70.4km, 4hrs, 55mins, 1027m total
climb
We weren't really that sad when we
finally left Agen after a big bowl of cereal at around 10am. It was
not the worst of places to get stranded, but we wouldn't have chosen
it for days off either.
We left and headed straight for Condom.
The first 20km or so went smooth and we got to Condom quick and
stress-free, even started to see signs for Spain at last. We were going to stop at the little town and take a
picture of the catholic church in Condom which is also one of the
churches to look at on the St Jacob's route, but we decided that we
wanted to keep going and only had a quick sandwich on the bottom of
the stairs of some sort of monument.
Our other concerns and the main reason
for us to keep going was the weather. While we sat enjoying our
sandwiches the sky turned darker and darker with rain clouds. The
weather is not really on our side at the moment. Just after we got
back on our bikes it started raining heavily. It was bitterly cold
and the wind was blowing straight in our faces which didn't help much
to keep a good average speed.
The route itself was not spectacular
either, “French flat” all the way. We have started to call the
French countryside “French flat” meaning climbing up a country
road for about 20m – 50m just to immediately drop to the original
level again, only then to do the same again and again. This can be a
little bit frustrating especially when it is blowing a gail in our
face. Tough day!
Luckily, we checked the weather the
night before and already anticipated that it would be too wet for
camping, so we decided to try something different and book one of
these mobile home thingys instead of a hostel. We finally arrived at
3pm at the campsite in Euze by which time we were totally soaked and
thanks to the wind freezing cold. We were happy to arrive even though
the campsite was empty and the reception closed. The problem was that
the guy from the campsite told us the night before that he wasn't
going to be there at 5pm. Luckily he also left us a number, but we
only got through to voice mail and everything started to look like we
were going to have to wait for 2 hours.
The plan was to warm up and just have
a hot shower at the campsite facilities and get changed out the wet
clothes so we didn’t get hypothermia - but then the guy (who looked
just like Chris of Family Guy and had seemingly the same level of
intelligence) turned up and opened up the caravan for us.
It was just a simple caravan but after
a tough day it was like arriving at a 5 star hotel. Nice how much you
start to appreciate the simple things. We had a hot shower in the
tiny caravan shower wet room and relaxed for a while. We didn't have
any food left to make a decent dinner so we decided to brave the
weather once again and cycle to the nearest supermarket 1km away. It
was still raining but now after we had a break it wasn't that bad.
Had a nice evening in the little
caravan and a good night sleep. It was still pouring down outside.
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