To Apt

October 2, 2024

Breakfast service at our hotel starts at 8, and because we’ve been awake for an hour holed up in our tiny room and Rachael’s desperate for her first shot of caffeine we push it a bit and are downstairs at 7:58. The door to the breakfast hall is locked when we test it so I step outside to look in through its windows to see if there’s any activity there. They’re dark, but a minute later a young woman opens the door to let us in, greets us by saying something I don’t understand, points us to the coffee machine, and then returns to her task at hand - setting up the breakfast spread.

The layout is pretty slim when we first look and we assume we’re getting one of those breakfasts this morning, but then more components keep showing up and it’s quite good in the end. There are cheese and meat cold cuts, even hard boiled eggs. And when she’s done, at the end she comes by and lays a plate with two enormous plain croissants on the table.

Checkout is at ten, which works well for our plan to bike to Apt in time for lunch. It should take us about two hours, which will get us there at the opening hour for the restaurant Rachael’s picked for us today but not made a reservation for. When it comes time to leave though we note the forbidding overcast sky out our window, check the weather forecast, and are startled to see that now it’s supposed to be lightly raining for the next two hours. Completely unexpected.

While Rachael settles our account I go to the kitchen of the adjacent restaurant to retrieve the bikes from where they’ve been stuffed in a narrow slot in the kitchen for the night. As I wheel them back I notice how cold it feels and especially the strong wind. Wind, cold and even light rain don’t feel like the right conditions for our health recovery plan,

so I suggest to Rachael that we might want to find a sheltered table in the open-air restaurant and sit and watch developments for awhile. She rightly points out that it’s not actually raining at the moment; and when I notice that once we get out of this enclosed space behind the hotel the wind is actually in our favor we decide we might as well bike and just be prepared to seek shelter if matters don’t go our way.

And it’s definitely the right decision. Once we’re on the road biking east we’re getting pushed up the flat bike path by this 10-15 mph tailwind, it suddenly feels much warmer, and it’s dry. It certainly looks like it could be wet behind and to the south, but we’re biking away from the weather.

This looks more promising than it felt when we started, with that sliver of blue sky ahead. I should have taken a shot back the other way, which looks much more menacing. We’re definitely going the right direction this morning.

We don’t stop often, with the two important goals of staying ahead of the weather and reaching our restaurant while there’s hopefully still a table waiting for us, so we mostly rely on the GoPro at first. Once it’s clear that we’re going to stay dry though and are doing well for time we allow ourselves stops here and there: we detour to cruise the small neighborhood at La Baumette, the curious settlement with a few troglodyte homes built beneath a limestone overhang: and later, we stop for a good look at Pont Julian, the two thousand year old arches Roman bridge - and this one really is Roman, built under the instructions of Julius Caesar as part of the Via Domitia in 3 BCE.

And here’s another plug for our current slow travel. When we rode through here two years ago, traveling from Saint-Rémy in one day, we rode across this bridge without even noticing it. This time I took the time to look back - you really only see it from the eastern side unless you get off the path to explore.

This really is a fine bike path, and I’d forgotten how scenic it is even in today’s grey conditions.

The view south: lavender and the Luberon.

It looks like we’re in a pocket of dry conditions. Its grey behind us, but if you look far enough out it looks like it could be wet there too.

It’s pretty great now but this must be a really spectacular ride in July.

The cliff houses in the Baumettes have been modernized and are inhabited - one even has a swimming pool beneath the overhang - but there’s evidence that the place has been inhabited since Neolithic times.

The members of this tour bike all zipped past us a ways back, all on e-bikes. It looks like they’re stopped here at a cafe for elevenses. They heard our voices and called out in English to them, so I asked where they were from: New York, Connecticut, California was the reply.

Pont Julian was built in 3 BCE as part of the Via Domitia, the first Roman road crossing southern France (Gaul) to link Italy and Spain.

The now dry Calavon River, from the Julian Bridge.

We’re on track to arrive in Apt by around noon when we’re stopped not past the bridge by a mechanical. Abruptly, as we’re climbing up from an underpass beneath the road, there’s a rubbing sound and I’m brought to a stop. I look down at the rear wheel, concerned by what I’m seeing, and then push the bike for bout thirty yards until we come to a metal fence I can lean it against.

The friction is from my left rear pannier rubbing against the tire. My immediate thought is that Patrick was right and the bolt that holds the hanger has pulled through again and my makeshift repair didn’t hold. It’s not that though, and in fact it’s not even the right pannier. This time it’s one of the bolts that attaches the rack to the frame. It’s pulled out of the braze-on for somehow, although it’s fortunately still here dangling from the rack.

So the next thought that quickly comes to mind is the wierd problem that befell us one day on our ride down the Mosel:

Now this is a real problem. The bolt snapped, leaving part of it in the frame and no way to extract it.

With no way to extract the bolt or even an idea of how one could, I was wondering if this might even be a trip-ender. Fortunately Rachael found a garage for us only a few hundred yards away, and when we wheeled the bikes down there we got the best service possible. The guys know bikes, and once ran a bike shop; and between the two of them they have the experience and insight to come up with a repair. The mechanic tries at first to free it with a wrench, but there’s just not enough exposed bolt to get a purchase on it.

So he leaves to confer with a partner, comes back shortly, says weld, and wheels my bike off to a shed. It’s brilliant: he welds a nut to the end of the bolt so he can crank on that. The bolt comes free, and afterwards he taps out the braze-on to rethread it again, and then hits us with the bill: €10.

Today’s problem is much less dire, as long as I’ve got the necessary parts and tools. And I do. I have a small crescent wrench, so I can try to reattach the bolt; and when I see that it’s slightly bent and really too short in the first place - it barely fits into the frame, and the end is stripped out - I have a longer one that is perfect. And, I have the other essential piece - a short plastic sheath that fits over the bolt, a spacer to force the rack far enough away from the frame to clear the disc brake.

So we’re on the road again, but behind schedule now and it’s nearing one by the time we roll up to our targeted restaurant and with disappointment see its sign that it’s closed today. So we check out the nearby restaurants., find a decent-looking cafe with their daily specials board out, but when we check inside we’re definitively turned away - complet. we go next though to a small Oriental place and walk out satisfied an hour later, filled with spring rolls, pad Thai with shrimp, a stir-fry with chicken and rice, and a Singha. Not the lunch we had planned on, but still very good and a nice change.

And then we bike the three blocks to the address of our apartment, where there’s some concern about trying to reach our host. He’d agreed we could arrive at two and asked for us to notify him an hour in advance so his partner could meet us; which we did, at the restaurant, but received no response. So we’re standing at the door of what’s obviously the right place, but with no bell to ring or posted phone number to call - a familiar scenario we’ve faced variations of countless times by now.

Rachael looks up the phone number, but it just goes to the mailbox; and we try sending another message through Booking. Then she has the idea to send a text, which works. A minute later Christian phones, says that his assistant will arrive momentarily, and soon an Arab woman wearing a shawl walks briskly up the street, smiles at us, and lets us in.

This woman speaks no English at all, so we interact primarily through pantomime as she grabs two of the panniers and then leads us up the narrow, steep, dark, fairly decrepit brick staircase - up one tier, then another, and then another, until finally we come to the top and she shows us into a huge, modern penthouse. It’s an amazing place, maybe the largest apartment we’ve ever stayed in on our travels. There’s a well stocked kitchen, and a dining area with a large dining table, and an attached living room with its two sofas (his and her sofas!), coffee table, and a grandfather clock. And there’s the bedroom, a spacious one with a queen sized bed. And there’s the second, matching bedroom which we’ll never use. And there’s the reading room, which we’ll never set foot in either. And there’s the shower room, and there’s the separate room with the toilet, both of which get used in time. And there’s the laundry room, with both a washer and dryer.

Our host leaves us to ourselves, Rachael is kind enough to offer to give my knees a break by walking down to the entrance hall to lock our bikes together we’ve left waiting down there; and then we contentedly spread out in the place we’ll call home for the next three nights.

I forgot to mention we have a view, because we’re in a penthouse. This is the one from our bedroom.

And I forgot to mention the deck, which may or may not get used. We’ll see.

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Today's ride: 17 miles (27 km)
Total: 3,934 miles (6,331 km)

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David MathersThat’s an apartment that you can hang out in for awhile! Maybe 🤔 it has your name on it for future stays 👌
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2 months ago

Scott AndersonTo David MathersI know! I don’t think we’ve ever had his and her sofas before. And I’m pretty impressed with Apt as a base. We still had a few walks and rides we’d have been happy to take from here.
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2 months ago