Bumpy Canal Trail Day

July 21, 2023

Charrin to Beffes

Today's track which took like five minutes to upload

Today I did not feel like I was that strong. Most of the problem I think was that I stayed up kind of late, because it was exciting to have a house, er, building. The building also had lights, which made it easier to stay up until midnight. Then of course the sun always comes up at 5:30. I still managed to sleep in until 7:30, I've always got my eye mask at the ready, but eventually it gets too warm to continue sleeping.

The day was mostly overcast with beautiful clouds.

They're overall writing posture felt awkward, my hips felt like they were too bunched up, my sit bones still hurt. A lot of the day was on the lateral Canal of the Loire, which was paved but not very well. Or maybe it was paved well at one point but it isn't anymore. This made the sit bone situation even worse. I got a flat tire from a thorn or something like that. In addition to not being very well paved, the trail also had an almost relentless lack of benches or tables. It had beautiful big trees on either side of it would provide a lot of shade, but then there's just nowhere to go and nowhere to sit. I think a lot of the reason I ended up still going through a lot of kilometers today was because they're just wasn't anything to be distracted by, no reason to stop.

So, in short, I didn't sleep very well and so I didn't feel very good all day.

Part way through the day, the Loire met the Allier, another sizable river, in a big flat basin area. This is where the Loire a Velo marks its kilometer zero, and a large plaza that had a map and chairs and this signpost. The pavement quality seem to improve at this point, I think the Loire a à Velo is older and better known, and so has been able to pull in more funding for improvement.

There's a big installation for kilometer zero of Loire a Velo

At the end of the day I ended in the town of Beffes, which has a gigantic concrete factory in it. There's a place called "velocamping", which I figured couldn't be all bad. And it wasn't, but it was weird. I couldn't find the reception, so just asked the first guest and who is installed near the entrance if there was one. He said that there wasn't one that day, but the person who ran it was his friend, and the system right now is just that you leave your name and they would send a bill later. I am very curious if they are going to send me an invoice in Oakland for the 10 euros for the camping. To add to the strangeness, off to one side of the campground that had film set lights. I don't know if they're actually filming, or if they just kind of like to have a well-lit grill. The layout of the place was also strange - it lookef like it was a quarry. And then it had some old (like 19th century) industrial buildings, and at the back wall there were huge fireplaces. As luck would have it, the husband of a bike camper couple in the site next to me was a German mining engineer. He explained that this place apparently used to be a place to process calcium carbonate into calcium oxide, part of concrete production.

I was exhausted, and felt like I should probably take a rest day the next day, but I also didn't think I was going to want to stay in this weird quarry the next day. I went to sleep early-ish (10pm, but it's still sort of light out).

Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 1,284 km (797 miles)

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