Sunday, 11 August, 2024 – Sunday, 18 August, 2024
One thing on our travel bucket list is sleeping on the beach, but we didn’t know that we would cross it off so soon. Sunday was our second day by the sea, and the thing with the French coastal area is that this is all like one big continuous city with barely any non-city area in between. So our idea for sleeping? We headed to a wild beach (near Frontignan) that is not accessible by car and that is completely abandoned after dusk. There, we made our own sunroof with the help of the bikes and spent a nice afternoon on the beach. When it got dark, we moved 10 meters away from the sea and set up our tent there. And here comes our brilliant idea: we should sleep without the rain cover so that we will get more fresh air in the tent. Did the plan work? Sure it did, but because of the moisture in the air, our whole inner tent got wet and in the morning we couldn’t wait for it to dry off because of all the morning people who had better plans than sleeping.
So we also had to get up early, pack the wet tent, and then we decided to spend some quality time at the beach. We did some stretching, running on the sand, and then swimming in the fresh morning water. It was a nice change from the constant pedaling. Oh, and one more thing about this beach: it’s almost harder to find a stone than a seashell; they are everywhere you look. So we made a small collection of the nicest ones that we found (see picture).
The day was hot, and we drove by some stinky canals of stale water. Otherwise, nothing special happened until we had an evening pause in some park and a horrible thought passed our minds: we forgot to dry out our wet tent! And it was already 8 p.m. with the sun slowly setting. We still tried our luck and spread the tent over the bikes on the last sun rays, but it was pointless. The tent wasn’t drying, and we were wasting precious time to find the sleeping spot before the dark. But, on the other hand, without a tent, a camping spot was useless to us. So we had a short urgent meeting amongst the two of us, and we have decided to try some night cycling. It couldn’t be that bad, could it?
Now that we had the full night’s worth of time, we weren’t in a hurry anymore. We slowly packed everything and started pedaling as slow as we could. We planned on some panoramic, relaxing riding. While passing through the Agde, we saw the posters for the “bullfighting” spectacle this evening, and we decided to go there and see what it was about. But, unfortunately, the show was in French, and without the context, we only saw some young guys with helmets running around the bull. Also, the ticket was 10€ per person, so we had to peep through some holes in the fence to determine what was even going on in there. Also also, we had nowhere to put our bikes, so at the end, we just turned around and cycled along.
And how did the rest of our night cycling go? We ended it one hour later when we found a comfortable-looking bench in a park. Even though it wasn’t on our bucket list, we still tried out sleeping on the park bench that night. We had two shifts of around 4 hours; one shift you slept and the other one you were on guard duty. It honestly wasn’t that bad, beside the short sleep and dew in the night. We woke up a bit stiff, but at least it was a calm night. Anyway, we wouldn’t recommend it; there are more comfortable places to sleep.
We reached a milestone of 50 days on the road, and all this time we didn’t have a single problem with the bikes. So what happened on day 51? While going fast downhill, the screws on Primož’s back rack completely broke off and the rack leaned down on the spinning tire, which caused the screws to bite into the tire. Luckily, the tire wasn’t damaged too much, but we couldn’t continue with a broken rack. And it wasn’t simply a matter of screwing in the new screws because the holes were filled with the remainders of the broken ones. We found a temporary solution where we moved the rack to the second pair of holes (where the rack for the guitar was screwed in), and we used some zipties and ducktape to fix the guitar rack to the bike frame. This would need to hold all the way to Barcelona, where we will properly fix it. We will also need to get some stronger screws and check them more regularly if they’re still tight.
On this day we also had constant strong bursts of wind, one of which, later, knocked over Primož’s bike during the break. And to make things even worse, the storm was coming for us in the evening, and we didn’t have anywhere to properly hide from the wind and the rain, so we had to put the tent behind some bushes, close to dry poops on the floor. There was a pile of old building material nearby, and we brought over a bunch of broken bricks and stones to weight the tent down in the corners. The wind didn’t stop throughout the night, and the rain fell only in the morning, but it was enough to form a possibly poop-infected puddle near our tent. So much bad luck in a single day.
For three days straight, we had a constant, strong wind, sometimes in the head, other times in the back, but mostly from the sides. The bursts of wind were so strong that they moved us sideways for up to half a meter, which could be very dangerous if they came at the wrong moment. So when we left the coast and headed inland, it was a nice relief from the wind.
On day 53, thanks to Komoot, we somehow ended up on a three-lane road where everyone was honking at us, so we got off at random exit. There, the rain shower caught us without a shelter, and we waited it out in the middle of a roundabout, under the trees. And for a cherry on top, we took a muddy shortcut between two towns, getting mud and sand into our chain, which was making non-pleasant noises from then on. After all that, we found an appropriate camping spot for the night, eager to go to bed early. But during the exploration of the surrounding area, we scared a huge wild boar out of the bushes, which made us change our mind about sleeping there. We went to the closest city and slept next to the football field.
On Saturday, day 54, we were 25 kilometers from the French-Spanish border and around 200 kilometers from Barcelona. But we still had 9 days before meeting Primož’s parents in Barcelona, so we had to kill some time in between. And we found a perfect way to do this. There’s a river with pebble-stone shoulders by the city of Le Boulou, and we spend a full day there, dipping our feet into the water. Without much thinking, we decided to extend our stay there, having a day off on Sunday. We stayed in the nearby park reading, playing guitar, writing journal and blog, and throwing frisbee in the wind. We also did what we should do every day: stretching. Because we were caught by the dark, we slept in the tent, in the corner of the park. Oh, and what did we see during the breakfast the next morning? A police officer on an e-bike patroling around the river and park. We’re really lucky sometimes.
Sunday was our last day in France; tomorrow we will cross into Spain, our last European country, for some time.
Some more pictures:
