Days #17-20 – Getting speed

Go, go, go

Ah back on the bike! Do you remember what was the effect of our last rest in Beziers? Daniel biked a bit more than planned the next days. Well what do you expect after 3 full rest days?! We left our planned stop (Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne) behind, we even passed by the next stop (Cormoz), for a great total of 120km the first day and 100km the next day. We are picking up speed. If these improvements keep happening we’ll do Czech Republic in a day

The downside of this is that we don’t have that many pictures to show. At first I wanted to take pictures but Daniel said he was feeling too good to stop and take pictures, then he said he was so tired that if we stop to take a pic, we would have to sleep right there on the spot.

Knock, knock v2

I mentioned there was no reason to try this again having so many hiding places around. But on day #17, after biking 120km we found the camping closed! We asked and the locals said the next camping was about 20km away (and off the route). Daniel was destroyed, not feeling like biking around for a hiding place. So why no try our luck? Oh I will tell you why not…

We knock and explain the situation. This time we begin by saying “we have a little favour to ask and it is not a problem if you say no” (in french). But before we finished the final sentence “…if we could camp in your garden” the guy was looking at the ground and shaking his head, kind of like saying “of course not”. He said “no” in about 10 different ways (without me saying a word) and he then said we could camp in his other property (an empty lot) about 500m away and must be gone in the morning.

He was cold and uninterested. He seemed annoyed by our request for the garden. But Daniel was dead, we really needed a place to sleep, this was no experiment. We camped as far away as possible. He then soon came to give us a bottle of water. Hmmm, maybe he is getting nicer (like the old lady in Verrieres)… the hell he is! He was just giving us water so that we had no honest reason to come near his house. He wrote down Daniel’s full name and nationality. He closed the door, all windows, and even locked the old barn. With the bottle he said “have a nice trip”, i.e. “I won’t talk to you again” (and he did not).

Right… ’cause we have biked more than 1000km, for 17 days, just to come there and steal his old stupid lawnmower in the barn. How the hell do we carry that on the bike? The other lady was scared, I can understand that, but this one was scared, uninterested, and selfish. He did not care who we were or why we were there. We were simply a problem, a risk, he didn’t want to deal with.

The experience really brought our motivation to the ground. The first day we biked 100km out of excitement, the second day we biked 100km to get as far away as possible. No one waved goodbye to us during that day, no flaggers, only uninterested people. A single girl approached us as we were looking at the map in Pierre-de-Bresse… je je, a Belgian… We will not try this again. I know there is nice people out there, but the risk is too big. These cold people bring us down. They make us want to give them a reason to be afraid. But we didn’t, we left the campsite better than we found it.

Veloroute to Budapest

On day #18 we got to Dole (I think an uncle worked for Dole some time ago). And by coincidence a guy mentioned there was a bike route going to Besançon, fabulous! We are going to Besançon! It turns out the route doesn’t go to Besançon, it passes through Besançon… it goes to Budapest! From Nantes (french atlantique)!!! We took it and it was lovely. It borders the river Doub until Besançon, filled with cyclists, walkers, and roller skaters. All of them suddenly friendly again! A road biker catched us and asked us about the flag, the country… he had even heard of “la vuelta ciclistica de Costa Rica”! Oh people like that motivate us again. It was a great surprise and althouth he was much faster than us, we rode together for a good while.

We arrived at Besançon and met our host for the next 2 days: Celine from Couchsurfing. Her friendly smile immediatly promised to erase all the bad knock-knock experiences. There are very nice people out there indeed, you just have to know how to find them

Peaceful nature

We have a lot of alone-time to spend. I like meditating though Daniel is a bit more restless. Still, he has no option sometimes. And a funny thing happens when you stay quite for a long time, you blend in with nature. I don’t mean spiritually, I mean the animals forget you are big and dangerous. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of this, if I had, probably I couldn’t write this section because animals would get scared.

Pigeons are normal, they are not shy, but did you know they also eat some types of grass? I didn’t. Maybe they just clean their beaks with it. We had squirrels walking back and forth half a meter in front of us. I think the best were a couple of little deer, not bigger than a dog, who came to our campsite. They stood about 25m away, took their time, ate grass… just in front of us!

We witnessed the organized hunting of grasshoppers by 3 birds… oh but that is a cool and long story. You can ask me about it in person

Stats

Day #17: 118km-5:38h
Day #18: 98km-5:05h
Day #19: 65km-2:45h
Day #20: Rest
GPS