Biking Day 34
- Length ridden: 90 km
- Ascent: 130 meters
- Rating: 8.5 out of 10 - different sceneries that day
- Highlights: Swimming in the ocean, again, the friendliness of the people
- Lowlight: ...and again, why can`t days be a lot longer?
- Map of the day
Just before 8 am I was ready to start the biking and now I was in a very much touristy beach area, with bars, restaurants, shops, theme parks, water parks, pedestrians, joggers, bikers (yes, even at this relatively early hour) - a bit of a Mallorca feeling - something that I had experienced on this trip for the first time. If everyone flocks to this beach, sure I can do that as well. The sandy shore was multiple kilometers long (if I recall correctly, some 20), so there were no crowds on the beach yet, especially not in the morning hour, I was one of the first ones in the water, but slowly others started arriving on this bright, sunny Sunday.
I granted myself a couple of hours, till roughly noon then started riding south. When I left the beach area, things got more quiet, it was a road following the coastline, not much traffic. Things started picking up again near the beautiful town of Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, referred to as the jewel of Côte de Lumière. It was a fishing port full of white houses with red rooftops - very much different from the stone homes in Normandy and Brittany - with an amazing church (what else?) and a Sunday market in full swing.
From my less-than-favorable experiences at buying market food, I opted for a McDo outside town, this time, it was quite a horrible experience, try entering a fast-food place near a beach at lunchtime on a weekend. Oh my. A much more preferable experience was at a patisserie I spotted on the opposite side of the road, it was an upscale franchise (French-ise) store called Feuillette, with wonderful pastries and bread. I ordered (more accurate: tried ordering) in French, the guy answered in German...he was French, but born in Germany).
In the afternoon, I went in for one more dip into the ocean - the only problem is that one gets quite sandy - but the water was amazing.
At around 6:30 pm, I reached Les Sables d´Olonne, which earned the "Most Beautiful Bay in the world" award in 2021. This is also where the Vendée Globe starts and finishes, a yacht race around the globe, taking place every four years.
Sometimes you arrive at a place and it simply does not charm you - this is exactly what happened to me here. Maybe I was tired after the two "beach vacations" that day, but I did not feel like spending time in this very crowded town, so after having a delicious ice-cream and visiting the main church, I left quite quickly.
As I was riding south, the sea was to my right, but there was also quite a lot of water to my left, a maze of channels, narrow waterways and canals of a marshland, called Marais Poitevin, the country's second-largest wetland.
Photos do not do justice to the landscape - to get a feeling of just how these marshlands look, just see the below picture, captured from Google Maps - it is not anything that I have seen before - and there would be similar areas the following day as well. While Les Sables itself did not really attract me, it would still be nice to return to the ara, for exploring these marshlands, supposedly best by canoe - now that would be a lot of fun!
After 9 pm, I reached a small beach at Saint-Vincent-sur-Jard, there were still people swimming - well, there would be daylight for another hour or so.
After downing a beer, I headed for a campground a few kilometers away. As usual, Faith threw in a small challenge, which was a bit of an incline - and Google decided to take me on a bit of a goose chase. I was riding uphill of a forest path and the worst thing was that there was no sign of any campground- I once had a similar experience in Sicily. But here we are in France - a small campground did finally show up, where folks were happily singing karaoke in French. The lady manager welcomed me with a big smile, showed me a large site for the night in person - no, she did not pitch my tent - and charged €12 for the stay. I can recommend Camping Le Sous Bois for sure.
Similar to the previous day, I rode 90 kilometers.