Friday 2 January 2015

A Velo-Odyssey


The birds are telling us to go south.
The windmills of La Mancha are calling us south wards.
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Marie-Antoinette the kitten is telling us to eat cake. And some of the best cakes to be found are south in Tavira.
So in Rochefort we roll on to the trans teleporting bridge thing with pulleys and wires and cables and all to take us across to the other side and to escape posh tea and a cat fight with Marie-Antoinette.
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On the other side we discover a strange chapel where people pray to the armless virgin Mary, mother to headless baby Jesus, surrounded by Beelzebubs’ acolytes, flies everywhere. But actually, there are no parishioners anywhere. We decided not to hang around…
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Luckily we found a very stylish French lady on a mini-bike to cheer us up.
And then we met the blacksmith and his son and they showed us the route southwards. Another little canal, where the two of them ride their horses and go cycling. Phew!
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And all of a sudden there was a giant in bathing trunks, running south wards for his holidays.
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Quick, follow that giant and his boat!
Suddenly giant paper boats headed straight for us! Where’s the giant gone? Which way do we go and can someone stop these boats from charging us!
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Lost in a sea of corn, we finally made it through the maze after many days.
We found ourselves on another ferry and here we pick up the trail of the giant again, lorries full of rocks. And as everybody knows, giants like rocks and find lots of useful and useless things to do with them.
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In the bay of Arcachon, the land of stilts we staid with a bakers mother. The baker is riding a Bullit in South America. On the wall there was another clue, sending us south to La Mancha.
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Follow the little red bicycles through the woods. Don’t talk to the hunters or even stop for them and find the narrow cement cycle highway.
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We made it across without falling of and found a save haven in the empty village of the people with no clothes.
A chalet had been prepared for each of the bicycles and a sign had been left for us. We knew exactly what it meant, even though the B was missing. On voyage, ever south wards!
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The next night was not as fortunate for us. We had to spend it in the haunted campsite of the gas lake. Here’s Johnny with the bill…
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Here’s Johnny the stoned squirrel with l’addition plus admin charges!? Warning! Do not stay here!
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In the marshes though we came across the cutest little calf ever and things began to look up again.
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Oh it’s so cute!
And up and up and up we went the famous big Dunes underneath which lies a whole Celtic village.  
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The giant and his boat was nowhere to be seen. The dunes, the wind and the painful sand blasting turned Kevin ito a sand flee.
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He hopped here, he hopped there and hopped right out of his cycling shorts…
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Luckily Marie-Antoinette didn’t see it.
Back on track, crossing Les Landes, we left the cost behind us and headed for the Canal du Midi to take us south.
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We found the canal near to here, Bazas. In the tourist office we saw this picture of the square. And outside the tourist office we saw the reality of the square. Fortunately there are days when the cars can’t park there, but this wasn’t one of them. So we left Bazas and headed for Agen.
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