Catching up #5: Napoleon to the Romans

With only a few guests and a fairly decent albeit “continental” breakfast spread there was good snaffle opportunities and I made a very delicious looking meat and cheese baguette with accompanying pastries for my lunch break.

Believe it or not today is the 9th April my fifth day – I’m half way on the run and need to be back on the train at Calais on the 14th: which reminds me I need to book it. But that can wait for today I have a mammoth route planned – back up to Castellane via the super-twisties then across country to visit the Roman Pont du Gard before retiring to Nimes. Wait – just check that booking confirmation and… YES – it booked for the 29th April. Oh shit.

I need to find a new place to sleep tonight and given that fateful conversation with the French idiot with the Triumph the further South the better – all the better to be near those lovely Pyrenees. It takes ages but I find the perfect stop just outside Montpellier which is a mere stepping stone to the Millau bridge and I also find a good spot to to rest over in Carcassonne – which if you remember were both on my list of possible goals: and Carcassonne is a stone’s throw from the Pyrenees!

The trouble is, the time that it’s taken to rearrange my sleeping arrangements and the further away that bed now is, the funky route I’d spent so long planning is looking way too long now! I need to re-route.

Well, the rest of the Route Napoleon would take me gently down now to Cannes/Nice where I could blast a motorway route through to Nimes from which the Pont du Gard was a teeny skip.

Now, prepare yourself for a shit sandwich:

• To my absolute delight, the bottom end of Route Napoleon has some pretty exciting bits still left- clip1
• It took me into the outskirts of Cannes and between Cannes and Nice I get hopelessly lost. It takes me ages to extricate my self from this and get onto the motorway heading in the right direction – by which time I work out that this now dull route will take about as long as my super-exciting initial route.
• The Pont du Gard was lovely and typically Romanly impressive.

Getting to and from the Pont involved the first significant roadworks I’d seen so far and they reminded a bit of the roads at home – and as if that wasn’t bad enough I still had a trek on the motorway to get to Montpellier and I could also hear that my drive chain was getting a bit dry – I like to keep it well oiled.

I was still annoyed with myself for mis-booking and messing up my route earlier in the day: it had cost me a lot of time and meant I’d had a day of mostly really rubbish and uninteresting riding (Nappy excepted).

It was a long and very hot journey that day and I was fairly shattered by the time I crashed in my room at Montpellier. My host suggested two food choices – an Italian with a complimentary starter if I had his card or a meat-
based grill place. Well I wasn’t stupid – I’m not falling for the “free starter” trick – so I went to get meat at the Buffalo Grill.

OMG it was disgusting. The Italian must be running a double bluff.

I got back to my room in time to plan a superb route to the Millau bridge AND plot it via Doc’Biker in Montpellier where I felt sure I could procure some lubrifient pour le chein – automatique. Oh yeah, how do you like me now.

A long day, a very comfy bed and an exciting day of riding planned with an oily chain made for a very good nights sleep.