Category: Bike Touring
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Crossing into Spain!
France, with its familiar language and culture, is an easy place for Chris and I to travel. Once we left Brittany, the coast route was mostly flat and the temperatures perfect for cycling. But today we cross into Spain, and need to retrieve our Spanish phrases and pronunciation, and also cross the Pyrenees. The mountains…
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Three days: From Bordeaux to Bayonne
We left Bordeaux under cloudy skies, but the sun prevailed as we navigated back to the coast and the Vélodyssée. We were on regular roads for a good deal of the trip back to the coast, and it was OK to not be weaving between people along the coastal paths. As we got closer to…
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A day in Bordeaux
The day dawned sunny and warm but not hot. We did laundry, caught up on the last few days of the blog and then went out at the crack of noon. We decided to follow a city walk from an app we’ve used a few times called GPSMyCity that works pretty well. And so, we…
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From La Rochelle to Bordeaux: 180 miles!
When we were riding along the great rivers of Europe on the EV6 last year, we passed through small historic and picturesque towns every day. Here on the Atlantique coast, we are routed mostly along the coast or along sequestered paths for bikes. There are occasionally some small fishing villages, but mostly it’s the larger…
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Into La Rochelle!
We headed into La Rochelle, to spend a couple days exploring. Neither Chris nor I have ever been there. The ride into La Rochelle from La Tranche-sur-Mer was uneventful. Most of it was along small road and canals, quiet and sometimes even monotonous. The most exciting parts were crossing over and under bridges and locks…
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St Hilaire-de-Riez to La Tranche-sur-Mer: Heading towards La Rochelle
Today had many similarities yesterday, crossing more of the Marais waterways, riding along canals and shallow waterways, and also passing through a busy beach area. This evening, we also got given the “last campsite available”, but no one arrived after us and got another “last campsite.” We had called around to see what was available…
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Heading into lovely weather, through the Marais Breton
It was a good decision to make yesterday a short day. The wind was howling and there was no real reason that we needed to hurry along. The morning brought blue skies and minimal wind, which brought smiles to our lips. We are heading into the Marais Breton, a reclaimed marsh/wetland that covers 36,000 hectares…
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A short day in wind and rain: St. Michel-Chef-Chef to Les Moutiers-en-Retz
Today’s forecast was for strong wind from the WSW, up to 30MPH steady, accompanied by rain. So, we decided to make it a short day, fighting the headwind in the morning and then enjoying a bit of tailwind in the afternoon but avoiding going too far. We ended up staying in the small town of…
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Into Nantes and out again
Our bikes spent the night in the garbage room in Lorient, and then they (and we) took the train from Lorient to Nantes. We stayed in a place near the train station that was in kind of sketchy area, but it was inexpensive. I guess we are cheap. We had visited Nantes last year, but…
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Bikes and gear across the continents, compared
We’ve been on three chapters of this trip, including the EV6 across Europe to Slovakia, our trip to NZ, Vietnam and Cambodia, and our current trip mostly on the EV45 and EV1 from Brittany to Madrid and beyond. For the first trip across Europe, we took our normal road touring bikes, meant to be ridden…