Today was 95% the best day but 5% tarnished it slightly, that comes later. It all started with a nice cool morning as I found myself a woodland spot between to two fields to camp in. Due to this, unfortunately no morning shower as there was no dew but I had a good 8 hours sleep so felt fresh.
The wind dropped and the roads smoother compared to yesterday all be it still rolling, meant I managed to get to my first town Bar le Duc in good time to get in touch with a few people via another McDonald's wifi.
This time I succumbed to the pressure of the burger but whether it was the quick snack or a quick catch up with loved ones i dont know but I felt absolutely brilliant for the rest of the day. The wind made my hair stand up on end as I coasted down hills and powered back up the otherside and this brought a feeling of change to my day. I have been quite reserved recently so this new lease of life convinced me to push the boat out today and do something crazy!
I continued to reassure myself that what I was going to do later will be a great idea as I motored through town after town. The appearances of each town also growing in beauty further adding to my amazing day.
After 70 miles of good cycling I decided to camp up in another forest as the landscape is slowly changing to woodland. Right, this is it I thought, tonight I'm having rice! For the past 5 days I have been eating packet pasta and adding the odd frenchitie to it but today I said no! Tonight I'm having rice!
Unfortunately this is where my day turned slightly as when it comes to cooking rice I'm more like Uncle Buck then Uncle Ben. I like a good thick sauce and I even bought a baguette to mop up the mess tin with. This in itself was a risk because carrying a metre long baguette Bungy corded to your bike is not only a major aerodynamic faux pas ( I should know, I'm an engineer) but also an open invitation for aerial attacks!
I was essentially a moving bird feeder or just a game to some of them. Knowing this i pedalled extra fast to find cover and a place to pitch up. Everything was coming together nicely and things just seemed to click. As it happened the water boiled before the rice was done and I didn't want to add more to risk a runny rice soup so just had to make do with hard pellets of rice getting stuck in my teeth. Then to top it off I've ran out of hobnobs! Tuc crackers have salvaged something back from the evening's meal though but if hard rice and no hobnobs is all I have to be disheartened about then let's hope everyday goes like today.
If you haven't already figured out then today was pretty faultless and not much happened...
No comments:
Post a Comment