clairedavieswriter

Last night at Le Jardin, a convivial vegetarian restaurant in a quiet back street, frequented solely by foreigners, we enjoyed our first real vegetables since leaving home…

During dinner, the brief window of good weather slammed shut.
This morning dawned to a clap of thunder directly overhead, and torrential rain. After breakfast at the Cafe du Commerce, which was deserted apart from us, the staff and a sparrow scrounging for croissant crumbs, we repaired to Biarritz’s bustling covered market, where we could have built a gourmet menu but contented ourselves with two well-stuffed sandwiches for lunch. While browsing, we also dodged a couple of brutal showers, but there was no avoiding our destiny. Between Biarritz and Bayonne, where the zebra crossings gave a nod to the most popular local pastime…

… we were caught in a truly biblical deluge. It came at us from every angle: from above, in the shape of ping pong ball sized raindrops, from below, as the road rapidly turned into a lake, and from the side, in the backwash from passing vehicles. Our shoes, which had withstood almost all the rain thrown at us to date, had no answer to the water invading via our socks. In less than a minute, our feet were swimming. But happily, that was the last time we got wet today.
Leaving the imposing villas of Biarritz and Cap Breton behind, we passed strings of campsites and holiday villages, and beaten up campervans draped with wetsuits and surfboards. Then, miraculously, the sun came out:

… and for the first time since Bilbao I dispensed with my waterproof shorts (an inspired last-minute purchase from Alpkit which I can’t recommend highly enough). After the hilly pain in Spain, the plains in France were a breeze – or they would have been without the, ahem, breeze blowing in our faces. But even so, the Vélodyssée was a dream to ride on.

At first glance, Les Landes aren’t the most fascinating landscape to travel through, but at the pace of a bicycle you have the luxury of time to spot umbrella pines, oaks, ilex and hawthorn, along with flowering dog rose, cistus, broom and honeysuckle. Larks twittered overhead, swallows swooped across our path and for the first time we heard the chattering of crickets.

About halfway though our journey, Colin’s derailleur started playing up. As luck would have it, we soon found a bike shop where a young Yannick Noah lookalike quickly resolved the problem – and refused to take any payment for his trouble.

The last 20k were a bit like a tragically slow time trial, along a road as straight as an arrow, through a corridor of pines:

But it gave us time to reflect on the sights we’d passed en route. As a British-built machine, Bernard could relate to this:

George Orwell might have appreciated this graffiti:

While I did a double take at this sign (or is it just me?):

Tonight, Jon, Bernard, Colin and I are all together in a family room. I hope the lads don’t fight over the remote while we’re out to dinner.