Day 16 - Angen to Montauban - France, Top to Bottom

May 10, 2023

Day 16 - Angen to Montauban

Because this whole trip was laid out for us by Andy and Jane of fellowvelo in GPX files, our Garmins have been nearly indispensable. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a few quirks. Periodically I will confuse my Garmin by getting off the path to take a picture or see what bird Doug is looking at and it decides the only way to get me back on track is for me to make a U-turn and go back to where it wasn’t confused. But rather than just say “make u-turn”, it will tell me to make a u-turn at the next turn. For example, it might say “U-turn .9 miles”. I’ll ignore the advice at the next intersection and it will give it another try at the intersection after that “U-turn 1.5 miles”, and so on until if eventually gives up on me and resumes proper instructions. It’s as if Garmin doesn’t understand I’m on a bike and can make a u-turn literally anywhere.

My Garmin also has a feature called “virtual partner”. I was blissfully ignorant of this feature until Doug pointed it out and now all my virtual partner does is annoy me. He always finishes before me because he never stops for pictures or to discuss with Doug whether the bird that just flew by was a black-headed gull or a Mediterranean gull, or for anything that I can tell. Today I stopped to relieve myself and when I got back on the bike, Garmin announced my virtual partner had finished. All I did is have a wee and now my virtual partner was already at the boulangerie probably taking the last tarte aux fraise.

My Garmin also seems incapable of comprehending the slowness at which we travel. I have a screen that shows both the miles and time to our destination. The miles are mostly correct, but the time always assumes we are going to shake off our sluggish ways and sprint to the finish at never before achieved speeds. Garmin, I have been riding with you for over two weeks now and at no point in time have we ever averaged 15 miles an hour, it is not going to happen.

Today was the second consecutive day of all canal riding, all of it on a smooth paved trail, but this time mostly sans rain. Coming from America, the extensiveness of the bike infrastructure here continues to boggle my mind.

Mid-day we explored the town of Moissac at lunch where we were thrilled to find an open boulangerie, but everything else was closed for lunch that extends from 12:30 to anywhere from 2:00pm to 3:00pm. The is built on both sides of the canal and has a large Abbot which was fun to go in and is enough of a draw to support a fair number of restaurants and souvenir shops. The day ended in Montauban where we succeeded in finding an open grocery store and I restocked my left front pannier/pantry.

More of this. Hard to not keep taking this same picture over and over.

On the edge of Moissac, this is one of the oldest churches in France and there is stuff on this sight dating all the way back to 3rd century.

Another long "pont canal" crossed today.

A nice man running along his daughter on a bike stopped and offered to take our picture. Greg (me), Doug and Donna, left to right.

This was fascinating. To speed up traffic through five locks, they built this experimental system that pushed a boat in a triangle of water up a slope.

Took a LOT of pictures of canal boats today, but this was my favorite. Going by the cared for plants, it is clearly actively lived on.

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Today's ride: 52 miles (84 km)
Total: 773 miles (1,244 km)

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