Hello again! It's been another eventful day but let me fill you in a little on what happened after we posted last night...
The campsite was on a mountain but all the cellular signal was pooling in the valley on the other side. I'm told phone signal and water are similar in the fact that it will run downhill and it's where fish live.
Anyway we had to trek back to the campsite entrance and then along, what was now a very dark road. As we stood in the area of four bars and attempted to upload the blog, we got molested by many many insects. So I hope you enjoyed it. Better than that, was when I saw a couple of comparatively large bats. Then Mr Badger trotted down the road, in the badgery way he does, before being alerted to our presence by the cry of "Chris look! There's a badger!"
Chris finished moaning, that his Garmin wouldn't upload the route of the days ride, and we retired back to our tents before the ants could carry them away.
Day 4 (imagine this bold and underlined)
Despite requiring more protein in our diets, we repacked the bags to unburden ourselves of a kilo of ants.
It was a late start, made later by preparing lunch. We left about 11:00 after taking the time to eat said lunch for breakfast.
We returned to the spot of signal, picked a campsite to ride to, and rejoined the canal.
During the last day and a half I've had three earworms:
I found myself humming these in the quieter moments of today's ride although the beginning was not quiet. Though the scenery was ever beautiful, the trail had more holes in it than Pistorious' bathroom door. The air rang with the rattles of our bikes and our bones. When hitting a particularly large pot hole I tend to exclaim "Errf", which we've learnt is frenchish for 'egg'. We discussed the possibility of egg nogg being Oeff Noff among other topical subjects, such as how would you make a bike in medieval times.
During this discussion we chanced upon this large boulder holder- potentially the school of rock.
We passed a few more docks with no boats in sight and stopped for lunch unwittingly in the vicinity of a small mummified crayfish. There were a few more people on the route today and this gave them a chance to overtake us (temporarily).
I wanted to stop as my feet were melting, so we pulled over at the next of many little wooden docks. I went a'paddling and as the steam rose from around my ankles, we watched the dragonflies' merrily swarm. One landed on the dock and after many failed attempts to take a picture, the strategy that worked best was laying on my belly and inching towards it like a beached whale. One of our company of cyclists chose this moment to catch up but only reacted with a wry smile.
We met a little dog on a bridge and then discovered a small wooden chalet that sold not only beer but ice cream too. Joining us, as we ate the mothers of all Cornettos, was this adorable attention seeker. She laid under my chair until the next group of people sat down with more ice cream aka potential dog treats.
Round a couple more river bends and I had to break hard in order to take a picture of a caterpillar crossing the road. When I caught up with Chris he was living his week-long dream of witnessing a lock in action. We watched for quarter of an hour only moving to avoid a horse.
We've talked about flies before in this blog, but I can tell you taking a dragonfly to the forehead is probably the upper limit of being able to walk away unscathed. However, the scenery did dull the pain, the water rippling gently alongside us like a moist vienetta. The trees displaying an array of greens from nuclear waste to the top of the semi skimmed milk bottle.
We were shocked to be forcibly detoured away from the path as they were resurfacing. How dare they respond to our complaints so quickly. This took us steeply uphill to a land of sunparched villas which may as well have been Spain. Though we were treated with a long slalom back down which did much to blow away the torrents of sweat.
All of that only to find another detour that lead us through Vietnamese jungle avoiding the newly laid cycle route alongside.
We joined it anyway and relished in its fresh tarry gravelly goodness. Nearing the town of Hennebont we crossed a bridge that said it wasn't for bikes and heard a loud bang. We assumed this was a warning shot for not obeying the local customs.
Arriving at the campsite we could not find an attendee so, not wanting to end our rebellious streak, decided to trespass. This quickly garnered us the attention of an English speaking lady who took our money and then cycled us to the end of a very long and narrow campsite, overlooking the river and being flanked by a cemetery. It was absolutely roasting (the weather not the cemetery). The attendant warned me the shower I was entering was cold only, and I thanked him while closing the door behind me.
We ventured to a hypermarket and filled our bags with quiche and fruit and Chris finally had a crepe.
We then ventured to Mac Donalds where we verified Pulp Fiction's claim that a quarter pounder with cheese is called a royale...with cheese.
We're back at the campsite now, and the heat of the water bottle I left in the tent would have happily poached an oeff. Chris just remarked that he hasn't seen a magpie since leaving the UK and I think that's as good a place to sign off as any.
Bonne nuit.
The campsite was on a mountain but all the cellular signal was pooling in the valley on the other side. I'm told phone signal and water are similar in the fact that it will run downhill and it's where fish live.
Anyway we had to trek back to the campsite entrance and then along, what was now a very dark road. As we stood in the area of four bars and attempted to upload the blog, we got molested by many many insects. So I hope you enjoyed it. Better than that, was when I saw a couple of comparatively large bats. Then Mr Badger trotted down the road, in the badgery way he does, before being alerted to our presence by the cry of "Chris look! There's a badger!"
Chris finished moaning, that his Garmin wouldn't upload the route of the days ride, and we retired back to our tents before the ants could carry them away.
Day 4 (imagine this bold and underlined)
Despite requiring more protein in our diets, we repacked the bags to unburden ourselves of a kilo of ants.
It was a late start, made later by preparing lunch. We left about 11:00 after taking the time to eat said lunch for breakfast.
We returned to the spot of signal, picked a campsite to ride to, and rejoined the canal.
During the last day and a half I've had three earworms:
- Billy Joel's 'For the longest time'
- This song from YouTube about a duck buying grapes.
- The stock music from a Sony Ericsson W850i, used in a home video montage of Alton towers.
I found myself humming these in the quieter moments of today's ride although the beginning was not quiet. Though the scenery was ever beautiful, the trail had more holes in it than Pistorious' bathroom door. The air rang with the rattles of our bikes and our bones. When hitting a particularly large pot hole I tend to exclaim "Errf", which we've learnt is frenchish for 'egg'. We discussed the possibility of egg nogg being Oeff Noff among other topical subjects, such as how would you make a bike in medieval times.
During this discussion we chanced upon this large boulder holder- potentially the school of rock.
We passed a few more docks with no boats in sight and stopped for lunch unwittingly in the vicinity of a small mummified crayfish. There were a few more people on the route today and this gave them a chance to overtake us (temporarily).
I wanted to stop as my feet were melting, so we pulled over at the next of many little wooden docks. I went a'paddling and as the steam rose from around my ankles, we watched the dragonflies' merrily swarm. One landed on the dock and after many failed attempts to take a picture, the strategy that worked best was laying on my belly and inching towards it like a beached whale. One of our company of cyclists chose this moment to catch up but only reacted with a wry smile.
We met a little dog on a bridge and then discovered a small wooden chalet that sold not only beer but ice cream too. Joining us, as we ate the mothers of all Cornettos, was this adorable attention seeker. She laid under my chair until the next group of people sat down with more ice cream aka potential dog treats.
Round a couple more river bends and I had to break hard in order to take a picture of a caterpillar crossing the road. When I caught up with Chris he was living his week-long dream of witnessing a lock in action. We watched for quarter of an hour only moving to avoid a horse.
We've talked about flies before in this blog, but I can tell you taking a dragonfly to the forehead is probably the upper limit of being able to walk away unscathed. However, the scenery did dull the pain, the water rippling gently alongside us like a moist vienetta. The trees displaying an array of greens from nuclear waste to the top of the semi skimmed milk bottle.
We were shocked to be forcibly detoured away from the path as they were resurfacing. How dare they respond to our complaints so quickly. This took us steeply uphill to a land of sunparched villas which may as well have been Spain. Though we were treated with a long slalom back down which did much to blow away the torrents of sweat.
All of that only to find another detour that lead us through Vietnamese jungle avoiding the newly laid cycle route alongside.
We joined it anyway and relished in its fresh tarry gravelly goodness. Nearing the town of Hennebont we crossed a bridge that said it wasn't for bikes and heard a loud bang. We assumed this was a warning shot for not obeying the local customs.
Arriving at the campsite we could not find an attendee so, not wanting to end our rebellious streak, decided to trespass. This quickly garnered us the attention of an English speaking lady who took our money and then cycled us to the end of a very long and narrow campsite, overlooking the river and being flanked by a cemetery. It was absolutely roasting (the weather not the cemetery). The attendant warned me the shower I was entering was cold only, and I thanked him while closing the door behind me.
We ventured to a hypermarket and filled our bags with quiche and fruit and Chris finally had a crepe.
We then ventured to Mac Donalds where we verified Pulp Fiction's claim that a quarter pounder with cheese is called a royale...with cheese.
We're back at the campsite now, and the heat of the water bottle I left in the tent would have happily poached an oeff. Chris just remarked that he hasn't seen a magpie since leaving the UK and I think that's as good a place to sign off as any.
Bonne nuit.
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