From Barcelona to Tehran: Day Five

Day Five: Boring and Risky   

                    

May 4, 2012; Distance covered today: 90Km; Total: 372 Km

I woke up rather late and I left the campgraound at 11 because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take a day off or keep going specially with free Wifi I could catch up with some online stuff. I biked through some resorts again. I can’t emagine how busy it gets in summer. There is nothing along the coast but hotels and cottages to rent. 

The more I biked into France, the quieter the resorts would get. It got so boring after a while with deserted luxurious hotels and villas. Even the stores were closed. In the afternoon, I had two choices, either bike on a major road, very similar to highway with two lanes on each side, and a narrower road with only two lanes though small towns sometimes. I took the latter and realized that the shoulder was not good –bumpy and sometimes none on the bridges. There were lots of trucks passing by too. I decided to be safe than sorry, so I stuck to the sholder although it was killing me. At about 6 pm, I got to a town called Narbonne. I went to the tourist office and asked where I could camp. They suggested a three star campground some 14 km away. They told me to take a bike path along the canal. So I did, but the bike path got dirt path with some terrible bumps and somewhere along the way, I got lost. Besides, my GPS ran out of battery! At this point, I stopped passing cars three times to ask them for direction. Except for the last one who lead me to a different campground, the others would say something in French and that was gibberish to my ear.

Finally, at about 8 pm, I got to a, not the, campground and found out that it was closed. I had no choice. I had to get in. I went round the campground and called one of the people inside. I told him to open the door for me.

AS soon as I pitched up my tent the rain and wind started. I put everything in, took a shower, cocked some dried frozen spaghetti and had it with Hamon sandwiches. Then wrote my some stuff for the blog (off line of course) and hit the pillow.