Saint Jean to Toulouse

A few weeks ago I was thinking that we were getting into a routine, and I started planning a “Day in the Life” post, following a typical day. Then Tim injured his foot, and our typical days were turned upside down.

We spent 9 nights in Saint Jean Pied de Port, basically waiting for Tim’s foot to heal enough to ride again. The first day I was occupied with running errands, making a plan, and fetching things for Tim, who could barely walk. But after Day 1, I quickly ran out of things to do. Relaxing was good, but by the end of it we were both itching to get moving again.

We made some friends, and tried to feed them peanuts but they weren’t interested.

On Thursday, (May 18) we decided it was time to move on, in spite of the fact that it was raining, and was going to continue raining all day. We waited around for about an hour to see if it would let up, and finally decided to just go. We made our way to Saint Palais (only 30 km away) and found a hostel. In spite of the short day and the rain, it felt really good to be on our way. 

It was hilly from the Spanish border to Toulouse… this is the first flat landscape we’ve seen in a while.

From there we planned to stay in Orthez, but found that the campground (and the tourist information office) was closed. It was still early in the day, so we continued on to Hagetmau, only to find another closed campground. Fortunately, there was a tourist information office there, where we found out about a pilgrims hostel in town, which was really cheap. 

Free WiFi outside tourist info

For Saturday night, we had set up a place to stay on Warm Showers, which is a couch-surfing website specifically for cyclists. We stayed with John and Susan, and older English couple, who gave us a warm supper, a bed, and an evening full of conversation about their many adventures. 

On Sunday we made it to Auch. Once again we had trouble with campgrounds. The municipal one in the city was closed, so we made our way to another one just outside the city, which was also closed (although there were a few people around, and some constuction happening on some little cottages). A woman there said we could camp anyway, and use a bathroom near the reception, but there weren’t any showers. While not ideal, we made it work, and ended up not paying for camping that night. 

Monday we were back up to our goal – we rode 102 km. We rode through the lovely city of Toulouse, along a beautiful canal, for the last third of the day. The campground was open! Tim helped another bike tourist fix his shifter, while I bungee’d our groundsheet to the bikes to create a bit of shelter from the thunder storm which was rolling in. It was just starting to rain as we finished cooking our supper. 

Some highlights from the last week:

• Tim’s foot is better! Not 100% but well enough to ride his bike. We’re happy to be on the move again, and covering a good amout of ground.
• We found cold beer for the first time in weeks. Grocery stores here rarely refrigerate beverages, including milk, so it can be difficult to find a refreshing drink unless you go to a bar or cafe. 
• I’ve enjoyed using the little bit of French that I know, both to be able to exercise that part of my brain, and also because it makes everything a little bit easier to figure out than when we were in Spain and Portugal.