Birdlady42
Surprise! This is Brian, not Kristin. Why? I asked her if I could write part of the blog entry tonight. Today was probably the worst day of bicycle touring I’ve experienced and unfortunately, I pulled Kristin along for the ride.
There were 4 mistakes I made today to cause the mess, I’ll point them out as I tell you about the day.
The day started great, with Kristin buying breakfast and lunch at the pastry shop. Quick aside: we passed two nuclear power plants. We stopped for lunch outside Gien. We had a beautiful view of the church and the castle.
We decided to implement our new way of reserving our rooms: at lunch time we gauge how we feel and pick a town to ride to. We then use booking.com to reserve a room in that town. Here comes my first mistake: using Google Maps or Komoot to plan a bicycle route will always pick the most direct way. The Eurovelo 6 isn’t direct, it follows the Loire. So the town we thought was 26 miles away was actually 36+ miles away. This made our day 56+ miles instead of 46 miles.
One thing you should know about the the Eurvelo 6: as it heads east, it winds past 2 mountain ranges. Now I didn’t say “through,” but as the trail leaves the Loire it gets hilly, well at least hilly for south central Indiana resident.
My second mistake was to pick nice hotel in the center of the old part of the town. Think about that, old French town…built for defense…best place for defense? Yep, the tallest hill in the area.
So the hotel was booked for the night and that stress was gone. Just a nice leisurely ride. We did get to see some amazing sites, like riding on a canal bridge. Not a bridge over a canal, literally a bridge that carries a canal.
Now I’ll throw my third and biggest mistake in here but in truth it was ongoing all day: I didn’t have enough water and ended up running out! Now there is an interesting fact about France: you can get water in cemeteries, There is drinkable water supplied for watering flowers and thirsty bikers. The problem with today is we only passed one and we didn’t stop. Later in the day we came to an RV/Caravan park. After filling up some bottles, Kristin pointed out that it ma y not be drinkable. Merde!
We rode most of the way to Sancerre before coming to a water source. By this time I was incredibly thirsty. I downed most of a bottle immediately…which I didn’t refill (foreshadowing!).
Right after finding the water source we were riding on a beautiful path beside a canal. Every mile or so there was a bridge that crossed the canal. The cycling path was very close to the canal so at the bridges there was a tiny but steep climb to the top of the bridge road and then back down to the canal level. It was at one of these short steep climbs that the first side-effect of going without water hit me: I got a massive cramp on the inside of my left thigh. I had to immediately stop riding and attempt to release the cramp…I still don’t really know how to. I’ve never had a cramp there, and never hope to again! The very next climb up to the canal crossing bridge caused an immediate and intense cramp. By this time I’d also run out of water… again!
Not long after we made it to the “exit” to Sancerre. Yay! As we enter the “town” the climbs began. Now I had used Komoot to plan the route to our hotel and load it to my Garmin cyclometer. After our first climb my Garmin seemed to route us in the wrong direction. We both got out our phones and used Google Maps to figure the “correct” route. I’m guessing this is mistake 4. Google routed us on the most direct route and it was insane! It had us going up some incredible climbs. It was at this time that the second side-effect hit me: My legs had no energy left! This meant from this point I was walking my bike up all climbs. Now one more thing to remember is that I hadn’t eaten since noon, it was currently around 6.
In addition to my legs having no energy, I’m beginning to suffer from total exhaustion. I should point out that Kristin is tired but not suffering the effects water deprivation. She now starts to become my personal savior.
As we round our current long but not terribly steep climb, oh, just a reminder, we are walking our bikes, Google informs us to “take a left” up the steepest road I’ve ever seen! For me, on top of everything else, despair starts to set in. We begin the climb. By this point I need to stop every 20 feet to rest. This road isn’t straight, as we approach every turn I’m hoping/praying that it will level out and at every turn the road gets steeper! After every turn my despair grows and I have to stop sooner. Kristin supplied me with encouragement every step up this ever worsening road. At the worst I think I was stopping every 5 feet.
After what I feel was 45 minutes to an hour on my own hell-road, we rounded the last corner to see a level road! We actually rode a little until this road also turned and started to climb, although nowhere near as steep as the hell-road. I still needed to stop and walk up this road.
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| Our own Tour de France mountain stage |
After that last road we were on top! It was just a few hundred feet to the hotel. Kristin continued to be my savior by helping me carry some of my bags as well as hers. Once in the room, she transformed into Dr. Kristin and helped me get water and sugar in me, this included the most expensive and most delicious Sprite I’ve ever had.
We’re feeling better after a good dinner and a well deserved dessert. Tomorrow’s plan is to sleep in, pick a hotel no more than 25-30 miles away that is very close to the trail.
Kristin here: shortly after lunch, I had what I figured would be the big story of the day- my bike broke in half! I always have been paranoid about the S&S couplers and will reach down and check that they are still tight fairly frequently. I haven’t done that at all this trip. We had just started up after a turn by the nuclear power plant and my gears were suddenly wonky (the technical term). I stopped immediately thinking I had broken a chain. Then I noticed my bike seemed loose, making me think something was wrong with my headset. Nope! Just then Brian noticed my lower coupler had come apart! I got it back together and hand tightened it and noticed the top one was starting to back off, too. Brian got the special tool out and tightened up completely. Disaster averted. I could have really damaged my bike or myself if I hadn’t stopped when I did.
So, to sum up, it was a rough end of an otherwise nice day. It was really hard to watch Brian struggle like that. I’m buying snacks he’ll eat tomorrow (he doesn’t like my Lara bars). He had some of the grapes we had left from lunch, but by then it was too little too late. Tomorrow will be a better day – assuming we can find a safe way off this mountain – and we’ll ALWAYS look at the map very closely before picking a town to stop in. It’s late, so we haven’t pulled the photos off of the cameras, so those will have to wait for later.