Villeseques – Valence en Agen
86.7km, 6hrs 16mins, 1014m total climb
Today was a 106km day with a bit of a
climb so we thought we would need about 8 hours and left quite early.
Packing up was fine as the sun was out and the tent was nearly dry by
the time we put it away after breakfast. We ate the whole 9 Euros of
fancy fig cake (no milk, no sugar, no flour – no idea what it was
made of!).
We were fast today. We have been trying
to stay in a gear lower and get some more rpm's out of the legs,
which seems to help our knees, but also makes us faster. A bit more
energy consuming but not as tiring. We are also a lot fitter, so it
feels easier I guess.
We stopped at a Lidl and got some food
for lunch. Always the best option if the weather is good as you can
completely fill up for half the price of a café sandwich.
After the lunch stop, we carried on
along a main road. I had been noticing a clicking sound coming from
my back wheel for the couple of days now and again, but hadn't
inspected it. I was looking down at the back wheel on a downhill
section and noticed a buckle in the wheel. We went a bit further and
I had a proper look at the wheel. One spoke has pulled the rim and
cracked it both sides, other spoke bosses show signs of cracking, and
one other spoke is broken/loose on the inside of the rim.
This means that we have to get a new
wheel, as it will eventually fail and if it happens somewhere remote
that could be a real pain. Also good that I noticed it now and not
when I got a puncture on some fast downhill corner! At first I blamed
the extra luggage weight on the rear wheel, but I don't think that is
a problem, the wheel should be rated higher than that loading, and
the number of stress cycles wouldn’t be enough to crack the rim on
several spokes anyway. I think the problem is that the wheel was
incorrectly built. This could have happened as I got my hub-gear
replaced under warranty by Shimano about a year ago, they would have
needed to rebuild the wheel to do that. I am not going to complain to
them, as they were helpful to replace the hub under warranty, and it
would take too long to process, plus I would get the same wheel
again. I will upgrade to a stronger wheel.
So we decided to reach the next largest
town and look for a bike shop. We detoured from the main route and
ended up doing 80km before we found somewhere after speaking to a few
people. We then found a campsite and put up the tent. It was a
Monday, so most places are closed (as well as Sunday, Wednesday
afternoon and 3 hours every lunchtime), but we had a look through the
town anyway to find the bike shop. We spoke to one lady cyclist who
had the phone number of the shop on her water bottle, and gave them a
call as some places are open Monday afternoon. They were open and we
followed her out to the shop outside town. She was fully kitted out
in all the gear, and was on a pretty good road bike, but did a steady
10kph all the way, hand signalling constantly. I think someone had
sold her the whole package when she probably just needed a little
shopping bike.
What a waste of time. They were
friendly enough in the shop, but totally clueless. The little round
lady kept telling us it was her shop, her husband (the guy who was
helping me) didn’t speak any English at all. I don't think it would
have helped that much though anyway as he had no idea how to fix the
problem. He thought I needed a whole new wheel, spokes and hub.
Anyway, he couldn’t build a wheel at his shop. I think it was the
round lady's father's shop, who passed it on to her and the husband
just worked there. He resorted to telling me that I had bought the
wrong type of bike for touring on. She was telling me all sorts of
rubbish that my bike was made by Peugeot and I should try Decathlon
as they sold them. Thanks for all the help people, do some research.
We decided to stay the night and have a
short day tomorrow to get to a bigger town that has a few bike
shops. We paid for some mobile internet through Orange, and found the
shop online, they looked like they could help.
The campsite was pretty empty apart
from a group of rough-looking Spanish kids who had rented the two
caravans next to us. They were OK though and harmless, but very
noisy.
We had more Fajitas on the stove,
starting to become our favourite meal!
Todays moan: We had another run in with
a vicious farm dog today. We have had a couple of surprises from them
earlier in the trip, in the small mountain villages but always got
away with it by waiting till the last second till it is trying to
bite you then giving it a fright by shouting at it and basically
going at it. Today, the dog was sitting in the grass at the side of
the road as we went past and hurled itself out at us literally as we
were right beside it. This one didn’t back down either and ran
alongside trying to get hold of my feet and legs. No amount of
shouting at this one helped. I was just holding my foot up ready to
kick it's chops and it kept trying. Eventually, just as Johanna got
worried as she lost her shelter behind me - it gave up. Probably due
to the distance it was now away from its owner who was in the field.
I don’t blame the dog as they are usually the ones that sit inside
the farm gate barking and biting at anything that comes close, i.e.
they are bought for protection and meant to be treated a bit mean,
but it is the fault of the farmer, not to have them tied up.
Especially this one which left roaming free right beside a B-road as
the owner worked away. What if had been kids on the bikes instead? I
don’t think it would have given up so easily. Afterwards I always
think I should have stopped and got hold of the thing and chased it
back to the owner and passed on my feelings to him in a similarly
aggressive manner, but I never did as I don’t want to spend half a
day getting wound up by some ignorant hill-billy., and we didn't
actually get bit. It is distressing for Johanna though as she is
quite scared of these dogs. My other idea is to carry a small supply
of dog biscuits or something that might get them interested. Then I
would soft-centre fill them with strong doses of Immodium, and
hopefully the farmers yard or kitchen floor gets a dousing later on.
Johanna, being more sensible than me, wants to get a dog whistle. Not
a bad idea. The pilgrim walkers complain about them also, but all
guard dogs seem to have a penchant for chasing bikes. I think they
are freaked out by the feet movement or something. Anyway, I haven’t
seen one chasing walkers yet.
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| Lunchtime |
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| That's torn it! |
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