CEBToD: Day 4 -- Perpignan to Narbonne

So today was a fun day... 50 miles total, from Perpignan to Narbonne. A chunk of it was on regular roads, some with no shoulders... but a good stretch was on bike-specific paths that cut across the French countryside! how cool is that!

So we started in Perpignan, and cut east to the coast. We stopped in a random little town and had some pain au chocolat, then continued east. Once we hit the coast, we started northward along it, passing through random little beach towns along the way. In Port Leucat, we picked up some fresh fruit and some wine, and snacked a bit before continuing on. Up until this point we'd been alternating between roads and bike paths, but just north of Port Leucat we caught a random bike path through this protected woods/camping area for a few miles. It was really pretty... esp as it was on this little peninsula that stood between the Med and a pretty big bay. There were large wind turbines in the hills around us... and by large I mean like 200 ft or taller... these things were as big as I've ever seen...!

We continued north... in Port La Nouvelle we grabbed some food (jambon et fromage sandwiches; I can't escape pork on this freaking continent!!), and that's where we picked up a crazy-ass bike path that ran like 15-20 miles along a canal, straight into our destination city of Narbonne! Most of the path was pretty decent... not well-paved, but packed dirt, with some loose gravel and some plants growing in it. We couldn't go super-fast (10-12 mph), but that was ok. I was kind of done with the 16-20 mph on the shoulders of highways.

We did have a few incidents of specialness... Dan got a flat and stopped suddenly without warning. I got too close to him and he couldn't clip out on the correct side, and basically fell over. Hahaha. Oops. Anyways, we went to change his tire, and turns out the only pump we had had lost its seal, so we couldn't any air in his tire. We were still a good 7 miles from our destination in Narbonne, too, and it was already like 4 or 5 pm. After 45 mins of playing with the pump and various tubes (we weren't sure right away if it was the tube or the pump that was the problem), a random Frenchman sped by on his mtn bike (everyone on that path was on mtn bikes but us... kind of a sign that maybe road bikes weren't meant to ride so roughshod... =P). We flagged him down and borrowed his pump. Thank god for that guy! His accent was crazy to understand, but it all worked out. At that point we resolved to get ourselves some CO2 and be done with crappy hand pumps.

So the last few miles were just as pretty... canal, fields of grapes and cows, vistas of the Med (the canal at points runs like 10 feet from the Med... weird, huh?). And near the very end I fell over from a stop, again. Now, Dan's been in front of me pretty much the entire journey, and though he encourages me to stay within a bike length of him, that makes me nervous, so instead I stay like 3-5 bikes behind him. Anyways, he's usually good about calling out or gesturing his stops/turns/etc. At one point on the really nasty, rough part of the path he wasn't, and so I was caught off-guard by his stop. I hit the brakes, came to a stop on his right, but since I clip out to my left first and he was in the way.... I basically fell over. Again. Owwww. Right on my injured shoulder, just like in Girona. Dammit!! I mean, it's pretty funny that I keep hurting myself going zero mph, so I suppose I should laugh. And I do now, a couple days later. Hehe. But I have got to stop landing on that damned shoulder. All these impacts can't be doing it good. =P

We rolled into Narbonne near a sports store, so Dan ran in and got some CO2. We then drove into town and found a great hotel on the main drag with these great french doors that opened onto a super-mini balcony. We cleaned up, then grabbed some crepes in the restaurant attached. Mmmmmm. Both savory AND sweet. yum! We then wandered the town... it's really cute, and has a huge-ass cathedral that looks bombed out for some reason. The canal runs through the middle of town and they've got it really nicely manicured, just like they did with the rivers in Perpignan.

Per towns, I think we've ranked best to worst so far as: Girona, Narbonne, Perpignan, and Llanca. Poor Llanca.

OK, the really sad thing is that i'm at a computer that has an SD slot, so I could theoretically upload pics and video. But our train leaves for Aix-en-Provence in an hour, and we need to jet. More on why we're taking a train later, I suppose. Perhaps on Sunday, when we have a whole day to kill in Marseilles...!