At the end of May, it was time for the biennial bike ride from Bordeaux to Sete. Several mebers of the Nogaro club were doing it, including Nick; but what was different this time was that he and another equally crazy cyclist, Francis, decided to do the return trip to Nogaro by bike as well.
After four days’ hard cycling in unseasonally hot weather, they arrived in Sete and as everyone else piled into cars and vans to head for home, our two intrepid madmen turned their bikes around, donned rucksacks containing essentials for the return journey, and pedalled off into the sunset. 25km towards the setting sun, to be precise, to where Nick had booked accommodation for the night.
The next day they had a following wind and were able to keep up a steady 45-50 kph most of the day, covering around 200km by late afternoon, so they cancelled the next two hotels, found somewhere to stay for the night and had a mere 160km to do the following day.
The statistics are impressive; 974km, 10 330m of climbing and 18 550 calories burnt, just riding, over six days!
Once home, Nick didn’t have time to rest as we were going back to Yorkshire for the wedding of our nephew, Dan, to the lovely Claire.The weather was beautiful on the wedding day and the venue, the Parsonage, near York, was superb; it was good the have the chance to catch up with Nick’s brother and his family.
We told very few people we were going back, in theory to give us chance to recharge our batteries, but these things never work out in practice and we still ended up with a hectic schedule, which included visiting as many Oxfam book shops as we could find; I don’t really know why, as we rarely seem to find the time to sit down and read. One day, perhaps…… It was great to see the family again, even if we’d forgotten how cold it can be in Harrogate in June.
No such weather problems here in our absence; it was perfect growing weather, warm, with frequent bouts of rain. The result was that we arrived home to a garden overrun with weeds and new stems of bamboo in the park that had reached 6 feet tall in our absence. As for the strawberry bed…… well, suffice it to say that it took some time to find the strawberries beneath the bindweed.
It’s hot now, so we get up early and spend the mornings in the garden, before retreating indoors for the rest of the day, or visiting a friend who has a pool. Ours is a swamp at the moment, Nick not having had time to sort it out yet this year; another task to add to the ever-growing list.
Nick a fait le Bordeaux- Sete rando au vélo encore cette année, mais cette fois lui et un autre fou ont fait la rentrée au vélo aussi. En total, ils ont fait 974km, 10 330m de dénivelée et ont brulé 18 550 calories, juste aux vélos! impressionnant.
Lorsqu’il est rentré, nous sommes allés en Angleterre pour le mariage de notre neveu. Le jour du mariage il a fait tres beau; on a profité du temps de parler avec la famille à Nick, qui on n’avait pas vu depuis longtemps.
Quand nous sommes rentrés, le jardin était complètement couvert de mauvaises herbes; je ne pouvais pas trouver les fraises là-dessous! Il nous faut beaucoup de travaille maintenant.