Final Outing

Today we headed out for our last ride of the tour. The group was a little smaller as there were at least five people not up to riding, and the Kiwi couple decided to do a self guided ride.

We set off just after 9am, with the sun shining and a beautiful blue sky, and the air was fresh and crisp. We rode along the canal for about 5 kms before heading cross country through rolling hills to the lovely little town of Le Cailar where we had morning tea. Here we met a very friendly 91 year old French Monsieur Have a Chat. We then headed towards Aimargues, and we were cycling down a back road when we had to stop because the road was being resurfaced with tar and pebbles. We were just about to turn around when Ian, who had been looking at Apple Maps, suggested we take a smaller country lane that he thought would take us in the right general direction. Micky agreed, so off we went. It took us through some pretty back lanes past farms, and eventually rejoined the original path. And, it turned out to be a shorter ride by about 2kms. We then got to ride on top of a flower covered dyke through some lovely countryside until we arrived at the picturesque village of Saint-Laurent-d’Aigouze. The market was just packing up when we arrived. We had some free time to have lunch, investigate the town and have a drink.

We headed out just after 1pm with about an hours ride back to the barge via the Tour Carbonnière, a tower on a single road in the middle of a swamp. We climbed the sixty five steps to the top of the tower to get a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. We saw white swans, wild horses, white heron and blue cranes and we even saw a small flock of flamingoes come into land in one of the swamps.

We then cycled the last few kilometres back to Aigues-Mortes. There was a planned short ride just after 3pm to a local winery for a wine tasting but, I had decided to give it a miss and so I retired my bike. I am proud of my accomplishments. I did five out of the six rides and a total of 243 kilometres over the week.

Once the group had left for the winery, Katie and I headed into town and walked around the old city. There was lots of drinking, dancing, music and frivolity with young people dressed up in wild and wacky costumes. It was too much for us so we had an ice cream and then headed back to the barge.

For our last dinner on the barge we had a bouillabaisse type of soup for entrée jam packed with seafood (almost a meal in itself), a grilled sea bream with vegetables for main, and an amazing citron tart with red fruits and a coulis for dessert. It was a wonderful meal with very generous servings. We also received a cook book from the company that contains all the recipes of the meals we had this week plus some extras.

There were celebrations in town for the Fête Votive at night, with music, drinking, dancing, a carnival, bull runs in the arena where young men chase them and try to pluck off a ribbon that is between the horns of the bulls. There was also a parade with the gauchos on their horses. This was of no interest to a number of us who just stayed on the boat. Those that did venture into town were back fairly early as the arena stands were so packed that they couldn’t see much of the action. Across the road from where the barge was moored there was a gin distillery which had a live band and DJ and the noise from the activities over there didn’t stop till after midnight, so not much sleep was had by many of us.Läs mer