March 14, 2022
Lesson? What lesson!
Day 24 - Hastingues to Lescar
Incredibly, we ended up cycling 20km in the dark today as well. Not feeling very smart or capable right now.
Last night we stayed at a great bed and breakfast: the hosts were so nice, chatty and attentive, the room was lovely, and we were given brioche, jam, fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast, all homemade!
I regret my somewhat judgemental comments about our arrival in France of a few days ago: I was annoyed by all the rain and traffic, and ultimately, my own ignorance of the French language. Since then, we have had mostly smiles and encouragement from locals, and our B&B hosts especially have gone a long way to warming my attitude to the country. Sorry France!
Sarah talked with our hosts a lot, and I could understand a fair amount, but couldn't really contribute. Sarah is clearly the better half, yet again! Thanks babe!
The cycling today was generally pretty nice: very rural roads but mostly tarmacked, views of trees and fields that looked very familiar to us in the overcast light, and quite a lot of gentle climbing and descending that we were tackling with decent speed and quiet pride: our fitness has improved some more, I think.
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There were some uncommon sights:
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Things took a turn for worse later in the day. After the mild panic of yesterday, we had booked a hotel in advance, which google told me was about 71km away. A decent but totally doable distance. However, we were not following the most straightforward route. I did not check on this route how far it was. We had done nearly 70km - "probably nearly there!" - when we saw a sign for Pau, which was the main town we were headed to. It said 45km to go. Mild panic set in again.
We turned off route to the nearest town and managed to track down some wi-fi despite it being nearly 7pm in the middle of nowhere. With some relief, we saw that if we took the most direct route the hotel was only 20km away, so we decided to go for it.
Google maps immediately took us down the most ridiculous muddy, rocky, scary, overgrown road of possibly the whole trip. Nobody on a normal bike ride would ever want to go down this road. What the hell!!
Eventually we got back to civilization, and what then followed was an hour or so cycling in the dark, again, on a fairly busy road. Clouds obscured the moon more often than not so as the sun set it got really dark. Eventually, we arrive at by far the worst hotel yet: a run-down, unloved, under-cleaned motel type.
If anyone has any tips for overcoming extreme stupidity please send them in!
Today's ride: 89 km (55 miles)
Total: 888 km (551 miles)
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