Bucket man has taken Jill’s advice and decided to set off before breakfast – after all, what is the point of hanging round for a warmish croissant when you can be pedalling, so he hit the road at 8.00am. “It’s dark before then” he reports, with a slight hint of wonderment in his voice.
He has made excellent progress today, covering 112 miles in total, a trip record. He has reached a place called Jonzac, a town near Cognac. Why he didn’t stay in Cognac and enjoy the local brew is a mystery, but then, as this is the man who chooses to eat Big Macs while in the gastronomic capital of Europe, we rest our case.
However, there was some faffing around with his bike, in a place called Niort. Determined to find a bike shop (sorry, a “le velo magasin”, Martin’s French is very taxing…) he found yet another one that was shut. This one was attached to a Renault garage, and allegedly this harps back to his tedious Halfordsism – in that non Halfords aficionados claim that Halford just send out a car mechanic to fix bikes. At this Renault garage, there really is a car mechanic who fixes bikes. Sadly, he was on leave, leastways, not present, so Martin somehow managed to get access to his workstation to fiddle about with his gears.
This part of the story was so tedious we can hardly bear relate it, apparently his front derailleur big cog is connected to his rear derailleur little cog with the chain inbetween, something to do with the lower half of his cassette (what, where did that come from!) on his back and little rings, anyway, Martin is convinced that Sean, he of end to ender fame will understand immediately. He droned on about some man in suit coming into the garage, and a lengthy discussion about the differences between psi (remember them from yesterday) and bar… It went on and on, does he really think you lot will be interested in all this stuff, we just want to hear about his involuntary dismounts and major disasters, not this boring old bike stuff, he will never get a film option at this rate. Finally, the man in the suit, from a Renault garage, who may be a mechanic who fixes bikes, does have one essential skill – he can pump bike tyres to 120 psi – hurrah.
Pressures sorted, the little man with the big psi pedalled to his hotel, Hotel 108, where he was delighted to find the menu de jeur, 3 courses, for a very reasonable 12 Euros. For an extra 2 Euros he can have a glass of wine and a coffee, what a bargain! He has managed to curb his Maccy Dee addiction problem today and went for a jambon et fromage baguette for lunch, at last, trying the local cuisine.
It has been hot, so hot; he had an unplanned stop to buy sun tan lotion, much to his surprise. He still needs to sort out his gear problems, so we suspect there will be more boring techie stuff to come. On a positive note, he thinks he will reach Spain by Thursday so hola – we will switch to Spanish…
Introducing the Canal trip sub blog!!
We picked up our narrow boat at Swanley Bridge Marina, just below bridge 6 on the Llangollen canal. Imagine our surprise when we found the boat was called Debbie, “pah” said Martin, “I bet it looks good on the outside and is crap on the inside”. Many a true word is spoken in jest… We locked down the 4 Hurleston locks with assistance from the British Waterways lock keeper at the top, who was wearing a natty BW life jacket, and then chugged on to Nantwich where we are moored on an embankment above the town. As we came into moor, Cadbury made an ill advised leap for the bank and had an involuntary swim so we are sharing a small space with a damp, smelly Labrador – oh joy! Off to Market Drayton tomorrow, it is doubtful we will do more than 15 miles, we are not really competing with the manic pedaller, but are enjoying every minute of our trip!
All things being equal, and the comms working we will have another update tomorrow.
PS. We had to trudge about a mile through desolate out of town Nantwich to find Wi Fi, now holed in up the fabulous Nakatcha bar - cripes - tonight is student night and the attractive barmaid tells us we have about 5 minutes to upload this before the bar crawling students arrive, gulp... Assuming we survive, more to follow tomorrow.
PS. We had to trudge about a mile through desolate out of town Nantwich to find Wi Fi, now holed in up the fabulous Nakatcha bar - cripes - tonight is student night and the attractive barmaid tells us we have about 5 minutes to upload this before the bar crawling students arrive, gulp... Assuming we survive, more to follow tomorrow.
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