Just a quick update before we can get stuck into an action packed week on the road; we are currently in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its unbelievably beautiful (go on.... have a look on google images). We've had a rough day today, Sam has been having troubles with his bike and another spoke broke earlier on today so we had to make a dash to get to a city. I must give an advanced warning that this is will be a long blog post, but its full of incident and I urge the reader to follow it through! Enjoy!
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| My wonderful Dawes Galaxy chilling next to a tank in Bastogne! |
After a well needed couple of days rest we were back on track and managed to get out of Luxembourg City by midday after abusing the free breakfast once again. We figured we could easily get into France by the end of the day and pick a spot to camp for the night.
Our first impressions of France were good; when crossing into a different European country (in the West) there’s rarely any fuss or immediate difference that we notice, it’ll be gradual differences that sneak in when you cycle through the villages and towns and begin to notice the change in culture.
The rural area of France seemed very, very quiet. Villages are compact but lack any basic amenities that we needed. We must have cycled through 15 villages without seeing a shop as we were low on water. By about 5pm we still hadn’t found a shop to pick up any water and we were getting a bit nervous. We only needed a couple of litres to cook and wash with but it seemed crazy that no-where was open and our good initial impressions of France were quickly diminishing into ‘lazy French bastards... too lazy to even open a shop’. In all seriousness if any young entrepreneurs read this, set up a branch of shops, similar to a Costcutter, Spa etc, and base your shops in small, rural areas in France and you would make an absolute killing. You may ruin a quiet, localised village culture but you’d be rich.... so swings and roundabouts.
With daylight fading we eventually made it to a town which looked big enough on the map to almost certainly have some sort of shop or garage that would sell water... Nothing. We asked a man in the street if he knew where we could find water – didn’t speak a word of English. It was the first major language barrier we had noticed in the trip, so far through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, seemingly everyone knew some English. But we managed to get across that we needed water and he seemed disappointed that he couldn’t help us. So we cycled on into the dead town where nothing was open and it felt like impending doom was approaching, a great start to wild camping. Then out of nowhere, the guy we had spoken to 10 minutes ago had tracked us down in his car and frantically beeped at us holding a 2 litre bottle of water. What a hero! We thanked him as best we could in French: “MERCI MERCI” and then as he drove off we headed out of town to find somewhere to camp for the night.
All we were looking for was somewhere flat and out of sight, we managed to find this quite soon after the town, a grass area just off the road, hidden behind a few bushes with a dirt track leading to it. Just as we were about to pitch the tent we noticed a few white boxes stacked next to each other, then we realised it was a Bee farm! Thousands of them were swarming about; luckily we spotted them before we pitched up otherwise a nightmare would have fallen upon us. Finally, a few miles on we reached a wooded area that was perfect, so we made our way into the woods and pitched the tent.
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| Happy happy! |
The next 2 or 3 days went like a dream. The weather was unbelievable for mid-march. At the hottest part of the day it would reach around 24°C. The cyclists tan was taking its toll. Cycling shorts cling down so tightly onto the thigh that whatever skin is exposed will burn and then form a beautiful contrast between red and white. The Atkins’ nose also took a battering, wearing a helmet and sunglasses covers up the top part of my face, and then my beard protects the lower half, so it’s literally just the nose that is always in the sun. I looked such an idiot when I eventually looked into a mirror about 3 days after.
Wild camping also became easier and easier, after 5pm we would usually just start looking for potential spots and then have a quick look around to check the coast is clear, and then pitch the tent.We came across the Frenchs generosity of spirit once again when we failed in our quest to find water. We cycled into a small village and decided to ask anyone we could where we could find it. 2 minutes later we were having a discussion in French with an old lady who was gardening. I was embarrassed about the lack of French I could remember, it really was shocking. “Aqua?” we would say and then a spool of French would hit us and leave us blank. The only solution in this situation is to politely smile and nod. Anyway, she disappeared into her home and returned with 4 litres of water and a French baguette for us to take. How nice is that? It’s what I love about travelling; getting an understanding of the people and the cultures that go on behind the tourist environments that hide all of this.
By the 4th day in France we had made really good progress and managed to wild camp every night. However, cycling 6 hours in the sunshine everyday with no shower at the end of it starts to take its toll on the body. Some questionable smells arose from the sleeping bag in the morning so we thought it was time to hit a campsite. We lucked out when we did eventually find one: 4.50€ each, hot showers, electric next to the tent, perfect. The feeling of walking out into the sunshine after a shower that has cleaned 4 days worth of dirt and sweat is too good for words. We had also had a really tough day on the bike and had reached a town called Maiche, just west from the Swiss border.
One thing I did see that day is a fat woman falling flat on her face outside a supermarket. It’s not the type of thing which I would usually mention, but after the initial ‘woah, is she okay?’I realised that the reason she had fallen over was because she had too much food in her bag and couldn’t carry it properly. When she fell over packets of biscuits rolled out onto the path and I just felt really sad. I thought is that what her life has come too? She was probably mid 30’s, trying to get her daily fix of biscuits and cake, to then have it all crash down in front of her with dozens of people watching. Go for a run.
Food for us is interesting though, I think we’ve had Chile con carne for the last 6 nights in a row, but what a meal! I used to loathe this meal as a kid. I thought kidney beans were the devils unborn seeds. But it’s amazing; we can do the full meal for less than 2 Euros. It fills us up and keeps us nice and regular for the morning toilet fix. Aside from that, it’s been plenty of bread, salami, chocolate, fruit, and whatever else is cheap.
The next day brought our biggest challenge yet: A Swiss Mountain Climb! I’d been excited about this all week. I knew it would probably be the hardest days cycling of my life, but I didn’t care. It’s a cyclists dream and I was definitely up for the challenge.
The day started well, great weather once again and we crossed into Switzerland early on. Fittingly, the border between France and Switzerland was a lake. And then our ascent began. It would be 20km until we reached the snowy top, 20km of relentless winding roads that didn’t flatten out for a second. It sounds bizarre, but with this sort of cycling you need to get ‘in the zone’ and just focus on the pedalling and not to think for a moment about how hard it is. The second you feel sorry for yourself is when you’ll get distracted and stop for a drink and then take 10 minutes to get going again. The mind wanders so much with this type of cycling; I thought about my dogs, my girlfriend, future cycling trips, quotes from the office, and then everything and anything in between. Then, 2 hours into the ascent, Sam heard a twang from the back wheel and realised a spoke had snapped. This was a disaster. I’d been nervous about this happening to my bike as spokes are the one thing I literally have no idea how to repair. A wheel of a bike relies on the even pull and tension of every spoke and to fix it means hours of tweaking and tuning – if you know what you’re doing. Once again I felt bad for Sam as he’s not had the best of luck with his bike, just a day earlier one of the front frames had fallen off which took an hour to do a DIY job. So I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard another of his Northern rants about everything going wrong. All we could do was nervously limp in to the closest town and hope they had a bike shop with somebody who knew a little English and had a few hours spare. We managed to get there in about an hour and through a few locals directions we found a bike shop. Luckily, it was a tiny shop with a guy who could help, but he certainly did not speak English. We think he was Italian, and after assessing the situation all he could say was ‘Catastrophe!’ It did take him about 2 hours to fix and I don’t think I’ve ever been so bored in my life. Sam didn’t say a word as he was so nervous about his bike, and I just had to stand and wait in the tiniest and darkest bike shop in the whole of Switzerland.
Anyway, by about 4pm the bike was fixed much to our relief. We thought by reaching this town we had reached the top of the mountain. We hadn’t. It took about another hour to climb to the top, which as it turned out was a ski resort! There was snow at the top, but not enough for the resort to be fully functional. It was pretty incredible that we had cycled to an Alps ski resort if I do say so myself.
Now for the downhill! It’s difficult to express the sheer joy and adrenaline rush that occurs when cycling down a mountain through words. However, two words spring to mind that will not please my dad. Fucking amazing. We spent all day climbing, and then experienced the lows of the bike breaking, to the ultimate high of hurtling down a mountain at about 45mph for 10 minutes. My jaw ached from the constant grin I had all the way down. If you can picture some of the classic James Bond car chases through the Swiss Alps then you’re almost there. But I was, and I felt like James frigging Bond.
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| I've fallen in love with this bike (and Switzerland). |
Within 10 minutes we had done 15km and reached the lakeside city of Neuchatel. We didn’t really follow a map once we saw the lake, we just thought, we’re getting to that lake. It was so nice to sit by the lake for 20 minutes after such a long day, but at this point it was about 6pm and we still had nowhere to sleep for the night. We followed some signs for a campsite, when we got there we looked around for someone to pay, but we couldn’t find anybody, so we just sneaked on to the site and pitched the tent near to the lake!
We woke up after another free nights camping and the plan for the day was to head as far as we could towards Lausanne (the place Sam is having his new credit card sent to). We managed to escape the city reasonably quickly and make good progress. Once again we were blessed with a wonderful backdrop of the snowy Alps. Although today was different, after three weeks on the road neither of us had listened to music whilst we’ve been cycling, but the route seemed straight forward enough so we thought we’d plug in the old ipods. It made such a difference; I’ve obviously cycled listening to music before, but when its cycling through Switzerland with the Alps in the corner of your eye it’s different. We’re both debating what genre or artist is most fitting, but for today I’m sticking with The Beatles, I think it’s fair to say they’re the best band of all time, and what better way to enjoy their music.
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| This was taken in France, but its a nice picture. |
Next on the agenda is Montpellier. We've arranged to get there for the 14th april to milk goats for 6 weeks! We get free accomodation, food and a car to explore the south of France, and my wonderful girlfriend is planning a visit when we arrive there. Good times.
