Tl;Dr Rough Start, rough finish
Up at 4:30 after what seemed like 0 hours of sleep. But there were some strange ideaeee re e3êees (must have been dreams).
Assembled out the door at 5:45, met at the car. Tightened Chaz’s stem bolts and inflated his tubes. Then through town and across the bridge to… Very rough gravel.
A challenge on the Walseth Brompton (but apparently not FOR it – it worked just fine).
After a couple miles things got gentler and we really started rolling.
The country is… Southern. Constant droning of cicadas. The vegetation seems Californian, a palm tree or two. Many, many grapes. Very agricultural. A few strong smells of animals.
The trail was mostly smoothe, a few rough spots nothing serious.
A stop for lunch turned out to be coffee only. We pushed on to the Pont du Gard museum where we got a food.
We perhaps stayed too long at Pont du Guard, but it is very impressive…
After the aqueduct Bruce, Chaz, John and I headed out towards Nimes. There were a couple longish climbs, and the heat was getting quite hot. Lots of twisty turns and road side conferences. After a bit of hunting and pecking we found a cafe in (name of town!), and ordered a ceaser salad to split & 2 orders of tater tots.
2 ceaser salads and chicken fingers later, we ate all the extra food and paid. Maybe 15 miles to go, a bit climb or two and more than a few twisty turns we finally made into Nimes and..
I flatted. We were really suffering from the heat, changing my tire wasn’t hard but I wasn’t especially fast at it. After a somewhat bleary ride into the city center we stopped at a cafe to await our Airbnb instructions.
40 miles today in this heat was challenging for our group. Tomorrow is longer, we need to be better with our time if we are going to do it.
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