Day 7: Margaux to Bordeaux (27.7 miles, 404 ft)
It is finished.
203 miles in just 7 days, and it hasn’t been as hard as we expected. We’ll talk about some of our highlights and a general overview of the week in an entry next week, but for now lets talk about how we got on today.
After a shaky start with Zak feeling pretty rubbish (read more about that here), things improved after a pain au raisin (even if we did do a mini tour of every street in Margaux to find the bakery – it was next door to the pizza place from last night, so we have no idea how mum and dad spent so long trying to find it). We had done more than 5 miles by the time we actually joined our planned route, even though the bakery was 1.2 miles from our accomodation.
When we started riding on the actual route for today, Zak finally started to speed up to a fairly normal pace after his fairly sluggish start, but then the rain hit us. I don’t find that rain really makes a difference to the riding experience except it makes it harder to see and if you brake too suddenly your bike can skid everywhere, I prefer to not ride in the rain but it was fine today as it was fairly light and it did eventually brighten up.
Part way along our morning route there were “Route Barre” signs, meaning that the road ahead was closed so we weren’t sure whether to stop and find a new route. Another group of cyclists who we had passed a few times already said we might be able to get past, so we decided to risk it and it was actually completely fine. Just a bit gravelly.
It rained for the whole of the first 10 miles, but then, just as we stopped to get a drinkit suddenly got hot and sunny. We stopped at a little boulangerie, as they had chairs and tables outside so we assumed they would do a basic coffee and me and Zak would have cans of pop. Dad and I went inside and asked for a coffee with milk, but the lady just kept on asking us if we wanted sugar. We said no, and that we just wanted milk. It turned out they didn’t have milk but did have sugar (as the lady told us about 5 times) so we all had cans of pop instead.
As we finally got into the outskirts of Bordeaux we stopped for lunch but there wasn’t much choice of fillings to put in our baguettes. We only had paté from yesterday and leftover bits so me and Zak just had bread.
After lunch and a family photo we did a few more miles to reach the middle of Bordeaux. Mum and dad finally got their coffee and Zak and I had lemonade to celebrate finishing the ride.
After our drinks we cycled the last mile to our home for the next two nights, dumped our gear (dad carried all our bikes up 2 flights of stairs to the apartment) and then went out to find a supermarket to buy dinner (pasta parcels), breakfast and lots of snacks. After dinner and showers we watched a film together before going to go to bed.
Overall, I have really enjoyed this week. It has been fun to do the whole ride as a family and has made this holiday a bit different to previous family trips to France. Over the next few days we will write more about our overall experiences of the ride(s) and things we would/will do differently next time. But right, now it’s time to relax.