Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Europe

Day 18 Biganos to the French Leon. Lifeday 25,267

The Delta Hotel had a great buffet breakfast which I probably pigged out on 🙁 Just not used to having a choice.

Strava had decided to take me along roads rather than the more circuitous Atlantic cycleway. So not as pleasant riding with all the juggernauts, I worked out why I lost some of my average speed yesterday.The problem with taking the etrex on walkabout especially in supermarkets is that it still thinks I’m cycling 🙁 So today I stopped at a bricolage to get some cable ties to mount the Etrex onto the bike frame 🙂

Mimizan was a bit of an eye opener. I’ve never seen so many restaurants in such a small town. I guess in the summer this whole coast line is heaving given the number of camping sites & holiday places. I ended up at the Post cafe as most places were full. I think the omelette I chose really slowed me down in the afternoon as my poor stomach was digesting it.

Once again the head wind appeared so by the time I reached Leon I decided to call it a day, especially since booking.com was only showing campsites or hideously expensive places. The Hotel du Lac de Leon doesn’t demean itself by using booking.com, just resorting to a small roadside sign 🙂 Needless to say I think I’m the only guest tonight!

Strava says I did 67.7 miles and 745 feet of climbing.

The pictures will eventually end up on dropbox, but the internet is as dated as the place.

The Fitbit Blaze had a bad day only recording 108mins of heart rate 🙁

Heart rate for a bit of the day
Heart rate for a bit of the day

Will update the post once I get on the internet!!

Day17 Soulac sur Mer to Biganos – Livingday 25,266

What a cycle track should look like
What a cycle track should look like

With a late breakfast I didn’t hit the road until just after 9am but it was a totally gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky all day 🙂

Amazing to find real dedicated bike tracks for 90% of the day on the La Vélodyssée. It’s lovely & smooth well marked and totally perfect. It’s so cool not to have to worry about vehicles behind you.

Such a pity that we sold of all our disused railway tracks, government policy of the day to prevent any likelihood of railways making a comeback, they make such perfect cycling ways.

A French cycling cafe
A French cycling cafe

The only bugbear of the day was the headwind, all day from the south – the direction I’m going. Plus the lack of cafes since it was mainly through woodland. After the one litre water stop at Aldi in Montalivet Les Bains there was nothing for the next 36 miles to the very upmarket restaurant La Bicyclette Jaune in Lacanau 🙁 I slurped a one litre bottle of water in a few minutes followed by a totally delicious fresh fruit salad and ice cream.

The next stop was an Intermarche in La Vignas where a one litre bottle of some jogurt was summarily despatched.

Since I was making such good time I decided to progress further and booked The Hotel Delta in Biganos. Probably the best hotel yet on this trip – the shower was really strong 🙂 For dinner I pottered down to Malhibou Ananas restaurant which amazingly is run by an English lady!

The success story of the day was using the cyclema.ps app reall simple will suck in a gpx file and let you follow the route with the direction of travel in the up mode. It shows cycle paths etc and even with no signal you can still follow the route.
[ride id=728931338]
The Strava for the 77 miles covered and 597 feet of ascent is here

The pictures are on Dropbox here

The heart data from my Blaze is:-

Fitbit Blaze Heart Rate data
Fitbit Blaze Heart Rate data

 

Associated Facebook posts:

Day 16 La Rochelle to Soulac Sur Mer on Day25,265 of my life.

What an amazing day 🙂 It’s just so pleasurable to walk of a plane to a nearby hotel and pick up your bike. Have a great night’s sleep, yep OK the salmon steak that I ordered for dinner was I reckon part of a cow’s behind, but we won’t that let ruin a great day 🙂 Neither will convincing myself to buy a Fitbit blaze heart rate monitor from Dixons at Stansted 🙂

I set of this morning with various routes planned to Royan, Strava and maps.me wanted me to avoid the centre of La Rochelle. However, the  hotel owner and Google maps shrugged their shoulders, so I went through the centre with no problem 🙂

The railway crossing enforced detour
The railway crossing enforced detour

All went well until I hit the Route Barree signs, which I ignored of cause. The problem was they were rebuilding a level crossing at St Laurent, the guy resolutely refused to let me cross, even though i could easily have done 🙂 So France has jobs worth characters too. My little detour all went well although I thought I could never turn left as Gmaps kept wanting to send me across fields.

Why is this bridge so high?
Why is this bridge so high?

Then it was the awesome crossing of La Charente although quite why the bridge is so high is a bit of a mystery to me.

I arrived at Royan to find that I had missed the ferry by 15mins and the next was at 4pm so I made a quick return into Royan to devour three scoops of delicious ice cream 🙂 🙂

Eventually I made it across the Gironde Estuary on the €5 ferry across to Verdun. On arrival, all the map apps had ceremoniously crashed! the gps thought I was still on the other bank 🙁  Eventually Apple maps came to life (I ended up deleting Google maps and reinstalling it later) it took me on on a very circuitous route to Soulac, which has to be said is a rather gorgeous town especially on a warm evening, although the Germans on the next table at Restaurant La Station kept complaining, so much so i moved outside so the poor dears could seal themselves in 🙁

The Hotel Neptune is adequate although I had to remind him of the free pression donated by booking.com

Todays heart rate according to the Blaze
Todays heart rate according to the Blaze

All in all a great day after a lovely weekend with Sally 🙂 The Blaze is disappointing as the heart rate only appears much later and the screen is difficult to read on the move.

Strava says I did 57.4 miles and 6.7 miles so 64 miles of very pleasant riding.

Some pics are here

 

 

‘Rest’ Days 11,12,13 & 14 on my bike tour

With the owner of Hôtel La Jetée Sud happy for me to leave my bike & to drop me off at the airport. I was wafted away on a busy Ryanair flight back to Stansted for a long weekend 🙂

Whilst on the plane it occurred to me that rather than buying up apartments around the world all I needed was to leave my bike overseas and then commute back home at regular intervals from different airports 🙂 thus pleasing Sally, Three & the various insurance companies who worry if I’m away too long 🙂

Eventually I managed to sync my old iPhone 6 to the new iPhone 7 taking the best part of 12 hours! due to the awful Virgin Broadband connection trying to sync 30+ GB of data 🙁 In the process losing all my passwords etc due to having to reset my keychain 🙁

Daily weight
Daily weight

Of course the biggest loss was having to lose the Fatwatch app which it’s owner has removed from the app store. So thus ending my almost 12 year run of daily weight measurements 🙁

In fact a by-product of the daily weighing schedule at home is I now know I’ve been home 2,718 days out of the possible 4.311 days. That is I’ve been away from home 47% of the time 🙂

The rest of the weekend was spent with Sally and following her demanding exercise schedule 🙂 comprising a 18 mile walk on Saturday plus a 72 mile high speed (for me) bike ride on Sunday. We managed to get to see the enjoyable Bridget Jones Baby at the ultra cheap Kings Lynn cinema as well. I loved to see Vodafone sponsoring the iPhone.

A very enjoyable break indeed, now to see if the iPhone 7 is really waterproof 🙂