September 26, 2024
To Marseille
Last train ride! For a while anyway. Today we head south to Tarascon, a river town on the Rhone just south of Avignon. And not a day too soon. The rains return to Brioude today and look due to set in for a good while; but down in Provence conditions are definitely enticing, with sunny days and highs of around 70 stretching out for the next two weeks. We can hardly wait.
And after what seems like forever we’ll finally be back on the bikes again, with a three week tour through lower Provence and the Camargue. We don’t anticipate needing the train again until we take it from Montpellier to Perpignan and bridge into the final stage of the tour. And we’re easing back into cycling very gently, both because we’re still working our way back to full health and because we’ve gotten so out of shape. In the first ten days we only have four moving days, and they’re all essentially flat and only about fifteen miles long each. We can do that.
Here’s the plan for the next three weeks:
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We have two concerns about today’s train ride. The first is the weather which is supposed to bring rain all day, heavy at times. Our train doesn’t depart until nearly two and won’t arrive at the other end until after six, so our plan is to have lunch here as our main meal, leave our bikes and baggage here in the hallway outside the apartment while we eat, and hope we get lucky with the weather for our short ride to the train station.
Luck comes our way, and there’s a brief lull right at noon which lets us arrive dry at nearby Le Cardi, the same place we ate two days earlier. And when we’re done with lunch it’s only lightly misting still so we get to the station essentially dry also.
So that’s one thing on our mind that goes well. The second is the train journey, which as you’ll recall we expect will include a break in the middle where we’re shuttled by bus past a stretch where the tracks are closed for maintenance. We learned when we arrived in Brioude that bikes are permitted on the bus so that shouldn’t be a concern; but still, things happen. There might be a hassle with the bus, or the bikes might get damaged loading or unloading them, or we might be delayed and miss our connection in Nimes.
There’s nothing to be done though but sit, watch the scenery, and hope things go well. And, things go really well in this regard because we don’t have to take the bus after all. When we come to Langeac where the disruption was to begin and just keep riding I relax and enjoy the ride the rest of the way to Nimes.
And it is an enjoyable ride, very scenic the whole way as we follow the Allier south to its headwaters and then start dropping into the Rhone basin. As we move south the terrain gradually transitions from the rocky, dark basalts of the volcanic zone into the white limestones of the south; and the dark, damp skies gradually become less gloomy until we reach the summit and then brighten as we drop toward Nimes.
Nothing else is happening to report on as we sit and look out the window for four hours, and since I’m lucky enough to have a window seat by a recently washed window, and since this will be our last train ride for several weeks we might as well include more than the usual number of shots from along the way.
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2 months ago
So neither of our two worries ended up being a concern after all. Unfortunately though we’re about to get clubbed across the side of the head by a third concern we hadn’t seen coming: for whatever reason our train arrives a half hour late in Nimes, and we miss our connection to Tarascon where we’re booked for the night.
Things don’t go well in multiple ways when we get to Nimes. First, it’s late enough in the day that the ticket and information desks are closed so there’s no one to consult about our options. Worse, for some reason there’s an issue with our phones: we don’t have connectivity for some reason and can’t research the SNCF website to verify the next train to Tarascon. And since we don’t have connectivity Rachael’s afraid that we won’t be able to show the conductor our ticket once we board.
So we do the best we can. I buy tickets to Tarascon at a kiosk for €16 as cheap insurance, and then we board the 7:27 train to Marseille. I pick this train because the one we missed was the 6:27 train to Marseille, which stops at Tarascon. I had discovered earlier that trains run to Marseille hourly so I felt confident that we were making the right choice. We make our way to the departure gate, stand around for a half hour, and then board our train when it comes in.
Most of our trains lately have been easy roll-on/roll-off affairs, but this one is different. Doors are narrow and there are three steep steps up so it’s difficult to get the bikes loaded. And departure is scheduled for only about two minutes after the train pulls in; and it’s a long train; and the bike car is way at the far end, so there’s a certain tension in the air.
As it turns out though we had plenty of time because once we’re on board we sit in the station for a half hour before the train starts moving for some unknown reason. In the meantime Rachael finds that she’s got connectivity again, looks up the SNCF site, and sees an alert that we’re being been delayed due to an equipment failure. We don’t like this development, because it guarantees that it will be dark by the time we arrive in Tarascon. Fortunately we’ve got lights, but still.
Also, while we wait Rachael contacts our host to let them know we won’t be arriving until about two hours later than we’d announced previously.
Finally the train hums back to life and we pull out of the station. A few minutes later the conductor comes by, asks to see our tickets, and then gives a puzzled frown because this train isn’t stopping at Tarascon. It’s a fast Intercities train from Bordeaux and it’s a nonstop from here to Marseilles, an hour away. So that’s the bad news. The good news is that he doesn’t fine us for not having a ticket to Marseille, and when we arrive there we don’t need a ticket to leave the station. Things can always be worse.
Hearts sink, tears are suppressed, and then Team Anderson moves on to acceptance of our dismal situation and to make the best plan we can think of. While Rachael contacts our host in Tarascon to tell them that we’re not coming after all and request the cancellation fee be waived (which not unreasonably is rejected), I research for trains near the Marseille station and book us at the Hotel Terminus Saint Charles, only about two blocks from the station. We’re spending the night in Marseille and will figure out next steps in the morning. In the meantime, we commiserate with each other and assert that we’re both really, really getting pretty damned tired of good stories.
It’s of course quite dark when we reach Marseille. I haven’t mapped out a GPS route to the hotel of course, so we navigate using the phone. It tells us the hotel is only 450 feet away, but after 300 of them we discover that the last 150 are down about a hundred step steep staircase. We can see our hotel right down below us, but we’re not about to take our loaded bikes down this way.
So we renavigate, this time using the bicycling rather than the walking mode we accidentally used at first. Now it’s a half mile, which even in the dark wouldn’t be too bad because there’s a sidewalk most of the way, but it’s quite difficult because we keep having difficulty finding our way. Finally though we’re down to street level and biking down the sidewalk to our hotel which is only a few blocks ahead now when we come to a dark underpass completely filled with street characters.
With visions of the Bonfire of the Vanities in our heads reminding us of how suddenly our lives could change forever if we take the wrong turn, we watch for a gap in the traffic, cross to the other side, and finally arrive at our hotel. I didn’t take note of the time, but it must be nearing 10 PM by now.
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It’s been a long, long day but we’re not done yet. The night agent tries but fails to find a reservation in our name, so I pull up the reservation confirmation on the phone and hand it to him. He reads it and tells us (and it really is a nice thing that he’s fluent in English) that unfortunately I’ve booked us for the wrong month: October 26, not September. Fortunately he has a room available anyway, so we’ll just cancel the other later.
And then, one final insult to close out the day. As I lift up my panniers to head to the room I discover another piece of very bad news: the hanger that hooks the pannier to the rack has pulled out of the pannier. Do you remember that about a half year ago way back at the beginning of the tour I discovered that the plastic panel board inside the pannier had cracked and I was concerned that we’d have a pannier failure sometime before we made it home? Well, here we are. It was at least lucky that it broke free here at the hotel instead of on the road.
So before going to bed I pull out all of my miscellaneous hardware hoping I’ll find something useful such as a washer to prevent the retaining bolt from pulling through. There’s nothing. There are a few tiny washers, but none with a wide enough diameter to be effective. Discouraging, and I’m starting to think tomorrow will begin with finding a gas station or someplace that I can find something that will work.
But then I dig deeper and find I’ve got a spare SPD pedal cleat, and it has an oval shaped washer that should do the trick. With that, I turn out the lights and crash. We’ll figure out how to get to Tarascon in the morning.
Today's ride: 1 mile (2 km)
Total: 3,813 miles (6,136 km)
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2 months ago
2 months ago
2 months ago
An, yes, very definitely a compliment on your creativity.
2 months ago
And I think Patrick is wrong - I expect it to hold up fine until we get home - it’s not even two months now, and we have a lot of layover days when we’re not carrying the panniers anyway! I don’t want to replace it because I’m pretty sure we’ve got an old pannier in storage I can salvage a panel from.
2 months ago