A 50 Mile Day

To Aimargues, France -- 52.8 miles, 12.3 mph, 750 ft

Slowly but surely we're starting to bump up our mileage. Today, although warm, was pretty straightforward; we avoided the only real climb of the day (~700 ft) by skirting the edge of the coastal town of Sete. We had to deal with the hustle and bustle down by the waterfront, but I think everyone appreciated the trade-off. The French towns have definitely had a lot more traffic than the more sleepy towns of northern Catalonia.

With just over 25 miles under our belts, we stopped for lunch in the shade of some trees.  It was fun to ride among some small farms on the way; we saw grapes, wheat, figs, and olives all in quick succession.

The roads today alternated between busy roads and highways -- all with good shoulders -- and dedicated cycleways, either gravel or asphalt. Although we appreciate all the bike lanes, the one aggravating thing is I never know when we get to a new road whether there is or isn't a cycleway. And, if there is, whether it's on the right or left side of the road. As a result, there are frequent u-turns and backtracking. 

I've been trying to reduce my battery usage during the day to take advantage of the generator hub on the front wheel. Each day I've been reducing the brightness of the screen to see if the generator can keep up with the phone. I've also begun putting the phone in power saving mode, even when the battery is full. This means; however, that I can't wear my sunglasses and see the screen, which will often shut off to consume power. The experiment continues.

Meg and I have been going through the state capitals with Dex and Kylie -- one of the items on the list for 5th grade. This is a good refresher for the educators as well. Unfortunately, I'd been teaching Kylie that the capital of Arkansas was Baton Rouge and Meg taught Dex that the capital of Nebraska was Bismarck. It makes it lot harder when your teachers don't actually know what they're doing!

We made it to our somewhat shabby campground,  Bellvue en Camargue, by around 4:00.  We had a nice grassy spot under a mulberry tree (with actual mulberries).

Although there was a big pool, it was mostly green and not open.  However, the small kids' pool next to it was available, which was good enough for all of us. We obeyed the strict swim apparel requirements by wearing our fancy synthetic underwear.

Afterwards, we walked across the busy road into town for dinner.  Meg and the kids thought the town was a bit eerie due to the lack of people (I didn't agree).

The few people we did see were congregated outside of restaurants drinking and smoking.  Unfortunately, it seemed that only drinks were available during the week.  After three strikes, we resigned ourselves to visiting the McDonalds on the other side of town.  Although not as cheap as in the US, we definitely know how to fill ourselves up there.  As is often the case these days, it was well after 10:00 when we happily crawled into the tent.