Le Puy en Velay to Montbonnet
The bonjour day
Day 1 of the walk has started. Off to church for blessing.
Jo managed to get lost even before we take our step on the route..
After breakfast it is good bye Le Puy et bonjour chemin du le Puy en valey. Oh and today happens to be the Grand Route de Chemin. Runners start from various villages on our route going to Le Puy, The French being polite say bonjour when passing, so our day is filled with bonjour after bonjour.
Day one didn’t end too well, Jo walked down the 3 steps in the flat, unfortunately there were 4. Ankle twisted and sore she had a restless night. (That may have been due to my snoring.)
Low cloud for the start of the day, hopefully it will clear later.
Today we decided to have easy strolls around town. I strolled and Jo limped.
Finally made it to Le Puy….
Before picking the sisters up we had to get out of St Etienne after many u-turns and 25 minutes we were back at the hotel.
Off we go take 2 was more successful and we managed to find our other passengers with the help of the onboard navigation.
Arrived at Hertz at 12.15 to find it closed for lunch, back at 2.00.
Left the car behind and found our accomodation, then back to return the vehicle.
After returning we went walk about for the afternoon. Getting our passport and climbing the virgin Mary.
Although yesterday felt good, today we are both hurting, finding aches in places we didn’t know we had.
The sun was up early but we didn’t rise untill 9:00 however we were away before 11:00 (not bad for us).
Today will only be a short ride as we get used to our saddles again.
Today we are off on our cycle trip.
As the weather doesn’t seem like changing we are going to jump onto the ferry at Poole and head straight to France, perhaps we will cycle the NR2 south coast cycle route another day.
As the ferry leaves at 7:00 we will have to be up early, so I set our alarm for 5:00.
As we have already packed it’s load our bikes and off and on the road by 5:30. We arrive at the port without incident and wait in line with the cars to go on aboard. One more to go before us and we hear vrooom vroom the idiot behind starts revving his car. Not sure what that’s all about as we can’t go anywhere.
We move up, show our passports & tickets and given our ID’s to attach to our bikes. Again from behind there’s the vrooom vrooom. That’s it I tell Jo to make sure the tickets & passports are safely put away before we move off, the attendant gives us a smile as to say ‘Take your time I want to make him wait as well’
Safely on board and we depart 15 minutes early, good job we didn’t oversleep.
The crossing was smooth and we didn’t need our quells.
On arrival at Cherburg we left the port and turned left, picking up the cycle path. Unfortunately within a couple of km. the cycle path ended in road works and we had to re-navigate. The Garmin sent us off along the main road, not the best choice, so we decided to turn around and find an alternative road nearer the coast.
It was good being on the bike again and soon the Kms sailed by aided by a tail wind.