Yesterday we left the road and took to the water for a 24km kayak adventure down the Ardeche river. The scenery was beautiful with birds soaring in the skies and the walls of the gorge towering above us. The route also gave our upper bodies a workout, after months of toning our calves by cycling kilometer after kilometer. Neither of us had much kayaking experience, so we flipped over once, after hitting a rock right in the middle of a rapid, but in a strange way this was a good thing. The cool water felt so refreshing compared to the heat of the sun shining down on us. There were quite a few people out on the river but not so many that we felt crowded. It might be quite different in July and August. Apparently in the high season there can be as many as 8,000 people on the river each day.