Biking Day 37

• Length ridden: 135 km
• Ascent: 120 meters
• Rating: 10 out of 10 - cool day!
• Highlights: Riding in the rain, wild-water swimming and Bordeaux - and again, how nice the French are
• Lowlight: Nothing really - I would do it all over again right now
• Map of the day

Writing this story, I know for sure know this was my last biking day, back then, on the morning of August 14, I was indeed planning it to be my last biking day, but there were some elements of uncertainty. First, there were some 120 kilometers to Bordeaux, depending what route I would follow and the devil does not sleep. Second, I had no idea how I would get home, I did look at flights, but these were all pretty expensive; back then, one not-so-probable option would have been continuing to ride even further, maybe to Biarritz (where I had ridden in 2021 from Barcelona over the Pyranees mountains, from there to Bilbao, here is the link to my trip back then). Anyhow, I got ready to leave and all systems were go at 8 am.

The weather was anything but friendly and that was one of the reasons I did not go in swimming. Another reason were the words of the friendly biker the previous day, who warned me that the currents and the waves are super dangerous and that I should swim where coast-guards are present. There were signs proclaiming this fact, too.

So I started riding, pretty much straight south, pretty much straight, as the road was a sort of a bike highway.

Soon it started raining, rather constantly. It was not a cold, unpleasant rain - so I just left my T-shirt and shorts on and rode to consume one kilometer after the other. There were groups of bikers in full rain gear, they shook their heads when seeing my fully soaked me, but I was actually enjoying the ride. While I have had some drizzling rain on this trip, or a strong rain in the morning or the evening, it was only on the 37th day that a relatively heavy rain impacted the ride. Now one more thing about the French: at one point, the bike road went next to the main road and I stopped at one intersection to look at the directions. A pick-up truck saw this, slowed and stopped and offered me to jump in. I smiled, thanked him and tried to explain the perplexed driver that all was fine.

It did stop raining after an hour or two and thought that now that I was wet, I might as well go in for a swim and this was at Carcans, a surfer´s paradise. I locked my bike, changed from my wet clothes to the dry swimming gear and talked to the life guards. They told me it was only a patch of the beach about 20 meters wide, signaled by two flag posts, where swimming is allowed (more accurate: supervised) - and apart from surfers in their wetsuits, no other fool was going in. I had done something similar in Biarritz, where there were even larger waves crashing on the rocks - back then, on one of my swimming rounds, a lifeguard came to warn me to swim back to shore immediately.

Here the waves was smaller, but, as I experienced, very strong. One wild wave from the left followed the other one also from the left, then a small one from the right, a large one from the left, one more small one right, then a large one left, you get the point - it was not easy not to gulp some sea water (which I did). The current was very strong, but luckily, it went sideways and in no time, I was pretty much out of the guarded area, so thought it would be better to return to the beach. I repeated this three times and was quite exhausted after the third swim, trying to beat the current (that was impossible). Still, I was very much refreshed (especially that I had no opportunity to shower that morning).

I was really happy to have been carrying so much warm stuff, I put on a number of warm clothes and hoped I would not catch a cold. I did not. This was my last encounter with the ocean on this trip.

Somewhat later, there was an intersection, where one sign showed the way to Bordeaux, turning away from the coast, the other sign said "ESPAGNA". Here I suddenly felt a bit weak and thought of riding towards the south, but then due to reasons I have already explained (getting a bit tired), I decided on reaching Bordeaux.

The weather turned quite nice in the afternoon and I rode by a scenic lake, called Lake Lacanau, not far from the ocean - where people were SUPping, kite-surfing and enjoying the sweet water. Should the waters of the ocean be too harsh, you can literally walk over to this lake...not bad!

There I became best friends with a young dog.

Now I nearing Bordeaux and took a brradth at a bus stop in a small town. I heard a young lady nearby making a call, she was speaking German, to be more presicse, Austrian, to be even more precise, Lower Austrian, or so I thought. Well, almost, she was from Styria and working on a farm nearby for a couple of weeks.

The ride on this pleasant, straight bike path became increasingly unpleasant, having to stop for cars, backtracking, riding through underground passageways. I saw an older biker shoving his bike, I asked whether I could help he told me his spokes had broken about 20 kilometers away from hereand had been walking for the last 3 or 4 hours, towards a bike shop in town. The memories of the Romanian bike rider became vivid, who, in the summer of 2014, took the spikes of his own cycle and replaced the broken ones in my bike, here is a link to my trip back then.

At around 7 pm, I finally reached Bordeaux. Even from far away, the town looked appealing. It is also called the "Pearl of Aquitaine" and has been voted European Destination of the year in a poll a couple of years ago. It is an UNESCO World Heritage city,  describing it as "an inhabited historic city, an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble, created in the age of the Enlightenment, whose values continued up to the first half of the 20th century, with more protected buildings than any other French city except Paris".

Hotels wee hard to find or very expensive, so I booked a hostel for some €60, in an 8-bed room. I did sight-seeing till about 10:30 pm, then rode to the hotel, trying to be as quiet as possible. Though I will never know, I believe no one was in the room - and after taking a shower, I dropped into bed - only to be awoken around 2 am by some, or all, of my room mates returning from town, but I felt asleep quickly - unsure what the following day, a public holiday, would bring.

I rode some 135 kilometers on my last biking day.