To La Rochelle

May 22, 2008 to May 23, 2008

Another pair of days with remarkably few specific memories beyond what these few photos remind us of. Looking back on this part of the tour especially, I have some regrets now. One is that I didn’t keep a journal of course. I did at least keep a daily distance and elevation log, so I know where we spent each night.

Another regret is that we have so few photos. This tour was a memorable disappointment, camera-wise. I carried a new camera on this tour, a Canon point and shoot, that either was defective or had a defective operator. A large percentage of the photos had serious quality issues - poor exposure, odd coloration - a fact that I didn’t discover until we returned home and I unloaded images from the SD cards I’d accumulated. This is the sort of problem that would not occur now, when I can unload and review everything at the end of each day. On the plus side, I was able to return the camera and exchange it for a Panasonic, but that was small comfort.

And finally, looking at these photos and looking back at the route we followed, I regret not having taken more time. This is another of those tours where nearly every day was a traveling day, and distances were often long by our standards. If we ever return, we’ll slow down considerably.

For the record though, from our skeletal log we at least know that on the first night we stayed in Saint-Georges de Didonne after a 58 mile day (otherwise, I don’t think we’d even know for sure where we spent the first night); and the next day we biked 68 miles to La Rochelle, passing through a string of coastal villages and miles of fine coastline with hardly a photo to show for it. C’est dommage.