100km with the brake on 😞

Lavender





The other day I told you about Steve's brilliant tandem parking brake invention - see pictures on 'Left, left, left, and left again...'. Well, if he had done a proper job he would have remembered the big red light on the dashboard and the irritating bleeper which makes it impossible to ignore the big red light 😞. This morning we stopped at a boulangery after about 20km because breakfast hadn't been that substantial. We parked the bike against a wall and Steve mentioned that it rolled back a bit when he took his stuff out. We put the parking brake on as a precaution. After that we carried on, had lunch, carried on again and, something like 120km into our ride we stopped for a roadside comfort break. I noticed the brake was on and, after a brief discussion, we realised it had been left on most of the day 😞. Now we have decided to leave the brake on every morning so that the afternoons will seem nice and easy 😃.

The wind of yesterday raged through the night and was still 'going for it' when we rose this morning. Fortunately, by the time we had breakfasted and were ready to leave the wind had died and we have had a lovely day, if a little on the warm side.

Today's route has taken us through some lovely countryside with plenty of limestone in evidence, stunted forests and the fields of lavender for which Provence is famous. As well as the lavender itself, which is coming into flower nicely, we have passed lavender museums, lavender distillerys and people selling lavender products by the roadside. Kind of lavender central really! This afternoon we passed through the gorges of Verdun - very impressive.

The ride today turned out about 10km more than we expecting, we think, because of a typo on our routesheet. If we are right, tomorrow's ride, which is already planned, will be 10km short. Today we have ridden 154km and have climbed 2234m. We knocked off a couple more easy cols today bringing our total up to 67. There were snowy mountains evident in the distance this afternoon - the Alps are just around the corner 😞.

Tonight we are resting our legs at Castellane. There is a church on top of a pillar of rock here. Although I had seen pictures, I was still awestruck at the height of it.



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