03/05/2019: Carnac
Km travelled today/sum: 168km / 2261km
Cloudy/Sun shine, nice twisty country roads
As we packed up in the morning, we realised that it is getting warmer. We saw our first two digit temperature reading in the morning since quite a while: 11 degrees! Today would be only a short ride and we would decide if we stay or not once we arrived in Carnac. When we arrived, the sun was shining, just in time for a nice lunch next to the tourist office.
The ‘Menhirs’ were not very far from here, so we hopped on the bikes and got there in no time. There are plenty of these megaliths (around 3000) spread over a vast area. These stones are around 5000 years old!
It seems that there are different areas with different pattern of the meaglith, but nobody really knows what the purpose of them was. For us they looked like “Hinkelsteine” from Asterix and Obelix. So we walked around, took a couple of pictures and then had a look for an abode for the night.
We booked something reasonable cheap, and as luck would have it when we arrived they gave us an upgrade to a different hotel! The hotel was just in front of the ‘Le Tumulus Saint-Michel’. We read about it in the museum and now stumbled over it in front of our hotel. The ‘Le Tumulus Saint-Michel’ is Europes largest megalithic grave mound. Unfortunately the door into the mound was closed.
From here we walked back to the town center to the coffee shop we noticed when we went to the tourist office. The had very nice cake and even a bear made out of marzipan – one of Bjoerns favourite sweets.
On our way home we used google maps to show us the way. Something went wrong and we ended up crawling through scrubs and walking through muddy ground. Unfortunately no pictures of this adventurous excursion. Eventually we turned around and opted for the longer way, which brought us back to the hotel much better. The sunset out of our window looked fantastic.
Tomorrow we will have a long day in front of us, we’ll try to make it to the Dune du Pilat, which is ~ 600km from here.
04-05/05/2019: Dune du Pilate
Km travelled today/sum: 519 km / 2780 km
Cloudy/drizzle, mostly highway
It was cold again; we used our heated gear and our rain gear. The ride itself was cold, rainy but otherwise uneventful, mostly highway. On our last petrol stop, we booked a cabin on a camp ground right at a dune. The cabin was a bit small, but the location was awesome. The ‘Dune du Pilat’ is Europe tallest sand dune, and it is moving, swallowing trees and roads on its way.
After we’d arrived we were exhausted, but we couldn’t resist, so we briefly climbed the dune in the evening and watched a spectacular sunset from there.
The next day we walked on top of the dune to the two highest points.
And after a fun way down, he needed something to gain our strength back, we had Oysters J
Later that day we had a look at our planed to ride through the Pyrenes. We discovered that the night temperature there would be around -2 degree, so we decided to give that a miss and now plan to ride through the Pyrenees after Morocco instead.
This meant that our next stop would be Bilbao, where the weather seems to be more enticing.
As for our noble steeds, they are travelling fine, apart from Sigrid’s chain. I had to tighten it again; it’s nearly a daily job now. It’s slowly reaching the stage where I can hardly tighten it more, so a loose link in the chain is flipping like mad. That means that, in the not too distant future, we’ll have to change the chain.
