Day 4 & 5 : enduring the elements

Day 4 & 5 : enduring the elements, originally uploaded by raoul_dewinne.

As the weather forecast had accurately predicted: the sun was gone, the blue sky was gone... Here we are again with our two wheels on the ground and in misty rainy weather, believing that our high-tech Goretex clothing will also protect our positive spirits.



From Poitiers we would smoothly work our way down to the seaside in two days of nearly flat terrain. At least, that was the picture that I had pre-programmed in Maggie's mind. Oops... The roads we traveled weren't as flat as I had anticipated, worse, they were not flat at all: up and down, up and down, up and down and on and on for the full 108 km of that day. Tandem plus luggage and two people made a total of over 200 kg, which is great when you go downhill but when going up it is as if you're grinding to a complete standstill... Countless hills... And after the initial drizzle we got some light rain for a change. "Who'll stop the rain?" this CCR song kept echoing through our empty brains. It kept raining till early afternoon and although our Goretex jackets and trousers might have kept the rain on the outside, we were nevertheless as wet on the inside from all the uphill sweating. At the end of our fourth day the GPS indicated a total ascent of 654 m !!

Not only were it the hills, the weight and the rain that wore us physically and mentally down, this distance of 108 km seemed endlessly. And when the rain stopped, we played another song: "Against the wind." Here the winds typically come from the southwest and guess where we were heading to?

Hallelujah, now we know what is too much... Although this seemed more than we could chew we finished the day with one more song "Our way" (with permission from the author to sing it in plural).

Our B&B was in a huge old farm from the 1600's - in the middle of nowhere, even no mobile phone connectivity... The old lady of the house welcomed us with hot chocolate - after everything we endured today this tasted like the best hot chocolate of our entire life.

After taking a hot shower we were regaining our mental strength and all we needed was a nice dinner. Haven't seen any kind or type of restaurant on our way to or in this remote village we asked the lady where we could find some food. Goodness gracious... We would have to continue pedaling to the next village, many kilometers further. I asked again with a faint hope that either she or me hadn't understood either the question or the answer - apparently not. Silence and a long sigh followed. And with even a fainter hope I asked whether she could call us a taxi? She looked at me as if I came from a different planet. A taxi? Here? You must be kidding? Actually

I wasn't. OK then... I volunteered to play for taxi... with my honey just sitting on the bike, refusing to pedal - the few people we met on the road smiled with amusement. Lucky me, it was a very fine restaurant... :-)

By the time we managed it back to our old farm, we had biked our longest trip ever on our tandem: almost 120 km. And don't forget to add the rain, the countless hills, our heavy load and the headwinds...



PS: It turned out to be impossible to keep up the schedule of daily sending a new update. Mainly it is a connectivity issue, either we had no signal at all or the GPRS service seemed not operating in a dependable way. We only met something like a city a day and when you are soaking wet finding an internet café is not immediately your highest priority...



Day 5 brought the same story as yesterday. We "only" had to bike 95 km - which under the current conditions was still way more than we could enjoy - and another 595 m of accumulated ascent was waiting for us...

Rain again till afternoon. People applauding and admiring us when we arrived in a city or a small village - or did they have pity on us?

After the rain, the wind. We're approaching the Atlantic coast and the wind is hammering us down or trying to knock us off our bike. Especially with all those packs we take A LOT of wind. When - on a flat road and with a lot of hard work - you manage only to develop a speed of 12 km/hour and your leg muscles seem to be ready to explode any moment and your back is about to break in two, than all kind of thoughts flash through your brain (if you have any left): why am I doing this; we must be crazy; we cannot go on like this; we're quitting; we're going home... But for some reason we kept going, we kept pushing, both of us, but maybe each of us for different reasons... :-)

If a pilgrimage needs to encompass some suffering then this is a pilgrimage with a capital P.



Finally, at last, the harbor of Royan where we'll take the ferry to cross the estuary of the river Gironde. Long lines of cars are cueing up, and then being able to coast along them and get in front of such a long line made us already forget some of the ordeal that we just went through :-)

The smell of the pine trees and the salty Atlantic ocean surpassed the best perfume by far, and things got even better when we reached a long smooth bike trail through the dunes along the coast line. The weather all of a sudden turned sunny and we forgot for a moment our sore legs and aching butt and we enjoyed a 200% - this was pure joy!

Our day ended with a touch of eternal beauty :-)