Howdy people, I’ve had a really good day today, well up until the last 3 miles, but we will get to that later. Said good bye to the 4 young English lads this morning, they were riding back up to Saint Malo to catch a ferry home. One of them ironically asked if I suffered from numb hands or pins and needles and what I do to make it go away! I laughed at first, but then showed him my hand which hadn’t changed much from the picture you all saw last night. He then had the cheek to tell me that he had his but its gone now! Great, thanks for that, make me feel a bit better about it all hey!
I set off this morning at just gone 9, did my normal easy going first few miles just to warm the legs up, then got cracking. I used the google maps print out for navigation most of the way as it didn’t seem to be too much a tricky route. I only had one stop today aswell. Its quite strange because you set out to stop a couple of times to eat, but then when your only 15 or 20 miles from the destination, sometimes its easier to just throw a few more jelly beans in the gob and knuckle down and push hard.
Went past a lovely field full of sunflowers at one point, but it was downhill and I was going to fast to want to stop and take a picture, you’ll just have to believe me.
Had to stop and take a picture when I got to D69, not because I just wanted to be rude, but it made me laugh just thinking that how Borat would pronounce it and what sort of conversation he would have with a local if they directed him down this road. As you can see, I’m even able to make something that’s not even funny amuse me for at least a few miles. I feel like by the time this bike ride is over or at least by the time I hit the Spanish border, I would have at least gone through most of the D roads that France has to offer! It can be so easy to get confused as to which one your looking out for.
Now as I mentioned earlier that everything was running to plan and I was having a good day. Well that was until I got to the point that the directions I had printed out didn’t match up to where I needed to go. basically google said turn left, yet I knew I had to turn right. So I told sat nav to direct me for the last 3 miles. As I’m fiddling about with sat nav, some Frenchman pushes my bike from behind, he had a face only a mother could love. He had the hump that I had stopped at the end of the road and was covering half of the cross over section! Now this road wasn’t busy at all and he could have walked round me, so a few words where shared, that’s when I don’t mind not being able to talk the language! But in the mist of everything I had forgotten that I was still in a high gear. So sat nav then said for me to take the right at the street I was on, I clicked my right foot into the pedal and pushed down, my left foot seem to click in way to quickly and easy for my liking. And yes as you can imagine, I didn’t have enough energy in the tank to go quick enough! TIMBER!!! I fell over and landed on 3 parts of my body, firstly my elbow, which is fine. Second my knee, yes the one that has already given me a little pain. And the hand! Which in a way was actually a good thing as I didn’t even feel the pain! A nice man asked me if I was ok, he was setting up the tables outside his restaurant, I said yes and road on with the hump at this stupid Frenchman for causing all this to happen. Then about 5 minutes later I get honked at by some old woman for not cycling in the bike lane, it wasn’t a lane I was taking my bike down, it was all gravel and stones. But this was my first time I’ve been honked at in a few days now, ever since the 1st day in France when a man thought I was about to take the slip road onto the motorway.
Anyway, off for the same routine now, get supplies from the local supermarket, and then source somewhere for dinner later.
Oh I forgot to mention, added to the road kill list today will be a Field Mouse, and also a Beaver, which I did have to stop and turn around just to make sure that it was infact a Beaver, don’t worry I wasn’t going to take a photo of it! But I think this was probably the first beaver I’ve ever seen.
Today’s journey was 75.5 miles, riding time of 5:33:25, max speed 33.6 mph, avg speed 13.59 mph, 4312 calories, 3.15 litres so far.
I Just Felt Like Cycling 