So our time at the farm has unfortunatley come to an end. Our hosts have been the most welcoming, down to earth people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. We've spent just shy of 2 months at the farm and we wont be forgetting it any time soon. Today (May 31st) was our proposed leaving day, but due to strange weather patterns (rain) over here we are staying an extra night. As a result, tomorrow will be the official day we leave the farm and make our way back to the UK. Its approximatley 900 miles to the ferry port and we expect to cycle that in a couple of weeks.
This past week has been a real highlight of the trip; my 22nd birthday was marked by a visit from my girlfriend. I managed to assemble a 'highlights' package of my time at the farm and it was a real pleasure to show her around my current surroundings.
The 'birthday week' started with a nice tour of the farm and then a trip to our closest town of Mirepoix. I've taken for granted how nice this town is, as me and sam usually bypass the town centre and head straight to the beer section of SUPER-U. A historic centre is surrounded by sprawling suburbs with a backdrop of the Pyranees mountain range. We had a nice walk around in the afternoon and then got back to the farm to milk the goats!
Then for my birthday! No big deal, but I turned 22 last thursday. In stark contrast to my birthday last year, I spent the day on the beach at La Grande Motte resort after a few nice birthday suprises in the morning. My 21st birthday last year was spent in my university library stressing over unfinished assignments.
My birthday bundle including 2 amazing books from the Willis clan.
We then had a nice birthday meal, it was only right to have a steak and beer to make me feel more masculine than I actually am. Its nice at the moment to be able to pull off wearing a vest in public. Usually I look like a tool, but I could see all the middle aged men staring with envy.
I'm not really a fan of birthdays, I just see it as another day, but this one will stand out for me. A perfect day.
On friday we had a nice drive into Carcassone, where I failed as a tour guide and managed to get us lost for an hour looking for the historic city. We eventually got there and had a nice look around. I was keen to show laura a chocolate shop where they sold huge slabs of chocolate that I'd seen before and wanted to buy one. At first the shop owner misheard me and picked up a small bit (instead of the SLAB I desired) and weighed it out. "Nine euros fifty sir". I was shocked. "How much?" Nine... euros.... fifty. At that price a slab would have weighed about 50 euros. I was so close to just walking off but my politeness prevailed and I reluctantly paid the man. Lesson learnt.
The weekend was then spent in the great outdoors, on saturday a beautifully refreshing swim in a nearby river, then on sunday I took Laura up to the top of a mountain!
A lot colder than it looks!
The mountain climb was certainly a challenge for us both: A real fitness test for laura and a mental test for me to keep her motivated to keep going! Laura isn't exactly 'unfit' (she's doing the great north swim next month) but I had the advantage of having cycled over 1200 miles to get here and the muscles in my thighs and calves were able to make this kind of exercise relatively straight forward. But it is an altitude gain of several thousand feet and can be a real strain on the legs. I can proudly report that we both made it to the top, despite Lauras 'jelly legs'. The views are incredible. Pictures really don't do it justice but here are a nice selecion anyway.
Drinking from a stream!
Sweaty Laura.
Amazing 6 foot snow mound.
At the top!
Very proud of her.
That about summarizes a great week of the trip. We're very excited to get back on the road and start heading back to the UK. But we will be leaving this dog behind.....
Seeing as this week I have nothing interesting or blog-worthy to report, I've decided to do a rather special blog. It was an idea I had as I was going through my ipod: If I had to pick 10 songs that would define me, what would they be? Its a concept that I thought would be easy, just pick a few songs from my favourite artists, but then I started thinking of songs that had a lot of significance to me; consequently every song here has a story to tell. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be (thats what she said).
Apologies to anybody who just thought this blog would just be about cycling; this will be fully resumed in about 2 weeks when we will be cycling from Mirepoix (my current location) back to the UK. But for now, just listen to some wonderful music.
I was first introduced to Bon Iver by my friend Dan Scouse about 3-4 years ago. Since then he has gained massive popularity, primarily due to the fact that his debut album is incredible. He recorded every song on his own in a log cabin in Wisconsin. I listened to the album every night for about 6 months with Laura by my side.
Buddy Holly was my childhood hero. I was enthralled by his rise to fame, his success and then the tragedy. It was the first proper album I ever owned and Rave on was one of my favourite tracks of his.
Its hard not to love David Bowie, and I could have chosen about 20 different songs of his. But I recently heard this song at the end of the documentary: The Cove. I've never appreciated the lyrics so much and it gave me an overwhelming desire to help environmental causes, something I will pursue well into the future.
This song reminds me of the best 3 months of my life. It was constantly played in America while I was working with American conservation experience. Many of the projects involved long drives to different national parks and this song became legendary throughout the ranks at ACE. I still remember a drunken 'A capella' version of the song by about 15 of us in Flagstaff brewery which brought the bar to a complete standstill.
I've no idea why I became so obsessed with this song, but it represents the only music rebellion era I've ever had in my life. I used to love coming home drunk to this song and putting it on full blast to the dismay of my university housemates. I still remember my friend Adam screaming at me to turn off 'that shite'. And he can really scream. I retaliated by turning it up even louder. It makes me laugh knowing that this song represents the music rebel in me.
I'm a newcomer to classical music, but there's no better place to start. 'The planets' is a series I can listen to endlessly, and Jupiter is my favourite. It needs no more explanation, however, this particular performance is absolute perfection. I love how the conductor becomes overwhelmed with emotion after about 3 minutes.
Motown is the ultimate in feel good music. I think this is about as good as it gets. I defy anybody not to feel happy while this song is on.
Just in case things were getting too happy, here's a classic which reminds me of one specific day I had in America. Me and a few friends from ACE were in a whiskey bar in Flagstaff at about 1pm on a tuesday. Their jukebox was incredible and we put this on; the mood suddenly changed and one of my friends started getting really weird and insulting everybody for no reason. She got really personal and it actually made me question whether I was a good person or not. It was strange because before that moment I had had nothing but respect for her, but with this song in the background I can still remember that moment so well, I had never been insulted to my face like that before, and I don't think I ever will be in the future. Then later in the day, by complete coincidence this song came on at a bar we were at and we all sang and danced like nothing had ever happened.
This song speaks so many truths about how I've started to feel in life.
Possibly the greatest song of all time. Its also tops my 'most played' chart on my ipod so it must have some significance to me. It never fails to give me shivers and despite what I'm ever busy with at the time, I always have to stop and just listen to the last few minutes with my eyes closed.
Well that brings it to 10. It was too hard to pick out a single track from Bob Dylan, but otherwise I think its a pretty good list.
A strange week on the farm; unlike England, we've had pretty crap weather all week so we've been tied down to the farm. I still haven't got round to doing the 100 mile bikeride, but it'll be soon. So with the bad weather we've just been watching films and reading books, and drinking too much beer. However, on the one day we were blessed with sunshine we made the most of it and decided to climb a mountain.
We think it was called Mount Ferrata, but this is unconfirmed. It was certainly a major peak in the French Pyrenees mountain range. It took about an hour to drive to the trail head and then we were off on another mini-adventure.
This was taken before we realised just how much snow there would be at the top - hence the shorts and t-shirt combination. However, I also wanted to keep my 100% mountain climb/shorts combination in check. It would be un-English to even attempt a mountain climb in anything more than shorts. So off we went.
The first couple of hours were awesome; nice sunshine, clear skies, wonderful views and not a single trace of human impact on this most beautiful of landscapes.
I'm not too sure what I was trying to achieve with this pose, its fairly reminiscent of Rocky? Anyway, this picture also gives a preview of the type of terrain we would have to face to reach the peak. The peak we reached was actually twice as big and scary as shown above!
The hike got gradually harder and colder as we went on. The air had a noticeable chill the longer we went on, despite the constant sunshine. Although I didn't notice it getting thinner like I had on my previous climb of Mount Humphreys, AZ.
Once we passed the treeline the snow became a lot more prominent and also meant that it was difficult to stick to the trail. I had one hairy moment when I attempted to cross a big mound of snow that had covered the trail on a steep shoulder. The snow was quite icy and slippery and with a fairly big drop if I were to slip. I made it half way across when my foot ever so slightly slipped and my heart went a bit funny. It was the type of mountaineering that would usually require full snow gear with an axe, harnesses and spiked boots, and here I was with shorts and a t-shirt, foolishly trying to make this crossing. I decided to turn back using the imprints I had made in the snow/Ice. Instead we had to climb up a steep patch of dense vegetation to go around the snow mound (on the way back I actually fell down this steep section but I managed to grip onto some heather to stop any momentum I could have gained and fallen any further down the mountain side). I think it was roughly around this point when I turned to Sam and said that this is pretty hardcore stuff.
After a tricky and exhausting final section we finally reached the peak at about 2pm. Its a great feeling to reach the summit of a mountain. You literally feel on top of the world and its a feeling I'll keep chasing into future.
We met a welshman at the top who lived in the South of France, he'd done the climb a few times before and recommended a few different routes back, but as we were about to start the descent, thick clouds drew in so we figured it would be safer to stick to the same route back down. About 5 minutes before we met him we had actually said how good it would be to have a beer to celebrate. Then as we were chatting to him he whipped out a beer and said: 'I never do a mountain climb without a beer'. Bastard. At least it gives me an excuse to do it again.
So a real highlight of the trip in a fairly uneventful week. We did manage to get the day off to watch the Royal wedding though, and as 'lovely' as it was, it kind of annoyed me. I'd forgotten just how religious weddings can be. As the Archbishop droned on I forgot that 2 billion of the worlds population were watching, this has probably undone the combined work of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens in one swift move, and reaffirmed many peoples belief in Myth.
The 'birthday week' started with a nice tour of the farm and then a trip to our closest town of Mirepoix. I've taken for granted how nice this town is, as me and sam usually bypass the town centre and head straight to the beer section of SUPER-U. A historic centre is surrounded by sprawling suburbs with a backdrop of the Pyranees mountain range. We had a nice walk around in the afternoon and then got back to the farm to milk the goats!
