Bike Hippies The adventures of two UK cyclists on a bike and a trike Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 17 0 5 3840

Articles from Bike Hippies

Tuesday October 9th - whee! 2007-11-18 05:10:00 After Monday's climbing, it was time for a lot of down.It was a cold night up at 1100m, I had to pull my sleeping bag right around me and was very reluctant to get out of it the next morning.I left and followed the Espezonnette to Lanarce, where the pain au chocolats were perfect. They were big, suitably flaky on the outside, fresh on the inside and made with good chocolate.There was little choice but to get back onto the N102 for a bit, unless I wanted to go many miles out of the way. It looked bad on the map, as the turning off the road was at the top of Col de la Chavade and I am very averse to big climbs on big roads, but the road was quiet and the climb quite gentle. I turned off the road, and so began the real climbs for the day.The road reached 1435m at the top of Col du Pendu, my maximum altitude for the trip. A small group of wind turbines gently rotated at the top, the only ones I had seen on the trip, and I passed a Nordic ski station.After dropping back down to 1100m, I pa ...

Monday October 8th - up 2007-11-17 06:16:00 This was the day of uphill - I started at about 500m and reached a maximum of 1330m near the end of the day, with lots of ups and downs in between. Mostly ups.After a couple of days of more interesting and rocky landscapes, today was a return to farmland, which was pleasant enough but nothing special. If it had been a nicer day, it may have been easier to appreciate the far-reaching views on the climb out of Langeac, but as it was it was too cloudy, hazy and dull a day to get much out of it.I passed through lots of very small, shabby and quite poor-looking villages and small towns. It was Monday, so nothing was open and I failed to acquire my daily pain au chocolat. I ran out of "snacky cakes" (biscuits, cakes, etc that I munch on for energy) and started to get a bit hungry. At Bains I found an open "restaurant" with a very limited menu and had a horrible slimy croque monsieur, which at least kept my belly quiet for a couple of hours. It was a bit like being in Spain but with no grocer ...

Sunday October 7th - Allier 2007-11-16 04:32:00 I was a bit knackered from Saturday's climbs so on Sunday decided to take in some slightly bigger roads and towns to get in some distance without overdoing it. It made a surprisingly nice change.After a climb out of the valley of Champeix and over a small ridge, I dropped into the valley of Couze de Pavin, a small tributary of the Allier river, which eventually feeds into the Loire. I passed through Perrier, which was very pretty but is not where the water comes from. (Volvic, however, comes from the town of Volvic which I didn't visit but is a few miles north of the Puy-de-Dome mountain).I skirted around the outside of Issoire, which had cycle lanes but the road surfaces were quite badly kept and bumpy. After that I dropped south towards St. Germain-Lembron and crossed over the Allier into the Haute-Loire departement, which is where many of the Loire's tributaries start out.I arrived in St. Florine at precisely mid-day and was greeted by air-raid sirens. At the time I thought maybe ...

Saturday October 6th - Puy-de-Dôme 2007-11-15 04:48:00 I was going to take on the Puy-de-Dôme today. Awoken by church bells at 7, I was gone by 8:30, descending into Pontgibaud with the mountains now visible on the horizon. I made another attempt to get campsite information, only to find that the tourist office had, in the finest of French traditions, decided to close for the day.I followed the small roads out of Pontgibaud, ascending the Col de Ceyssat which was beautiful and autumny with lovely views of the approaching mountain, but was also long and hard, taking me to 1078m. A creperie stood at the top, which is a fine place to build a creperie, but foolishly I decided not to stop. The Puy-de-Dôme ascends to a height of 1465m, and the top of the col was right next to the mountain so I felt I was part-way up already... unfortunately it's never quite that easy, as the road then dropped down again quite a long way before reaching the foot of the summit.So, who won the match of me versus the volcano? Well, nobody really. The volcano simp ...

Friday October 5th - little yellow storms 2007-11-14 06:17:00 My parting gift to Frances and George was two bulbs of garlic and about 900g of sugar. Being alone, and wanting to travel light, a single bulb and 100g of sugar were more than enough, but it's impossible to buy in such small quantities. I hope they appreciated the generous donation anyway.I filled up on baguette, jam, warm croissants, coffee and orange juice at breakfast. I was running dangerously low on porridge supplies and had yet to see any in the shops, but Frances assured me that it was available in some larger supermarkets, and should become more available as I got further south.One of the topics of discussion the previous evening had been the Puy-de-Dôme, a huge dormant volcano in the Auvergne region. A road leads all the way up to the summit, from which apparently the views are spectacular, and the mountain has occasionally been part of the Tour de France. I decided I had to climb it.I entered the Puy-de-Dôme departement and headed for Pontaumur to try to get campsite lists ...

Thursday October 4th - la Grande Maison 2007-11-13 05:30:00 Dinner clearly wasn't enough, as I woke up very hungry at 2am, and had to munch on the last of the ginger oat biscuits to silence my complaining stomach before I was able to fall asleep again. I was woken at various points in the night by nearby horses making funny little horsey sighing noises (brrrr!). Conveniently, just enough rain fell in the night to make the tent nice and wet and heavy the next morning when I packed up. Nobody had come round to take payment for the campsite, so I slipped 5euro under the reception door as I left.I started out by taking the wrong road out of la Celle Dunoise, which was at least in vaguely the right direction, but later on I took another wrong turn back onto the originally intended road. Sometimes these mistakes are worth making, as I ended up on a fantastic descent into a beautiful gorge near le Bourg d'Hem, which was the best bit of the day. There were quite a few ups and downs throughout the day, and my legs handled it quite well.I was running l ...

Wednesday October 3rd - Creuse 2007-11-12 05:05:00 The Creuse river was still, cool and beautiful as I crossed over it first thing in the morning. I left the river and embarked on my hilliest day yet. The uphills were long, mostly gentle, winding and slightly sweat-inducing. The downs were long and fantastic.Having just left Centre and entered the Creuse departement of Limousin, I had run out of campsite information so stopped at Dun-le-Palestel and waited for the tourist office to open from its lunch break. (In addition to Mondays, the French are also keen on closing their businesses at every other opportunity as well, most notably for at least two hours at lunchtime).Whilst waiting, I called dgym from a nearby phonebox. He was able to call me back via Voip, which was much cheaper than any other means of phone call we had tried but the quality of our home internet connection made it harder to hear what he was saying. By that point I had given up all hope of my international SIM finding a network ever again, and my mobile situation was ...

Tuesday October 2nd - Brenne 2007-11-11 04:16:00 I was still really tired after Monday's long distance (70 miles may not be a lot for some riders but it's a long day for me) and spent Tuesday crossing the Brenne national park over the course of twenty fairly flat miles. The Brenne region looked quite interesting on the map, with a dense clustering of lakes and marshes, but in reality it was hard to see much of it due to the flat terrain and roadside trees and hedges, and I only got one or two glimpses of lake.I had lunch in a restaurant at St. Gaultier, a 10euro menu which was not great and slightly lacking in vegetables, but a vast improvement over my own cooking, and you can't really go wrong when there is wine included in the price. The waiter talked to me in broken English about where I was going, and, like most people, was a little surprised that I was going all the way to Marseilles. I was approaching the half-way point across France, and wondered how far I would have to get before people stopped being surprised!I stayed in ...

Monday October 1st - mouillée 2007-11-10 05:01:00 Somewhere along the line since our last trip to France, I had managed to completely forget something about the French - they like to close things on Mondays even more than they enjoy closing them on Sundays. Somehow I had not noticed this last Monday when I arrived, probably because I arrived into a big town, stopped at a big supermarket and didn't pay attention to much else.At Azay-le-Rideau I was kept awake, on and off, until midnight. There was a concert going on in the nearby stadium (campings municipales are often located next to sports grounds) and a couple decided to set up their tent nearby and giggle and chat until late. I could hear bunnies munching grass outside the tent, or so I thought at the time, it may just have been the cats that I caught trying to get into my rubbish bag early the next morning.Apparently, I left just after dawn - it was one of those grey days when it's hard to tell when sunrise actually happened, and the sun didn't actually make an appearance unti ...

Sunday September 30th - Loire 2007-11-09 06:26:00 It was another cold morning, and again I had trouble getting out of bed. The day was a little warmer, although I think at this stage I had got far enough south to escape the mild and rainy oceanic climate of the north coast, but not far enough south for the warm Mediterranean sun.I emerged from the tent to see a lovely red sunrise peeking through the trees, unfortunately I wasn't up quickly enough to see it fully before the day arrived.It being Sunday, I picked up pain au chocolats and lunch baguette at the first opportunity, and headed out of town.The landscapes started to change. I saw very few cows, lots more dead sunflowers, and the first grape vines. Men with guns and dogs were out in the fields hunting down rabbits for Sunday lunch. A scared-looking bunny rushed past me at the side of the road. One of the hunters flagged me down for a chat. It was windy, we were separated by a roadside ditch, and my ears weren't very well tuned into the French language at that point, so I could ...

Saturday September 29th - slow day 2007-11-08 05:02:00 It was one of those cold mornings when I really didn't want to get out of the sleeping bag. I left just after nine, the tent was covered in dew and I tried to dry off as much as possible but it was still wet and heavy when I rolled it up. I was a bit disheartened about the phone and distracted by trying to get a decent signal and battery charge. I bought some more string with which to tie the solar panel to the front of my handlebar. Fortunately it was quite a sunny day so I was able to get some charge, but still couldn't get a signal.My legs felt quite slow - there are always bad days, and this was one. I followed the cycle path from Luche-Pringe to Le Lude. Fortunately, this one was paved and I was able to make good progress, although it was impeded by annoying barriers which were unnavigable by a fully loaded bike, and had to push it through.I found a "cybercentre" at le Lude, it was closed for lunch so and waited for it to open. In the meantime, I went to the local Lidl and stock ...

Friday September 28th - squashed hedgehogs 2007-11-07 04:31:00 After a brief phone conversation with Dgym on Thursday night (it was brief due to lack of phone battery due to lack of sun) I put my head down shortly before dark, and promptly became concerned for my sleep given that (a) I'd gone and parked my tent right under a street light and the tent was filled with orange glow, (b) I could hear lots of people-noise in the street and (c) I could hear lots of yippy dogs yipping away. I got a couple of hours' disturbed sleep and then at 10pm the light went out and everything quietened down, even the dogs (after all, this wasn't Portugal!) and I slept pretty well until the light came back on at 6am.I got up, cooked porridge, packed the tent away and rode off into a lovely orange sunrise. I ate a pain au chocolat for dgym and a choc chip brioche for me at Montsurs. I passed through Bois des Vallons and then the pretty mediaeval fortified town of St. Suzanne, before heading off down the scenic and slightly indirect route through the Foret de la Gran ...

Thursday September 27th - forests 2007-11-06 03:10:00 Thursday marked my departure from the sea, and the start of a long journey across the continent towards the Mediterranean.The weather was still a bit grey and miserable, with very little actual rain but not enough sunshine to enjoy lunch by or by which to adequately charge my phone.The morning landscapes consisted mostly of unremarkable flattish stuff. I left Normandy and entered Brittany for a short while, crossed the pleasant Foret de Fougeres and then continued into the Mayenne region of Pays de la Loire.I passed lots of farmland and cows. I startled one cow, which caused it to start bucking around and charging in my general direction, and I was very glad of the electric fence between us. After this incident I would take a lot more care around cows, trying not to ride past them too fast, and crossing to the far side of the road whenever possible.Later there was a nice gentle winding climb up into the Mayenne forest, followed by a nice fast straight road to Andouillé, where I camped ...

Wednesday September 26th - le Mont St Michel 2007-11-05 03:13:00 I decided to take Wednesday off to visit Mont St Michel, and it was well worth it. I walked along the footpath on the mud flats, over to the not-quite-island that is the mountain, and into the narrow cobbled streets of the town.The abbey proved an excellent way to spend a morning, with its fantastic views over the surrounding mud flats from the terraces and self-guided tour of the church, cloisters, refectory and other atmospheric and beautifully constructed rooms.The abbey had to be designed around the steep rocky slopes of the Mount, and it is an impressive feat that the 13th century architects and builders were able to create this carefully-crafted three-storey building around the huge granite pyramid that is Mont St Michel, supported by strong buttresses and designed so that the upper layers are as light as possible.It started to get a bit drizzly when I came out of the abbey at about 11. I tried to get my first crepe au citron but nobody was serving crepes till lunchtime so I star ...

Tuesday September 25th - approaching the Mont 2007-11-04 05:08:00 After the previous evening's car chase, I wasn't quite sure which side of Coutances I was on, but after a little map-and-compass workI decided I was on the west side, which was the right side to be on. I left at about 9:30am, having slept a lot to make up for the previous night. It took me about two hours to get up, make porridge, pack and get going, but this was my first time doing it alone and I did cut that down to about an hour and a half for most of the rest of the trip.There was a broken bridge at Pont de la Roque, destroyed during the Second World War in an attempt to cut off the Germans. I started to notice signs to town campsites, which I hadn't really done on Monday but decided it was good to get into the habit. I got my pain au chocolat, and had one for dgym too.The weather was very changeable, the very definition of "sunny intervals". My raincoat stayed on as it wasn't too hot, but the hood was constantly up and down. I spent most of the day watching the skies. When it ...