Day 6 - Rest day in Seignosse

Distance cycled today - 0
Distance cycled since Modbury 219

Well, still at the campsite.
We ate at the campsite restaurant last night and had crudites, confit de canard/entrecote steak and rhum-raisin/pistache ice cream. (Hope that doesn't spoil your sensitivities, Steve!)

We noticed, when the other campers returned from their day out, that they were nearly all young boy-girl couples. Rob speculated that we may be kept awake by the sounds of passion all around during the night and we both fell about laughing (again) as we each took our blood-pressure tablets and realised the apparent irony.
All our immediate neighbours have been friendly and I swear they think that we're a gay couple!

After the sun went down last night it was perishingly cold. I can't see our using our own tents on this trip. To stay warm, we had to use our own sleeping bags, even with the supplied quilts. I had arm-warmers on in bed!

You're right, Sarah, we are sounding like a married couple and I've warned Gill that we may be holding hands when we get off the ferry in a fortnight's time!

We have now realised that travelling by bike has its limitations. Yesterday, we paused at Biarritz to take in the sights and detoured to overlook the beach. We wanted to see more and there was another road but we couldn't work out how to get to it. We kept coming up against the one way system and every street that we went down ended with our having to cycle back up a steep hill. It's frustrating for us but you really don't have the speed, flexibility and effortlessness of a car to keep seeing where different roads lead without losing significant time and energy.

Just outside Biarritz yesterday, we passed a golf club, where I thought an old friend of the family may still be working. Rob agreed that we could cycle back half a mile to the clubhouse to check. Sod's Law - the clubhouse was at the top of a shortish but very steep climb and we found that my friend didn't work there. By the time we'd got back on our route we'd lost over 45 minutes.....for nothing. It would only have been a 10 minute break by car.

Thus, our sight-seeing is being limited somewhat to what we come across en-route, if we are to maintain progress. We are trying to pick what we think will be a scenic route, sometimes only to end up on a housing estate on a hill ......... or on my side in the sand in front of a family having lunch!

Photographs are another compromise and what we post doesn't reflect everything that we see. Sorry, guys, if they come across as a bit simplistic. Rob has identified all sorts of birds of prey and a multitude of trees and shrubs (no silk trees yet, Sarah). For practical reasons, our cameras are always in our buttoned up bar bags as we have no zipped pockets on our jerseys. I take the blog photos on a Blackberry in order to be able to post them. I invariably have to keep entering a password to bring the BB out of hibernation. As the file size is small, I also have a better Lumix camera with a higher resolution which I try to take better quality photos on. So I run 2 cameras which necessitate stopping, unclipping, finding somewhere to lean the bike, unpacking the cameras, fiddling with settings, taking the photos, repacking and remounting, whenever we want to take pictures. There is a lot to see but we simply won't have photos of it all.

I did try taking video with one hand whilst on the move yesterday (for those who want to see Rob's backside) but when I went over a manhole cover.........well, let's just say that constipation is not a problem!

Thanks to Tom and Richard for your kind donations. They're greatly appreciated.

The swimming pool looked too cold so we gave that a miss today and we weren't in the mood for crazy golf after catching up with our laundry washing. Lesson learnt: don't bring white cycling socks on a road tour. Another 5 minutes of trying to remove the grime and I would have chucked them.
Anyway, with the sun out, the temperature has risen to 31C but once the sun is hidden by clouds, it plunges again (now dropped to 17C)..

We bought some supplies from a local store and had cheese, ham and a baguette for lunch. We also bought a disposable barbecue and will have sausages and steak this evening with a ciabatta (yes, Steve, I know ciabatta's Italian!). My family know what my barbecuing is like (2 hours to get the damned thing lit and then sausages only identifiable from dental records) so Rob will probably be cooking.

We've just said Hello to some new neighbours on the campsite who've driven down from Mannamead in Plymouth. Small world, isn't it?

Thanks for your continuing support and messages. It's really good to get them. Spirits are high with us and there are plenty of giggles along the way.

Photos:
Our luxury accommodation.
Roughing it on our rest day.