of Motorcross Madness to work over between two laptops connected by a crossover cable and, of course, cycling. It was an immense achievement when, on the last day, we cycled a shade over 80 miles on our venerable mountain bikes - Phil riding a maroon red Grisley rigid mountain bike and myself on my (now stolen) Hardrock Pro with front suspension. At the beginning of the week I would struggle to make it up a hill near the cottage called 'Pain-de-Sucre'. This was a hill with a considerable gradient and I'd usually have to get off half way up and walk. By the end of the week I was able to make it all the way up.
As happens, we grew apart during university - him studying classics at Liverpool University, a considerable drive away from Cambridge. We met extremely infrequently since he visited home rather less than I did. During that time we both took our passion for cycling further. I joined the Cambridge University Cycling Club and started racing. Meanwhile, Phil signed up for a series of audaxes, completing the 1200 kilometre Paris-Brest-Paris ride in 2008. While I thought the Tour D'Afrique was hard, Paris-Brest-Paris was in a wholly different league. Phil cycled this distance over just five days, sleeping rough and carrying everything he needed with him. The weather that week was extraordinarily poor and he cycled through rain and wind, sleeping for a handful of hours every night.
After university we both found ourselves in London and working similar careers. While neither of us have done any epic rides since, we were both keen to do something similarly involved. I knew that before I started my Master's course, I wanted to experience as much of Europe as possible and to try and do something meaningful. Phil had similar holiday ambitions and proposed Calais to Brindisi - a historically significant audax route based on an old passenger train that used to take well off Britons out to their summer holidays in continental Europe.
Audax pace, is, I'm told 14 days to cover 2100 kilometres. (Bear in mind this route crosses the Alpes.) We're giving ourselves 20 days and have truncated the uninspiring first two days of the trip from Calais to Paris. Tomorrow morning we'll be on the second Eurostar train of the day to Paris (and at the time of writing, I'm rather hoping that our bikes have already made it there, courtesy of the EuroDespatch centre at St. Pancras).
With a rest day in Aix-les-Bains, again in San Marino and finally in Brindisi, I'm hoping that my body will be able to cope with what will be about 80 miles a day on a fully laden bike. I'm not a particularly strong cyclist in the physical sense of the word - one of the decisions that really helped me a lot in the Tour D'Afrique was taking an exceptionally light (but sturdy) bike. Loading this up with 8.5 kilos of touring load is going to test my limits but I'm hoping I'll emerge stronger at the end of the trip.
The other physical difference (aside from the transient limb injuries that I've undergone various surgeries for) is that since the Tour D'Afrique I've been diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. This in itself didn't prove to be a problem during that trip (aside from many amusing photos of me napping on moderately expensive expeditions). Now, three years later, even with treatment, I do find myself unreasonably tired often. Perhaps not enough to negatively impact our progress on the trip but enough to perhaps temper my psyche.
So, perhaps more so than with the Tour D'Afrique, I am cautious of my ability to finish. Having read Eric's and Gerald's (excellent) books on the Tour D'Afrique, I am reminded of the exceptional challenges we faced and how the wrong encounter with a pedestrian or a tropical disease could lead to the tour ending prematurely.
Either way, I'll try my best to keep up with Phil whilst enjoying a large amount of bread and cheese, as vegetarians do in Europe :-).
Finally, this trip presents another challenge - we're carrying our own load. This means no laptop. I'm also forgoing a dedicated camera and MP3 player - with the intention of using my Nexus 4 (plus a Bluetooth keyboard which I am currently using) to replace all three of these gadgets. Let's see how that works out. (Who wants to bet that it will become unusably broken within the first week?)
Our route:
Phil is an accomplished audax rider. Friends of the Geek on a Bicycle will note that he was the person who first motivated me to get cycling and if not for him inspiring me to start cycling to my high school, I'd still be as obese as I was as a teenager. We first got to know each other at the back of the field during a mandatory school cross country run. As plump 11 year olds, we were terrified of the consequences of being lapped by a considerable number of ours peers. Phil's eldest sister was training to be a lawyer at the time and I have fond memories of him threatening to get her involved if we were punished for being too slow!
During sixth form we both commuted by bicycle each morning and evening. In our holidays we would cycle together around Hertfordshire, and into London occasionally. For one week in Easter 2005, we took our bikes to his parents' holiday home in France and spent our days reading books, trying to get a pirated copy of Motorcross Madness to work over between two laptops connected by a crossover cable and, of course, cycling. It was an immense achievement when, on the last day, we cycled a shade over 80 miles on our venerable mountain bikes - Phil riding a maroon red Grisley rigid mountain bike and myself on my (now stolen) Hardrock Pro with front suspension. At the beginning of the week I would struggle to make it up a hill near the cottage called 'Pain-de-Sucre'. This was a hill with a considerable gradient and I'd usually have to get off half way up and walk. By the end of the week I was able to make it all the way up.
As happens, we grew apart during university - him studying classics at Liverpool University, a considerable drive away from Cambridge. We met extremely infrequently since he visited home rather less than I did. During that time we both took our passion for cycling further. I joined the Cambridge University Cycling Club and started racing. Meanwhile, Phil signed up for a series of audaxes, completing the 1200 kilometre Paris-Brest-Paris ride in 2008. While I thought the Tour D'Afrique was hard, Paris-Brest-Paris was in a wholly different league. Phil cycled this distance over just five days, sleeping rough and carrying everything he needed with him. The weather that week was extraordinarily poor and he cycled through rain and wind, sleeping for a handful of hours every night.
After university we both found ourselves in London and working similar careers. While neither of us have done any epic rides since, we were both keen to do something similarly involved. I knew that before I started my Master's course, I wanted to experience as much of Europe as possible and to try and do something meaningful. Phil had similar holiday ambitions and proposed Calais to Brindisi - a historically significant audax route based on an old passenger train that used to take well off Britons out to their summer holidays in continental Europe.
Audax pace, is, I'm told 14 days to cover 2100 kilometres. (Bear in mind this route crosses the Alpes.) We're giving ourselves 20 days and have truncated the uninspiring first two days of the trip from Calais to Paris. Tomorrow morning we'll be on the second Eurostar train of the day to Paris (and at the time of writing, I'm rather hoping that our bikes have already made it there, courtesy of the EuroDespatch centre at St. Pancras).
With a rest day in Aix-les-Bains, again in San Marino and finally in Brindisi, I'm hoping that my body will be able to cope with what will be about 80 miles a day on a fully laden bike. I'm not a particularly strong cyclist in the physical sense of the word - one of the decisions that really helped me a lot in the Tour D'Afrique was taking an exceptionally light (but sturdy) bike. Loading this up with 8.5 kilos of touring load is going to test my limits but I'm hoping I'll emerge stronger at the end of the trip.
The other physical difference (aside from the transient limb injuries that I've undergone various surgeries for) is that since the Tour D'Afrique I've been diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. This in itself didn't prove to be a problem during that trip (aside from many amusing photos of me napping on moderately expensive expeditions). Now, three years later, even with treatment, I do find myself unreasonably tired often. Perhaps not enough to negatively impact our progress on the trip but enough to perhaps temper my psyche.
So, perhaps more so than with the Tour D'Afrique, I am cautious of my ability to finish. Having read Eric's and Gerald's (excellent) books on the Tour D'Afrique, I am reminded of the exceptional challenges we faced and how the wrong encounter with a pedestrian or a tropical disease could lead to the tour ending prematurely.
Either way, I'll try my best to keep up with Phil whilst enjoying a large amount of bread and cheese, as vegetarians do in Europe :-).
Finally, this trip presents another challenge - we're carrying our own load. This means no laptop. I'm also forgoing a dedicated camera and MP3 player - with the intention of using my Nexus 4 (plus a Bluetooth keyboard which I am currently using) to replace all three of these gadgets. Let's see how that works out. (Who wants to bet that it will become unusably broken within the first week?)
Our route:
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