Bucket man phoned in his report this evening with not much to report. He is now 35km south of Bordeaux, why he has started reporting in kilometres after five days of miles is an unexplained mystery, and he tells us he has done 110 miles today, do you see the problem? He is holed up in a place called Labauheyre, which is a new one on us, never heard of the place. His hotel is called La Pasha, just by the motorway (handy) and he also says the menu de jeur yesterday was top drawer, well worth the 12 euro expense. He has managed to get through another day without a McDonalds meal (we use the term “meal” loosely) so maybe has got over that particular compulsion. He does say his energy is flagging and maybe that is because he hasn’t had a hamburger, so he tucked into a plate of pasta and some indeterminate meat bits in Bordeaux to try and address his energy balance.
He has decided that he will not go into any cities in future, because he is incapable of finding his way out. He blames poor signage, and reckons it took him 2 hours to escape Bordeaux’s clutches, we believe it is down to his incompetence in map reading.
As we said, it is a day of no news, but Martin has scratched his head and come up with three bits of information, namely 1) he saw his first red squirrel today, sadly it was a dead, squashed, red squirrel but he knew what it was because it had little brown tail attached to the squashed bit – which he spotted just as he rode over it... 2) No bike mechanics in France are better than those in Nottingham, he has had 3 different mechanics working on his bike and none have managed to fix it, they all say it is fine where he reckons he knows differently. Lastly, 3) he started whittering on about having an Ashes to Ashes moment, after expert questioning we established that what he really meant was that his heart monitor was kaput – i.e. his monitor was stating no heartbeat while obviously his heart was still beating or he wouldn’t be boring us with all this nonsense.
He is still promising to be in Spain tomorrow.
Canal sub blog: 22 locks, about 12 miles travelled, one British Waterways incident involving a lock paddle which meant an hour’s hold up, 2 bottles of wine and more sun than you can shake a stick at = moderate sunburn. We are now in Market Drayton Hippodrome, a Weatherspoons pub on Thursday morning for breakie and WiFi - sorry we are late in posting yesterday's update, lack of enthusiasm last night was the problem.
The guy will never EVER find a mechanic that he rates....he's never satisfied....and would you recommend a canal trip as a family holiday?
ReplyDelete