Day 8 : still 1000 km to go...

Day 8 : still 1000 km to go..., originally uploaded by raoul_dewinne.

We woke up that day under a dark gray sky with menacing rain clouds - that didn't bode well... Strong winds were blowing eastwards from the ocean - that was the good news, since in the morning we had to bike eastwards as well, moving away from the sea.



To get effectively started we first enjoyed a short boat trip to cross the Bay of Arcachon, famous for its oysters - there are a few less by now since we had them for dinner last night - yummy, yummy. The boat was barely three times longer than our tandem bike and while other bicycles would go on the roof, ours was too long to fit. But the skipper found a solution laying our bike down to cover the entire front deck.



The wind made the pedaling a lot easier and we could pick up a decent speed for the first hour. As we got used to by now, some car drivers would wave and blow their horn as a salute. When we stopped to have a reinforcing espresso an old man walked enthusiastically up to our table telling that it was he who sounded his horn a while ago - he said that he had biked a lot when he was much younger but never was able to make it to Santiago de Compostela. Therefore he asked us to think of him and pray for him when we arrived there. He really shook our hands firmly and with strong emotions and he embraced Magic Maggie and gave her two kisses. Such touching moments give you extra power to continue to confront the elements...



A bit further when going down into a tunnel, a car with an open roof top, coming from the opposite direction, flashed its lights, blew its horn and a backseat passenger stood straight up and clapped his hands. Wow... We felt like the king and queen of Belgium, maybe even better since I'm not quite sure whether a Frenchman would do like that to our Belgian royal highness.



After biking through heavy car traffic for over an hour we finally hit a bike trail that was a former rail road. The trail let us cross the Landes in an almost straight line. This rather flat and sandy landscape offered us a never-ending scenery of old oak and chestnut trees amid patches of evergreen fern on which the morning raindrops glittered like pearls - and not to forget the omnipresent pine trees. This was a very enjoyable ride. But - as many other things in life - it didn't last forever, we had to leave the bike path to drive southwest against the wind again. And after a while the menacing clouds lived up to their promise and brought us... rain - and lots of it.



Every little village that we passed we looked for a pub or any other place where we could have a warm coffee and some temporary shelter, but either there weren't any facilities or they were all closed... Even the churches were closed... At one of those medieval churches we found a stone signpost telling us that we still had a 1000 km to go before reaching Santiago. That was encouraging news :-)



By late afternoon our legs were getting sore and we were soaking wet (again); tired we decide to take the shortest road to the hotel, which meant biking on heavy traffic roads with a lot of big trucks racing by and that for another 19 km - these turned out to be the longest 19 km of our biking life. Half dead we reached our charming hotel after 91 km of pedaling.



Before going to bed my lovely queen noticed that the king had a red biking butt - as red as a monkey's. After taking a closer look at the queen's butt as well, it turned out that hers was aching but(t) not red, while his was red but(t) not aching... Would that indicate - according to Darwin's evolutionary theory - that long time gone some mutant monkeys must have adapted to a biking life or maybe even invented it?