We arrived fit and well at our house in Prades about 4.30 yesterday afternoon, 31 days and 1,945 cycling kilometres (1,208 miles) since we started in Worcester (Cath estimated 1,894) and 2,233 kilometres (1,387 miles) from Mellor to Prades. I had 2 days of not cycling, so that is an average of 42 miles a day, not too bad for senior citizens toting panniers. The final 3 days were demanding but we had concluded that we would push on à toute vitesse to avoid another overnight stop. This is not because we were sick of hotels; rather surprisingly, spending most of the last 31 nights in different places has been fine and we have been bucked by the generally pretty high standard of comfort and cleanliness. A significant number of the breakfasts have been pretty feeble and most provided many opportunities to take in fearful amounts of sugar. Choices included hot chocolate, cakes, muffins, Nutella, honey, jams, chocolate confectionery, Viennoiserie, dried fruits, sweetened yoghurts and bizarre sugar-laden breakfast cereals. My top prize for sickliness goes to the Hotel de France in Rochefort.
As we feared, the coffee has generally been execrable. An Italian would have wept. However, being English and stoical, we held back the tears and contented ourselves with occasional mutterings of disappointment. We did have the odd 11:00 am espresso that was pretty decent but this morning we bought supplies of Malongo, our preferred French brand. This, together with fresh full cream milk, provides a rich and sturdy relief from the maiden's water to which we have been accustomed, albeit a dehydrated maiden with kidney disease.
We did have some very good bread, however, sometimes at breakfast and frequently from the many decent bakers that remain, and from whom we bought bread for our daily picnics. Most claim to be 'artisans' but only some are the real deal and we have become adept at sniffing them out. Nevertheless none matched the extraordinary quality of the bakery at Ille-sur Têt, down the road from here: Henri Poch and son at Boulanger et Chocolatier Le Couvent bake properly fermented bread of rare quality.
Our final 3 days en route were just as interesting as the other 28 but the lamentable quality of the Canal du Midi towpath and the strong Tramontane twind on the first two of these made the journey difficult. The French department of navigable waterways is responsible for upkeep of the canal but it is only if individual Départements wish to invest in improving the path that any decent or consistent standard is maintained. Haute Garonne, brilliant, good signage, lots of Tarmac but Aude, pitiful, with little signage, rutted dried mud, rocks, tree roots/stumps and coarse gravel, wholly unsuitable for cycling. Monday was a bank holiday in lieu of May Day, which fell on a Sunday, so we had opted for a self-catering room near Homps, just off the canal. This turned out to be a development of 100 units in an aparthotel by the very old vineyard, Château de Jouarres. The estate buildings were very fine and perhaps early 18C. The room itself was not the cleanest that we have had and the promised 700m walk to the shop proved to be 1.89km not something devoutly to be wished after a 79km cycle journey in sub-optimal conditions. The beer was, as always, just what the body craves after a long walk or cycle trip.
Tuesday was sunny with few clouds but the Tramontane was often rather a battle. Nevertheless it was behind us most of the way and we booled along at top speed through the charming Minervois wine villages on our way to Narbonne. Some of this was along the Canal de la Robine which connects Narbonne to the Canal du Midi and goes on to Port-la-Nouvelle much further down the coast. To do this it passes between the sea and the Étang de Leucate on a narrow embankment. The railway line is alongside it much of the way, a very unusual landscape with a nature reserve at Cap Sainte Lucie. The wind across the étang is a regular feature here and the stunted Mediterranean pines are permanently bent towards the sea. We have been to Port-la-Nouvelle before and like it very much. Although it has great beaches and solid neighbourhood type restaurants, it is predominantly a port town with silos, oil tanks, a cement works and large merchant vessels, as in the photograph.
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