The Family Bike Touring Guide

Before I start my review of today, there are a couple of updates I need to add from our ride yesterday. Zak wrote the blog entry last night, and my two memorable moments were not mentioned!!! The first one happened whilst going down a really fast hill. My bike wobbled a lot but fortunately I did manage to control it so I didn’t fall off. I’m really wishing I had put more training in carrying panniers as they have made cycling a lot harder. My second incident happened whilst getting ready to do a wild wee. My bike lost all it’s balance and fell to the ground, I went with it and my helmet got tangled in some brambles which took a while to de-tangle and scratched my face!

I went to bed mega early last night whilst Jon and the kids stayed up and played games. I have a cough that has progressively been getting worse, I don’t feel particularly ill but feel tired. That could also be linked to the cycling I guess. No-one else seems to have aching muscles in their legs and shoulders, however Jon says that they just don’t complain about it. I feel that with my panniers I am the weakest member of the family. Zak is only carrying a very light-weight tent (for emergencies) and Maisey has a saddlebag thing full of emergency flapjack. We didn’t want them to struggle for the whole week, but I think Zak is probably fitter than me and could have had some small panniers quite easily.

Today was an interesting food day. Our accommodation for the night was in an English lady’s big house, but it was in the middle of nowhere. There was no local boulangerie and we hadn’t been able to buy milk or cereal at the little shop we found last night, so just pirate biscuits (as we call them) and a nectarine for breakfast today!

The start of today’s ride was hilly, but since then it has been virtually flat all day. Hills are hard first thing in the morning when you’ve had no proper breakfast. I did end up walking up two of them.

Most of today’s ride was alongside an estuary with lots of fishing ‘piers’ along the way (not sure of their real name!) The terrain was mostly easy, roads or cycle paths. However I did not realise how much the wind can affect your riding. Cycling into the wind we struggled to maintain 8mph, whereas the same bit of road heading away from the wind found us doing 12-13mph without any effort. The ride today was a bit boring with views much the same all along the route and we were tired from yesterday. However, as always we found new ways to entertain ourselves, even successfully playing Coco Curacha together, using the bells on our bikes.

Lunch was also a bit tricky. We had plenty of food (cereal bars, seeds, chocolate, biscuits and beer) so we didn’t go hungry but we passed nowhere to buy lunch ingredients and the cafe we passed would only serve complete meals and the lunch menu was expensive. So an odd day of eating.

A cyclist waved us down. I think he was English, if not he spoke excellent English (with a strong Yorkshire accent). He asked us the way to a Port Vitzeray. He had cycled from Bordeaux this morning (we have two more days cycling to get there). All he had for directions was a compass and a small scrap of paper with some names and distances on, he also had no gears on his bike and he was easily in his mid 60’s. Wow. Just wow!

We arrived in Ètauliers at around 4pm and headed straight to a supermarket to buy dinner and snacks. Our accommodation tonight is massive and has a washing machine so I have a full load in and am feeling thankful for no hand washing tonight. I think I will do a separate entry about the clothes we have bought with us at some point.

Tomorrow is a much simpler day, broken into to shorter sections by a small ferry crossing at Blaye. More updates to follow.