To cycle or to walk?

Hey we picked an aire with free wifi!!!!!! What a result, after a bit of deliberation managed to pick up 146 emails to find only 3 were of interest.  First time I’d picked up since we got away so actually happy that no customers had been after me.  Not only that but we had free showers and they were fantastic.  The water pressure nearly beat you into the ground.  Not only was I able to wash my hair with two shampoos but I could use conditioner as well – heaven. 

Back to the holiday – the aire was about 4 miles from Mont St Michel with direct access to the river cycle path, so hey bikes today – yippee!!!! I’m not made for walking miles but I do like to cycle.  The first time we’ve used the bikes for a year so that failed promise to get fit before the holiday starting to bite.  Got the bikes off our new bike rack - a tow ball one (there’re actually very good) and pumped up all six tyres.  Yes two each, of course the dog has to come too and she has a trailer with two wheels that hitches up to my bike and we tow her everywhere. 

  Onlookers find it amusing to see a dog in a trailer.  Anyway poor thing is 11 or 12 now so she’s too old to go too far walking let alone running alongside bikes.  She’s also got no concept of wheels of any sort and with her constant spinning will actually just spin into the wheels – yes we have tried it and yes she does, you’ve got to be constantly watching that she doesn’t turn into your front wheel or even worse run into you between the wheels.

She loves the trailer – well probably more resigns herself to it and it’s better than getting left behind. What makes me laugh is when we stop to let her out for a walk she won’t budge and looks at me as if I’m stupid – she gets that from Iain, he looks at me like that too.   I do make her get out and walk if we are going up hill though – I’m not pushing the bike and the trailer with 12kg of princess, who has got 4 perfectly good legs, sitting in it. The biggest problem with the trailer is that it’s like constantly peddling up hill – but then I need the exercise a lot more than Iain does.

So off we go, Iain, me and the dog in the trailer.  Everything is going great, a nice pace, a little bit of pull on the muscles that hadn’t been used for ages, when a shout of “Stop! – The trailer has got a flat tyre.” Great – about a mile away and we’ve got a trailer failure.  Decision needed now:-

• ·         Go back
• ·         Keep going
• ·         Abandon bikes and walk

The latter was decided and we chained our bikes to a tree and walked on.  Well that was a long way and quite a hot day.  We did manage to get to Mont St Michel and see the Monastery and the dam that has been built to stop the silting up of the river.  It was really impressive and probably one of the last “Must See” things for us to see in France.

A long walk back to the bikes and the dog was knackered.  She saw her bed in the trailer and jumped straight in and laid down.  A slow cycle ride back to make sure that the tyre didn’t come away from the wheel and back to the aire.  Job for tomorrow – source a new inner tube – we’d got a spare one for our bikes but not the dog’s.

I made a determined effort that I was going to take more photos this holiday and that Mr Technophobe might actually be encouraged to take some as well and maybe even some of me!!!! - here's his effort.

Next day we left the Aire – you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to work out how to use the machine to allow us to leave.  He was in the driving seat and I fiddled and fiddled and as sod’s law dictates, just as someone came to help the barrier rose and we went through. At least I didn’t look a complete fool.

Oh just one thing – where were we going?  By this stage we’d been away 7 nights and we had no plans after Mont St Michel.  Perhaps we would go to Brittany – we keep threatening that. Last year we went to the Vendee and then to the Loire because the weather forecast for Brittany was bad so this year we might give it a try.  Nah!!! Too many yellow windy roads - much too small for our behemoth so we’ll go back to the Vendee.  Off we trot about 170 miles to St Jean de Monts.