The bearable lightness of biking

When I started from my apartment in St gallen I was made mostly of butter and wobble, 200 km later my calves had turned to wood; brown, tough, full of imperfections and solid. The rest of me was still jelly-like but my calves were indestructible! Another 100 km on I discovered my shin was made of glass and switched from walking to the bike.

200 km after that my thighs had toughened to steel while the calves reverted to blubber. Unfortunately about this time my backside was bearing the brunt of the bicycle's bruises. Another 100 km later it had also toughened and evolved into the tush of steel.. until another 100 km later I realised my saddle position was inefficent and altered it. This exposed a totally new area du derriere to the saddle. Quell damage! Quell dommage!

There. Two kind of bilingual semi-bum-puns in one paragraph. That's all I wanted to do here if I'm honest, the rest is just window dressing..

After switching to the bike at besançon I spent the next 3 days in a sort of idyllic advertisement for french tourism.
Cycling along the bourgogne canal, on one side I passed sun-drenched verdant fields, tiny hamlets, secluded orchards and old mansions, on the other: calm still water, bejewelled with water lillies punctuated now and again with lock-cottages or passing barges with friendly French people waving from them.

Then I passed into Mordor.



Two days of storms and rain. Slogging into a strong headwind through miles of greyness and dirge. I remember at one point trying to navigate and being so utterly saturated that I couldn't retrieve my map without drenching it and my phone wouldn't respond to my commands telling me that my fingers were wet.

Still I had used what little foresight I possessed to keep a dry change of clothes in a black plastic bag so at the next hotel, after a shower and a meal all was good in the hood again. Literally.

This is my hood. The rest of the rain jacket was fired for being utterly useless but this kept the all pervasive rain out of my ears and so has earned it's place by my side. Or on my head; probably more useful there.

Since switching to the bike I had drastically lightened my already pretty streamlined set of equipment, eschewing my camping gear (which had saved me some cash on accomodation but wasn't providing the necessary rest each night) and just carrying one set of cycling clothes and another for the evenings (and toiletries. And first aid kit. And puncture repair kit. And pump. And spare tyre tube. And emergency food. Etc etc). Still everything fits into a set of saddlebags (I still feel like a wandering gunslinger, albeit a rubbish one) and is relatively streamlined, which is good, cause I'm not.

Every second little village I passed seemed to have a 'novelty giant thing' on it's outskirts; giant taps, giant flower pots, giant topiary peacocks (ahem), giant penny farthing (though those are pretty big anyway so it may have just been a normal one). I began to feel like a borrower; I kept thinking that around the next bend I'd have to fight off a giant rat with my sewing needle sword.

I pressed onwards to Paris, which for a European capital proved remarkably difficult to find; the heretofore clear bike route became a tangled morass of dead ends, construction sites, flooded paths and private property. If any neighbouring teutonic countries ever get all 'invadey' again, the French should forget the Maginot line and force them to use the 'designated tank lane', they'll either get so frustrated at the disorder they'll give it up or else never find the capital at all.

Cheaper than a howitzer and more effective at detering invaders.

Chugging along again now and hoping to reach cherbourg within a week at the outside.