Day 1 (Sunday, 27 August 2006): 58.78 miles, 6:27 hours, Pampignan to Le Pla
[ MAP ]

Note to self: actually do some preparation next time.

So I get dropped off at Pampignan at nine this morning. I'm right next to toll gates for a motorway, feeling quite shady after a sleepless night on a bus that travelled overnight from England. I should probably go and find some place to sleep right now.

But no. After loading my bike with the panniers, I'm straight into the saddle and heading west towards the Atlantic. My brain starts to wake up when I realise I'm about to enter the motorway. When I get back to the toll gates where I started I have one of guards shouting at me very angrily. Pity I don't understand French.

I finally find the road that takes me out of town and along the northern side of the mountains. I've got copies of a Lonely Planet guide for a Mediterranean to Atlantic route that I'm meant to be following. I'm already cheating. I was about ten kilometres away from the Mediterranean when I started, I could see the blue waters from the bus. At the time I thought there was no way my lazy arse was going to pedal a twenty kilometre round trip to the coast just to say that I'd been there and done that. But now I'm regretting it.

I'm also cutting the first planned two days into half, sidestepping the mountains for the first day. If I'd planned a bit better I would have done things differently. It's not like I didn't have the time to plan...
...Here's how planning the Leon-way goes:
    1.   Enjoyed my last trip to France so much that I figure I want to do it again, this time with some hills.
    2.   Find a bus that takes bikes all the way down to the Pyrenees. Bike express have a regular schedule during the summer but with only a few weeks to spare and the route I've chosen it looks like I've got eleven days to get from point A (on the Mediterranean) to point B (on the Atlantic), about five hundred kilometres at the most.
    3.   Yeah, I can do that, no sweat. Book the bus trip.
    4.   For three more weeks (I work on a boat) I do nothing; no other planning, no training in the gym. Zilch.
    5.   I get home. I've got a whole week to prepare and train for the trip.
    6.   Instead, I go out every night drinking and catching up with friends.
    7.   Day before I'm scheduled to leave I pack my panniers with too much stuff I don't need and do a test ride down my street.
    8.   All good, I'm ready to go.

My left pedal is clicking away madly with every turn. Didn't make that noise when I rode it to the end of my street.

It was a bright, warm day and easy riding along a highway for most of the day. The mountains stayed menacingly to my left until I turned towards them at Axat. The road squeezed itself through the stunning St George's Gorges; steep sharp rocks towering above either side of the road and river. By then it was half-past four, my legs felt hollow and I was feeling very burnt out. It was another five, very slow, kilometres up the beginning of tomorrow's first hill before I started seeing the first signs indicating a campground. It was not until I'd ridden several kilometres more up ten percent grades that I finally crumbled into the campsite at Le Pla.

Easy.