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Published: July 15th 2023
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Jeff's tent
You can see my fly still flat on the ground. So after the tent were up we got some dinner (burger and frites) from a food van at the caravan and settled back to listen to a talented young man who sang for close to 2 hours playing an acoustic guitar. The place gradually filled up and and he really had the crowd engaged with a mix of both English and French tunes.
With our new plan, we had to be in Roubaix by Monday. Two days to cover 140kms. Unfortunately there was no town 70kms away. We decided a longer day first up so we have 84kms to do tomorrow. Hotel was booked in no time (in Bethune Bruay).
I got up at around 6am, and about half a dozen times during the night. Woken by either the wind or rain that came down quite steady for a while. I suppose it could have been worse, I stayed dry, the wind didn't blow my fly down, my sleep mat didn't puncture or deflate and all my camping gear packed back into the original bags in the morning which is a minor miracle in itself. I'll take that as a win.
We left by 8am without any supplies
One Man Concert
A 2 hour performance without a break. and limited charged devices. Luckily my bike has a USB charger off the front dynamo which I used during the day to keep my phone charged.
We were on minor roads but managed to find a Car Four supermarket and stocked up. We got some breakfast and lunch and some fruit to keep us going for the day and we should be able to get fresh supplies tonight. We were making great time, but the steady tail wind may have had something to do with that. By lunch time we had done 56kms, only 28kms to go. We figured we'd cruise in around 2:30pm and enjoy the afternoon.
We figured wrong!
Not long after we left from our lunch (and 15 minute power nap under a tree), the road pointed uphill and the road turned to gravel. Things got considerably slower. We ploughed on, no other choice really. The gravel was very bad in places, very uneven and steep, and then descending it was quite technical and bone jarring. That alone would have been bad enough but a burst of heavy rain was obviously needed to ensure our bikes got muddy and we got wet. There were
two burst of rain, the second coming just after we dried off from the first.
All said and done we still made pretty good time, we were in by 3:30pm. Check-in was via a terminal which takes payment and issues you with a code for your room - Technology replacing humans everywhere.
As I mentioned above, tomorrow we are heading to Roubaix (via Lille). We'll also have a rest day there, so it will be nice to recharge the batteries a bit and do some maintenance on the bikes.
Dinner tonight at an All You Can Eat Asian Buffet. All I can say is the ride will start off very sow tomorrow!
My phone is complaining about water getting in again. From now on when it rains I'll need to put my phone away and Jeff will need to take overt the navigation.
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