Introduction - France's Southwest Corner - Tandem Loop - June 2018 - CycleBlaze

Introduction

This spring's ride needed to be a slim one. We had a visiting child and partner at the beginning of June, and had a trip to Italy scheduled for the end of June. So we had to squeeze this trip into the time available.

With that constraint, and because we like to ride from home when we can, I chose to explore some countryside that was close-by but not super-familiar. There were several interesting features and sites within a 1 hour drive from home that we had either not visited or had not visited enough.

One of these was the Gorge de Galamus. This is a deep cleft in the earth through which a stream and, improbably, a road wander. We had visited many times but I'm always driving the car and this time I wanted to be able to stop (which you can't do in a car) and oggle the beauty of the place.

Another was the Canal de la Robine. This canal crosses through the middle of an "etang", a large estuary off of the Mediterranean just south of Narbonne.

I also wanted to check out the Canal du Midi between Carcassonne and Narbonne and see whether the biking was as bad as people had said.

So a loop tour from home was planned. Some care was needed, since we'd be crossing some fairly unpopulated country and tourist facilities are thin on the ground.

The route
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Our equipment was unchanged from previous trips, except for a new navigation system. On this trip, we would be using the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt for turn-by-turn navigation. As explained in previous introductions, I plan our trips using RideWithGPS. The Wahoo Elemnt offers instant synchronization with the routes I plan.

We were back on our tandem Two'sday for this trip. We had the rear wheel rebuilt by a local shop and a test ride proved that everything was in good shape. Well, it wasn't really. But more about that later.

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