Another beautiful, peaceful morning, and I am back on the bike again by 9:15 heading off south, cycling down through the cycle track through the forest, almost like riding through a long tunnel. Much of the route is flat and dead straight, but sometimes it jinks to the left or the right or picks its way over a sand dune. I realise that I have not had to go into the bottom range on my triple chain set for several hundred miles, and my leg muscles feel something quite new.
For the first half-hour I don’t see anyone, but then as I get closer to the small resort at La Palmyre and the lighthouse at La Coubre more people appear, many on bikes rented from the various cycle rental shops at the resort. There are also joggers, and I even see a cycle club speeding past me on the main road.
I stop for coffee at a beachfront restaurant at La Palmyre, and feel the end of season atmosphere around me. Beautiful weather, but really not many people around.
Pushing on, I start to get close to the major town of Royan, and everything starts to become much more built up. The cycle path continues, but is now moving through suburban housing, and the constant stopping and starting at junctions starts to get frustrating, so I end up cycling on the road instead. It is great to have dedicated cycle paths, but what designers usually overlook (except in the Netherlands) is to move the give way line behind the cycle path at junctions, so that cyclists can continue without having to constantly stop and start, losing momentum. I guess this reflects that hegemonic assumption that the car is king.
I stop briefly at Pontaillac, a small resort on the northern fringes of Royan, to watch some surfers and people paddling from the small beach, and then pick up the cycle path which winds around the corniche and leads into the main seafront at Royan, a very long arc of sand stretching to the south along the Gironde estuary. A good time for today’s sandwich.
Carrying on south, I suddenly come across some fairly serious climbs as the road picks its way over a headland at St Georges, then drops down as the D145 picks out a flat, fairly straight line along the mudflats. Again, I am cycling into a steady, hot headwind. I stop for a rest at the small village of St Seurin, and another cyclist passes by, calling out “Bonjour!”,so I reply, and clearly in an English accent as he shouts back at me “Ah. Cavendish, Mark Cavendish!” I think it must be the muscular legs that cause the confusion…
The land of vineyards begins
The road out of the village climbs up a short but fairly steep hill, and suddenly the landscape changes, and I now see my first vineyards. Signs everywhere along the road now tell me that I am in the land of pineau de Charente, an aperitif based on grape juice and cognac, to which I shall become acquainted later this evening. The road continues high up above the river, but then at Mortagnac a steep and winding road takes me back down to sea level and the veloroute, which then follows a somewhat bumpy back road for miles through marshes and fields of ripe sunflowers.
I am now starting to understand the rhythm of a long day on the bicycle. The first 10 to 15 miles goes by very easily, but then things start to get harder until about 40 miles at which point I feel like I have done enough, but have to carry on. Then, the next 20 miles usually seem to fly by very easily as my body has got into a rhythm and I have reached a point of steady tiredness, it seems. However, by the time I am reaching 70 miles the fatigue is really settling in, particularly when it is hot and if there turns out to be more climbing at the end of the day, which was really the case on Day 1.
It is now time to start heading for my evening destination, so I turn left, pedal along an unsurfaced track and haul myself up a steep hill to St Thomas de Conac and make my way through miles of vines to the vineyard of Raymond Bossi, where I meet up with Helen and our stop for the night. The vineyard produces some very good quality pineau de Charente and cognac, and after cleaning myself up after the hot day, we go for a very enjoyable degustation.
This has not been such a long day, just 52 miles and very
little climbing apart from right at the end! That makes 452 miles total, and
just over halfway to the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment