Archive for April, 2007
Monday, April 30th, 2007
65km Peyrehorade to Morcenx-Bourg
After a peaceful sleep in a pine forest, we had a lazy bike ride into Dax, stopping halfway to buy milk and make our morning coffee. Dax is famous for its hot springs but, aside from flying by a few fountains fed by the thermal waters, we didn’t see much of the baths. Instead we stopped to catch up on a bit of internet, something we’ve had a hard time tracking down in the last few days. From Dax we cycled to the outskirts of the city, where we found a beautiful picnic park in the village of Berceau de Saint Vincent de Paul.
The name gives away its history: the birthplace of Saint Vincent. After our lunch we wandered over to the visitor centre where the nun in charge showed us a film about Saint Vincent – remembered largely for his charitable work – and then we visited his house of birth and a chapel dedicated to his memory. When we returned to collect our bicycles the cheery nun asked us if we’d eaten. She wanted to invite us to lunch and offer us a place to stay for the night. The skies were turning rather dark and threatening rain. We were touched by the offer but instead decided to carry on as we’d arranged to stay with someone in a town up the road tomorrow and had a few kilometers to check off if we wanted to make that meeting.
Our afternoon was spent cycling down dead straight roads through forests of tall, lean pine trees. It appears the area is cultivated by forestry companies. Somehow we managed to keep just ahead of the rain until late in the day we found a campsite to pitch up in.
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, France, Journal Entries by andrew
Sunday, April 29th, 2007
73km Saint Jean Pied de Port to Peyrehorade
Today visions of our sofa danced in our heads. We had the best chocolate-brown leather couch from John Lewis when we lived in London. On the weekends it was the perfect place to lay down with a duvet and fall into a deep sleep while the TV rattled away in the background. Now, when we feel exhausted on the bikes, we long for just one more long snooze on our sofa. Today our desire to be sitting down quietly – and not pedalling up and down the foothills of Pyrenees – followed a day out with our friends Conny and Mel. They’d been in Spain for a few weeks and were able to cross our path on their way back to London.
It was great fun to see them again but a little too much rosé wine made pushing off again difficult. Lead legs were the theme of the morning. At least the rain, which has poured down over the last two afternoons, stayed away and we made good time cycling first along another stretch of the Santiago trail (the pilgrim count for today stands at 18) and then ducking off into the back roads and the French countryside.
Aside from some pretty little villages the day was fairly unremarkable, although we were surprised to see kiwi fruit being grown along one stretch and banana plants beside a house. Was this France or some tropical rainforest, we wondered? By the time we’d stopped for supper we were exhausted. Luck went our way as we found a place to pitch our tent in some woods not far outside the dreary town of Peyrehorade. It had enough cover and was far away from the road so we were able to put up our tent long before darkness fell, with no worry of being seen by anyone. With light now lasting until past 9pm it makes wild camping a rather late affair and difficult if you are tired and want to go to sleep rather earlier!
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, France, Journal Entries by andrew
Friday, April 27th, 2007
72km Irotz to Saint Jean Pied de Port
“Grandiose Vista
No, not Microsoft, the view
Biking down the road” — Andrew
“Mountains rise ahead
Sun warms our toes as we bike
To their misty peaks” — Friedel
We took a tip from Keith, a pilgrim we met in the hostel in Pamplona, and spent our morning composing haikus while cycling towards the pass over the Pyrenees and into France. We were quite pleased with our efforts – maybe not up to Japanese expert level but we thought they were pretty good for an amateur attempt. It was a good way to occupy our minds as we pedalled up the hill.
The crossing was actually quite tame, more so than we expected after hearing so much debate from other cyclists on where to cross the mountain range. We feared a killer climb but ended up with a gentle uphill ramble through woodland and then spent most of the day cruising downhill to Saint Jean Pied de Port, a key starting point for the trek to Santiago. It’s nice to be back in France, a country we both love and where we both speak the language. We always feel at home here. It’s our first time in the Pyrenees though so there’s lots to explore.
Just today coming down the mountain we noticed long-haired sheep and a type of pig we haven’t seen before and there are lots of signs for cheese and wine tasting alongside the road. Our progress could slow quite a bit over the coming days! Another pleasant surprise is the return of the municipal campground. We loved these in Portugal as they usually meant clean but cheap camping. Spanish campsites were always privately run and the prices were pretty outrageous so we’re very happy to once again have a reasonable option when we need to clean up after a couple days of wild camping.
In the campground we met Richard, a cyclist on his own and planning to follow the trail to Santiago, before turning south to Porto and then east to Salamanca. We invited him to a dinner of salad, pasta and wine and really enjoyed hearing his tales about other cycling trips (Lands End to John O’Groats and around the Orkney and Hebrides islands) as the rain poured down around us. Our tarp once again came to the rescue and gave us lots of dry space to sit. We hope our evening meal was a sign of a better trip to come for Richard since he was hit by a car on the first day leaving Biarritz! Luckily he wasn’t hurt and we were amazed that he was not too shaken up to continue. In Richard we also found a man in need of a Spanish map (the one he was planning to use was 40 years old, from the honeymoon he and his wife took after their marriage) so we happily gave him our road atlas.
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, France, Journal Entries, Spain by andrew
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
15km Pamplona to Irotz
We had good intentions of starting out early today and crossing into France and the nuns in the pilgrim hostel where we spent the night certainly made sure we got out of bed in good time. At 6:30am the lights went on in all the bedrooms and, while we rolled over and tried to ignore the inevitable, many pilgrims jumped to their feet, eager to hit the trail. Just an hour later the hostel was nearly empty as the sixty or so people who spent the night there filtered out into the streets of Pamplona to knock off a few more kilometers in their quest to get to Santiago. Our quest was much simpler: coffee.
With the price of a morning cuppa getting more expensive as we go north, we decided to buy a litre of milk and make our own in own of Pamplona’s many public squares. By 9am we were done our coffee and headed off to a bike shop we’d spotted the day before to get some new brake pads and to ask for an opinion on whether it was time to replace our tires so far into the journey. This turned out to be one of the best stops we made during our whole journey. The two brothers who run the shop – Aitor and Ibon – were helpful and quite funny, joking continuously with us as they examined our bikes. In the end we decided we could get a bit more out of our tires, but not today as Aitor and Ibon invited us to lunch. We couldn’t refuse of course and were treated to a wonderful meal of salad, a rice dish with seafood and a desert of soft cheese and fig jam. Delicious!
This was also a wonderful view for us into Basque culture as Aitor and Ibon are very proud Basques and were happy to answer all sorts of questions for us about the language and the history of the Basque people. Late in the afternoon we finally set out from their shop and followed a trail along the Arga river to leave Pamplona. At the trail’s end we found a place to set our tent for the night, before continuing into France tomorrow.
1 Comment » - Posted in Cycling Trips, Journal Entries, Spain by andrew
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
48km Estella to Pamplona
It’s not been the best week for food on our tour! After our oil-spill of a couple days ago, today we woke up to curdled milk. We’ve been trying to work out the best way to carry milk for our morning coffee on the road. We can buy small lunch-box sized cartons of UHT long-life milk but they are expensive, as is powdered milk. Buying a litre of UHT milk is cheaper than the smaller portions, but we don’t use that much in one morning, so for the last little while we’ve decanted the rest into a bottle and carried it with us for the next day. So far it’s worked well but apparently the heat of yesterday was too much for the milk. It curdled as soon as we mixed it in with the coffee.
It’s hard packing up your panniers without a proper wake-up breakfast! Needless to say, the bar was the first stop on our route as soon as we got on the road, not for a beer but for that vital caffeine injection. It’s a good thing we stopped for the extra energy since plenty of hills appeared in front of us as we approached Pamplona. We continued the Pilgrim Count to amuse ourselves as we pedalled away. Today it reached 41 on foot and 3 on bicycles before we got to Pamplona. One group of Germans told us they take two weeks off every year to do a portion of the trail. They’re now in their 10th year and hope that next year they will make it to Santiago.
Once in the city the numbers of pilgrims exploded, unsurprising as the trail runs right through the heart of Pamplona. We wanted to walk around a bit so we joined the pilgrims in the hostel set up for them. Technically it isn’t for mere tourists like ourselves but we told the truth when the receptionist asked if we were going to Santiago or not and he didn’t seem concerned when we said no. Maybe in low-season they are happy to fill the extra beds and for €5 we were happy of a very cheap place to stay. We found a cracking bicycle shop just down the road from the hostel and now we are thinking of replacing our tyres. Decisions, decisions!
