Missing: Presume fed.

So it's Friday 27th April, about 4.30 in the afternoon and I'm on a campsite in a place called La Tarbardiere, right in the arse-end of nowhere! What a few days it's been. The weather's picked up hugely, and the wind has dropped off substantially. Over the last two days I've ridden over 130km, and am feeling great for it. I left Le Clos Clotture on Wednesday morning and headed out to a place called La Fosse Rouge near Chateau d'Olonne - the wind made it a bit difficult, but getting there was well worth it. It's right on the coast, and even thought the majority of the town was closed I did manage to find an open bar and an open restaurant. In the bar I ran into my first friendly face on the trip - a Scottish builder, originally from Dundee, though by the way he was washing back the Pernod I surmised that he had been down in France for quite a few years! He recommended a restaurant called Anguille Beach, strangely just off Anguille beach where I spent a happy couple of hours demolishing a tasty steak and (half) bottle of vin rouge. Wednesday was spent in transit from Chateau d'Olonne, through the Olonne area towards Notres Dames de Monts - it was quite easily the best day's riding that I've ever had. The weather was perfect, the sun was on my back, the wind behind me (and not of my doing before you at the back start piping up again) and the scenery amazing. I travelled through the old town of Olonne, past the new(ish) waterfront, then through a beautiful forest and the views just kept coming and coming. It really was fantastic. Last night was spent at Camping Le Dornieres. It's their low-season at the moment, so it's pretty quiet - just a few families in mobile homes, and certainly nobody else stupid enough to be camping. It's blissfully tranquil, even if the company leaves something to be desired. As an answer to someone's question on the blog, I have a general idea of the direction that I'm headed - at the moment it's simply Northish towards St. Malo, as I have my brother's stag do at the start of May. Each night I'm getting out my Allan Rogers book of campsites, working out what's open and in the general area of where I'm going, link it up to my satnav to see how far it is and heading for it the next day. It's a simple enough plan and, as yet, seems to be working well. As regard food, I'm typically either grabbing a croissant and a coffee for breakfast or having the leftovers of yesterday's bread with some jam, grabbing a couple of baguettes and nipping into a charcuterie for some cold meats for my lunch and having a salad with cold meats for dinner. It's quite healthy, but makes no mention of the myriad of ice-creams, crepes & sugary snacks thrown into the equation!! So that's it for now - unfortunately the battery life for my iPad isn't exactly ideal and it tends to eat the battery on my solar panel fairly quickly (which is kind of important for recharging the SatNav!) so I'll be off. Next post will probably be back in Jersey.

Mieux vaut tard que jamais...

Better late than never. Well, finally I'm on my way. For exceptionally boring reasons that you all probably know (and if you don't, I'm not going to go into them now), my departure from Jersey was delayed for a couple of weeks. Nothing to do with the two week hangover from my leaving party, honest. So where am I? Here is currently a little campsite in a place called Angles in the Vendee region of France. I started out on Sunday, and headed over to some French friends of my family (the Hery's) in Saint Servan. Their hospitality was, as ever, fantastic and it was great to see Jean, their eldest son (a midshipman/lawyer in the French navy) back to vote in the Presidential elections. I stayed over at theirs on Sunday night, after being fed and watered (disclaimer: might not have technically been water) for almost every waking meeting of my somewhat fleeting visit. I jumped on the train from St. Malo at some ridiculous hour in the morning, exacerbated by the fact that France is an hour ahead, meaning it was EVEN EARLIER. A couple of weeks of nice long lie-in's cruelly faded into history. The train down to La Rochelle (where I started) was fairly uneventful, aside from the woman in Rennes without a soul (she walked straight into an automatic which only opened when a dog wandered past which promptly started growling at her (ref: The Simpsons - Bart sells his soul)). That was good. The other thing that I managed was not to time-stamp my ticket correctly. I spoke to the conductor before heading down who told me not to worry and that he'd remember my face (must've been something to do with the shorts that I was wearing in the midst of a torrential downpour of rain). I didn't see him, and when I enquired if this would cause a problem at Rennes, was promptly offered a refund on my ticket which was nice. As an aside to anyone that cycles, French trains are great for cyclists. There's a really simple system for hanging the bikes on the wall above a load of fold-away seats, and nobody bats an eyelid. They're clean, friendly and (certainly compared to trains in the UK), cheap. They're also on-time. The trains that I got, LOR (possibly - they weren't TGV at any rate) cost €50 down to La Rochelle. A great advantage for anyone planning a cycling holiday. My first night abroad was interesting to say the least. Bearing in mind that (a) I arrived in La Rochelle at about half four in the afternoon; (b) it was still raining; and (c) the wind was close to being a hurricane, I decided to check into a hostel for the night. An interesting experience, especially bearing in mind that I was sharing said hostel with an entire school full of French schoolchildren. At least the bar was empty. So on to today, my first day on the road. It was an interesting start - just outside La Rochelle I managed to mis-read my GPS and almost tried to join an Auto-Route. Interesting. Almost immediately thereafter, as soon as I found the correct (non-multi lane) road, the heavens opened and soaked me to the skin. But it didn't last long - within half an hour I was dry again, and blasting down the open roads in beautiful French sunshine, admiring the beautiful French scenery. Breakfast consisted of a pain au chocolate and a coffee on a bench outside the boulangerie of a pretty little town that I have entirely forgotten the name of, and lunch was a baguette on a wall in Champagne La Marais (only remembered purely by the fact that it had Champagne in the name). The ride that I had thought would be about 30-35km for a nice gentle start to the trip clocked out at being 58km, due to the fact that my GPS measures distance as the crow flies, and that my bike doesn't handle water particularly well which resulted me avoiding the large tract of sea that travelling as the crow flies would have entailed. My GPS also decided that I wanted to cycle down an unpaved road to shave about 4 metres off the distance that the road right next to it would have been. I have since had words with my GPS, mentioning that unpaved roads are not fun when you don't have any suspension and are sitting on a leather seat. It has promised not to do it again. We'll see. I arrived at Camping le Clouture in Angles at about 3.30 this afternoon, set up my tent and had a nice little read (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Trilogy of Five (I thought that I'd start off with another travelling book)) in the glorious sun. It's beautiful here, and typically French. They have a bouncy castle. And two Emu (Emi?). I had an ice-cream. It's only my first day out on the road, and there's so much to say, though I know that it would bore the pants off the vast majority of you. Suffice to say, thus far I'm having an amazing time, and can't wait for tomorrow. As for tonight, I'm resting my sore arse (fnarr-fnarr), am about to order my first pression of the afternoon and settle down to watch Barcelona vs. Chelsea. Bring on tomorrow.