The Family Bike Touring Guide

Today was officially crash day!!

Nothing serious, but within 4 miles of our start point, Maisey managed to get some road dust in her eye and then ploughed into a tree branch, scratching her arm quite badly, and then 10 minutes later, there was a massive thud from behind. Zak had managed to not see a bollard in the middle of the cycle track and ridden head-first into it. Somehow amazingly both he and his bike managed to survive, fairly scratch free. It could easily have been a lot worse.

The only other significant unplanned event today was the realisation 3 miles into the route that we had somehow left one of our bike locks at last night’s accommodation, meaning I needed to abandon Lara, Zak and Maisey and dash back to the start. I actually quite enjoyed the challenge, managing an average of 18mph each way with all the gear on my bike. We were soon reunited and back on track for our midday ferry crossing.

Most of the roads today were covered in gravel and not pleasant to ride on. It’s amazing how much you appreciate the smoothness of a nice piece of tarmac when you’ve ridden for miles trying hard to avoid unending potholes.

After a quick stop at Blaye for a coffee while we awaited our ferry, we were soon onboard and enjoying a short crossing over the estuary. Lara fully appreciated the onboard toilet after riding around Blaye for 20 minutes desperately trying to find one. She was literally dancing around while she queued to pay for our tickets (which didn’t include the fee we had expected for the bikes).

It’s odd how you can see virtually no other English travellers for 6 days and then spend 30 minutes on a ferry full of them in a fairly remote part of the countryside.

The second leg of our journey was uneventful and flew by. Lara had napped for a while after lunch so she had a little more energy, although her hacking cough remains with her.

We were at our accommodation (a nice self-contained two story annex at the side of a family home) nearly two hours before we had suggested we would arrive. After waiting outside for a while, watching a builder on the roof who had clocked our presence but was happily ignoring us and continuing his work, he finally wandered down his ladder from the roof and introduced himself as our host for the night. He was obviously a little surprised at our lack of French vocabulary – I’m guessing, in part, due to the fact that I’d taken the time to translate all our email messages over the previous weeks. However, he did speak a little English, so we managed to get by. It was only later this evening that it dawned on me, when answering his question about my ability to speak French, instead of stating I could speak French “a little bit”, I had simply said “Peas!!”.

This evening we ventured out on the bikes to get some food, finding a really good pizzeria with a proper pizza oven. The pizzas were both cheap and AMAZING. Possibly the best pizza I have ever eaten (and that’s saying something – I’ve even been to dominos).

Tomorrow is another fairly light day. Only 20 miles and we’ll be at our final destination of the ride – Bordeaux. I’m a little sad that the tour is almost complete, and slightly nervous about the challenge of getting our bikes onto the train to return to La Rochelle on Saturday. Apparently the trains are notorious for not allowing bikes on, even though we booked tickets which specifically allow them onboard. No point worrying though. We’ll get back somehow.

Right, time for our last small ruby beer (hoping Lara doesn’t steal it from me) and an early night before we set off for our last leg.