Wednesday, 31 July, 2024 – Saturday, 10 August, 2024
On the last day of July, the 37th day of our journey, we finally reached the point where we can say that we cycled over a whole country. We could already see France land, and we were excited to reach it.
Slowly, like two heavy turtles, we were cycling uphill, envying every electric-cyclist that effortlessly passed us. To cross the Alps, we chose the mountain pass called “Col de l’Echelle”. All the way up we were eager to see the border crossing and to be officially in France, but we were disappointed. Slowly, the greetings of other cyclists changed from “Ciao” to “Bonjour” and we were in the French part of the Alps. There wasn’t any border crossing, no official-looking table of “Welcome to France”, not even a single sign. You just change countries without knowing. Just to make sure, we checked our location on Google Maps, and as we predicted, we were already in France. There goes our selfie with a French sign or a flag.
All the way to the top of the pass, the views were amazing, and the road was mostly ok for us to ride; there were just a few parts of greater incline on which we pushed our bikes. At the height of 1783 m (according to our Garmin navigation), we reached the peak, then followed a relaxed descent on the other side. The first few kilometers were relatively flat, and we were astonished by the beauty of the nature around us. Soft, green grass on both sides of the road, followed by a sparse forest with mountains in the back. The green seemed greener, and you could feel the peace around you. Even though there were quite a few tourists, having picnics or just resting, it didn’t seem crowded, and you could easily find your own little peaceful piece of grass. We slowly cycled along, enjoying the atmosphere, until a few kilometers passed and we decided to just take a break and relax. It seemed a nice coincidence that we stopped next to a little chapel of “Notre Dame de Bonrencontre”, the protector of travelers.
Another storm was dooming over us, and the wind picked up, but in the end, nothing came out of it, and we enjoyed the rest of the descent, using our dynamo to charge the powerbank. Can’t say no to free electricity.
Speaking of electricity, we have around 3 days of independence before we need to recharge everything (especially phones, powerbank and navigation). Our initial idea was to use Pedalcell rim dynamo as much as we could, not only during descents but also on the flat parts of the road. But since we’re still in a phase where we’re accommodating to the load of cycling every day on the body, we don’t want extra resistance on the wheels, so we don’t use dynamo much. But what we do a lot of is take breaks, especially during the hours of strong sun. And it would be very handy if we had solar cells that we could place under this strong sun. So our new goal is to find some good solar cells and try them out.
On this day, we also ate the last dehydrated food that our family brought us. It was about time for our tastebuds to experience something other than a mushroom stew or chilly with beans, even though this meant that we would have to start spending more money on food.
On Thursday morning (day 38), we got up early and rode in cold weather until we reached Briancon, where we planned to go to E.Leclerc (we googled the cheapest store in France). We got there at around 6 AM and still had over 2 hours before the shop opened, so we visited a castle and the old city center. Up there, we waited for the sunrise, enjoyed the view over the city, and just talked. The E.Leclerc that we found was so big that it took Iris over an hour to find everything we needed. Maybe she wasn’t the right person to send to the store.
During the break, where we planned to reduce some of the newly acquired weight, we met Fabian and Sebastiano, two bikepackers with a plan to cycle from Graz (Austria) to Lisbon (Portugal). Time spent with them made our day; we had a nice lunch by the river, and we still kept in touch after we departed. They do approximately 3 times as many kilometers as we do in a day, so there was no way of us doing a couple of days together. If we did, we would already be in Barcelona by the time we’re writing this (we’re not close yet). When we get back home, we’re going to go for a beer together!
We hoped that the WarmShowers (WS) situation would improve in France, but it looks like it’s something similar as in Italy. We wrote to around 20 to 25 hosts and only got two positive responses (out of less than 10 who even responded). It was Friday (day 39), time to meet our first French hosts, Remi and Jany, who have set a very high bar for hosting. They were all you could ask for: hospitable, kind, interesting to talk to, and with a very active lifestyle alongside their family life with kids. They love travel and adventure at least as much as we do. Even though we didn’t intend to, we stayed one more night with them, and we are really pleased that we did. On Saturday we joined their celebration picnic with family, then they even invited us to ride a catamaran and canoe on the lake. We spend the evening eating, talking, and playing board games. We felt like family, and we’re sure that we will see each other again.
Up until this point, we had trusted Komoot to make good decisions about the route for us. But then, there came a moment when, to reach our next hosts, we needed to do around 70 kilometers and almost 500 meters of ascent, according to Komoot. Did we like those numbers? Absolutely not, so we spend more time on Komoot, inspecting the road ahead to see what still awaits us. This is when we switched bicycle mode from “bike touring” to “road bike”. Suddenly, the expected 70 kilometers of distance and 500 meters of ascent changed to around 65 kilometers and 250 meters of ascent. Why is that? Because apparently, Komoot thinks that you want to avoid a few kilometers of main road by crossing the neighboring hill and that you don’t really mind combining cycling and mountaineering. Well, actually, we did mind it a lot. So another lesson learned: don’t blindly trust a navigation app; take your time to inspect the road ahead, where the hills are, and if there are any alternative roads. When we looked back, we saw a few similar examples where we left the main road, went over the hill, and joined the same main road a little bit later.
Here in France is also the first time that we have a strong wind (usually in the head, even if we change directions). This makes us go (even) slower, but it’s so hot that we appreciate the wind because we would get roasted in over 40˚C without it. Our butts are also slowly adapting to the uncomfortable bike seats, so it’s getting a little bit easier to sit on a bike for longer periods of time. It’s still not painless, just less pain.
Before we started our journey, we both agreed that we couldn’t stay a year without a book, so we discussed if we wanted to take some kind of e-book reader with us. In the end, we found a better solution. Let’s have one book with us and read it, then exchange it with someone along the way and read something new! Well, up until this point, we were book-less but this changed on Tuesday, the 43rd day, when we bought “Lord of the Flies”, our first book. There weren’t many English books to choose from; we chose something with a story but also something that could be an interesting topic for discussion. I hope that we won’t be disappointed.
And our second WS hosts? We met Lily and Clement on Wednesday evening (day 44), and they impressed us with their plan of also living on a bike for an extended period of time, going around Europe. We had an interesting topic for discussion. It was also nice that we could sleep a little longer in the morning, leaving their home at around 8 o’clock.
After doing some online research, we decided to test the 15W solar panel from Decathlon. It wasn’t much of a detour in the city of Arles. Now, after around a week of testing, we’re very pleased with them. Since we have a very strong sun, we can easily charge our phone and navigation so that we have basic electricity independence. Solar cells will easily pay for themselves since we don’t need to go eat in a restaurant to charge electronics if we don’t have any hosts.
After the 44th day, we left all of the hills behind, and we had a couple hundred kilometers of flat land before us. Here, there are a lot fewer drinking fountains that we find along the way, and when we find them, the water is usually not very cold. We got spoiled during our time in the Alps, where the water was everywhere and it was refreshingly cold.
On Saturday (day 47), we saw our first Flamingos in a nature reserve, “Centre de découverte du Scamandre”, as Remi told us that we may find them there. They were less pink than we expected; mainly, they were white with pink color only at the ends of their wing feathers.
On this same day, we finally reached the sea for the first time on our journey! The beach was mostly sand, but our bikes don’t like sand in the gears, so we couldn’t take them near the water to look over them while we would swim. So we did it one-by-one while the other one was watching the bikes in the shadow, 50 meters off the beach. It felt amazing; we definitely appreciated the sea more than we do when we reach it by car.
And to finish the day off, we found a park of pine trees planted in a grid, where we could sleep. We couldn’t really hide there, but it seemed peaceful enough, and we planned to get up early to avoid any crazy morning people on their walk or stroll. Spoiler alert: apparently 5:30 isn’t early enough for some people, but luckily we didn’t have any troubles.
Here are some bonus pictures for you:
Hi!
How are you?
We like your cactus photo!
Jany & Rémi
Hi Jany and Rémi!
We’re having amazing time here in Mexico, eventhough the food we eat most of the time is boring. We’re missing the time we spent with the two of you!
We’re glad you like the cactus photo, we’re trying to get one nice photo of a bird to send it to you but we weren’t lucky yet.
I & P