March 26, 2022
Pourquoi?
Day 36 - Narbonne to Béziers
Brace yourselves, I'm complaining again! I'll try to stop in future posts, sorry. But should 55km of cycling on roads and canalside paths on a beautiful French spring day really be so hard?
Well, I suppose it wasn't that hard, but it wasn't as easy as I would hope or like. The 85km yesterday was really too much - we hardly had energy to eat. But 55km? We are finished earlier, but still pretty tired!!
With that out of the way, today really was beautiful. It felt like the first proper spring day, with blue sky, birds singing, blossom growing between the still dormant grape vines, and warm sunshine. There was still a bit of chill on the wind, which was blowing in our faces on and off as we meandered along the canal.
| Heart | 6 | Comment | 3 | Link |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_pine
2 years ago
2 years ago
2 years ago
What are the four most common words in the French language? "Fermé", "interdit", and "route barrée"! We have seen an astonishing number of cafés and shops closed (usually when we are desperate for a bathroom), as well as roads. It's often because they are resurfacing the cycle path, which is good I guess, but they never give a warning or offer a diversion.
Béziers is much bigger than we knew, which made finding the hotel that was inevitably booked on the opposite side of town near some large roads pretty annoying.
Entering from the west was stunning though! Somehow the water in the canal is more still and more green, the trees are more green and more elegant and taller, and we saw a famous historical group of locks that raise the water level by some 30 metres.
While looking for an etablissement ouvert earlier in the day, we did find a really nice brewery / restaurant where we chatted with the nice Canadian server who is studying viticulture, who told us that Agde, which we will be going through tomorrow, is a hotspot for nudist beaches, freaky air b&b adverts, voyeurism, and many other delights of sex tourism. So that'll be interesting.
Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,336 km (830 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 7 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 1 |
2 years ago