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Garry McGivern’s Spanish bike ride Thursday 14th-April-2011 Daimus to Benicasim. 102 miles. I started the day off cycling through orange groves. It made a pleasant change from all the polytunnels I’ve seen so far.

While cycling along today, I started to think (don’t worry, I don’t think too often!) about last night’s accommodation. The whole of last night had only cost me fifteen euros. That was for my pitch, a three-course meal, with a bottle of wine and three beers to finish the evening off! I’ll be surprised if I beat that on this trip but pleasantly surprised if I do.

I forgot to mention in last night’s blog, or rather I’d fallen asleep after my bottle of wine. My old friends, the prostitutes, are back. Remember them from my 2009 ride through Spain on the road to Denia? Well, I came across them again, and again it was around Denia, which was a real pain, as far as I was concerned!

I was busting for a pee, but every time I came across a bush, a prostitute would be standing nearby, waiting for her next client. It took me ages before I found a bush with no prostitute near. And even when I did, I was nervous that I might find the prostitute busy with her work behind it! Thankfully I didn’t!

I think I’ve had nearly every type of road today. I started off first thing this morning on quiet country roads. Going through Valencia, it was busy city roads, then coming out of Valencia, I ended up on the motorway. And as usual, I couldn’t find the right road. Luckily, I wasn’t on the motorway for long. I finished the day off cycling along a cycle path.

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Garry McGivern’s France bicycle tour, Friday 23rd-July-2010 Herbignac to Camors. 70 miles. Bloody wind, we’ve had a strong headwind for the past three days. It’s now starting to get rather boring. But then that’s the joys of cycling east-west against the prevailing winds.

Somebody thought it was a little chilly when we left camp at six-thirty this morning. And it wasn’t me. I would have thought Katrin would have been used to the cold. Don’t they have a lot of snow in Switzerland?

We decided to stick to the coast today and head to Port Navalo, where there is a ferry to Locmariaquer. Then from Locmariaquer, we turn north. But we were unsure if the ferry took bikes. It was unclear from what we could read in the Lonely Planet guidebook. So we stopped off on route at a tourist information shop. The lady in the shop was very helpful. (It also helps that Katrin speaks fluent French.) She also gave us a timetable and said yes, bikes were allowed on the ferry.

Quick

While looking at the timetable, we suddenly realised that the next ferry left in less than an hour, and there wasn’t another one for three hours. Bloody French and their two-hour lunch breaks! And we still had over twelve miles to cycle against the strong headwind. So it was head down and go for it.

We managed to make the ferry just in the nick of time. And after our dash to the ferry, we were both pretty knackered and only managed to cycle another twenty miles or so today. I guess we’ll just have to make up for the lack of miles cycled today, tomorrow.

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Garry McGivern’s France bicycle tour, Thursday 22nd-July-2010. Nantes to Herbignac. 78 miles. The day got off to a bad start. Katrin was struggling to get on her bike and fell off trying. I think she may have been suffering from our ninety-mile ride yesterday, which is much more than we had originally planned. At the start of our ride, we agreed to cycle between eighty and one hundred kilometres a day. (Fifty to sixty miles) with me pushing for the higher mileage. So ninety miles was a rather long day. Luckily Katrin never hurt herself and laughed it off.

We only had a short ride this morning before we had to catch a ferry across to the other side of the Loire. We arrived at the jetty just as the ferry had left. But it was okay as it was only a twenty-minute turnaround. As we waited for the ferry to come back, we could see it struggling to come across. I just thought it was the current, but when it finally landed at the jetty, we discovered there was a problem. And they needed to fix it before returning. Thankfully whatever the problem was only took three-quarters of an hour to fix, and we were soon on the south bank of the Loire.

The End

We arrived at the end of the Loire valley at Saint-Brevin-Les-Pins at around midday, after Katin took us on a detour. I could see the “Pont Saint-Nazier” in the distance, which is at the end of the Loire. One minute it was on my left. The next minute it was on my right. I would have just cycled direct.

After getting our photo taken at the marker for the start of the Loire valley ride, we had to cross the “Pont Saint-Nazier”, which I was a little nervous for Katrin. But I needn’t have worried. I remembered what the bridge was like when I crossed it in 2008, very busy, narrow with a strong side wind. Katrin is a confident rider and was fine. We are now heading north westerly along the coast towards Brittany.

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