A Reminder

Friday 25.05.2012  Sateney – Seurre  65.2 k

I may be that, today, I am suffering from ant poisoning. Instead of water from my water bottle, I had treated myself to a can of lemonade for the night. I left it just beyond the zip, by my head, where I could reach it easily; which I did. In the light of the morning, I thought to finish the can, only to find that the ants had taken possession and many had drowned in the process thus providing me, no doubt, with an extra dose of protein. That being the case, the croissants and bread I had ordered for this morning were going to provide the antidote. Mmm…we lounged in the sunshine, already hot, drank coffee and discussed the day ahead. We have now become what I would like to call, casually organised in the morning, so in such manner, we pushed our bikes and packed trailers across the grass to the hardcore. The squishing noise that I thought was grass brushing tyres, was in fact, a flat! So, from casually organised, we became casually competent (actually the ‘we’ refers mainly to Alan). I passed the tools like any good theatre nurse and helped to unpack and repack the trailer. We were very grateful to the nice Dutch gentleman who came to offer his tools as the repair was completed! Only half an hour later we rode away into ………………………………NOSTRIL WIND. Now, Alan said I was not to make mention of my favourite topic as our readers must be tiring of hearing about it. BUT today it was impossible to ignore. It snorted at between 20 and 25 kms. This is a lot of pushing you backwards power especially when hauling Sherman and Herman. Did we let it get us down? Yes! After 65 kms we were well and truly bu……ed. The compensation was the sunshine and the beautiful countryside if we had only been able to lift our heads to view it. We did, however, lift them long enough to admire a memorial commemorating the shooting down of an allied plane in the second world war. Not only was the date mentioned but also each one of the crew who were four British, two Canadian, one New Zealander and one Australian. We have their names and feel sufficiently moved to try and search for more information later. I hope Mr. Technician will include the photo on this blog.

Having battled our way to Seurre, we set about following the map in order to find a campsite of which there were supposed to be two. Mmmm……usual story. Either our navigation is crap or the sites have moved. On arriving at a point on our map which suggested we should be welcomed to a site with restaurant, swimming pool and all the knobs and whistles, we found…………….a piece of waste ground, a young man with two very large dogs and a car kicking up gravel from a racing start at the top of a small slope. So, no campsite. Young man with two dangerous dogs was not a gangster but a very helpful young man who directed us to the campsite which he held in high regard. He was nonetheless somewhat nonplussed that we should enjoy riding bikes especially such a long way; he preferred his car. Thanking him profusely we retraced some distance, crossed the bridge as instructed and behold a campsite. Not quite the luxury we had come to expect, in fact no luxury at all. And no toilet paper. Still we could get the tent up, have a shower and cook another one pot meal. Alan worrying about scurvy as fruit is so difficult to carry without it getting squashed! Nice German couple camping alongside who were on their way to the Med pedalling bikes with battery driven motors. They reckoned they were good on the hills, but with 27 kilos of extra weight…… Apart from the road and the continual bird scarers every 30 seconds, it was fine. I am getting so I can sleep through anything and Al can’t hear it anyway. Off to Dole tomorrow for a rest.