Oh my we’re off again, 10 years after our first trip. Obviously we’re 10 years older, Dez and Danny have got married, moved to Dubai (and swiftly back again) I’ve built a house, had a brush with cancer and opened a café.
We found it easy last time
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This is my packing 2 hours before we left, 3 hours before I was baking ANZAC biscuits…I had so little time to prepare and left all the route planning to Dez. He found a good site: cycle.travel which chise routes using the many dedicated cycle paths which criss cross France.
The routes are so much safer than our Google/paper map system we used last time. But the drawback is the distance. Many tracks wind through sleepy villages, cut through forest and cling to canals.
Google says our route from Calais to San Seb is 1100km but Dezzes route on cycle.travel is nearly 1400km.
So we have chosen to extend the trip, which gives us less time in San Sebastian. We’ve also had to supplement with a few trains…disappointing but never mind. We will have still cycled just as far.
Our change of route also means we now get a ferry over the Gironde Estuary (Estuaire de la Gironde).
It’s the huge estuary that runs from Bordeaux out to the Atlantic, where the Garonne and Dordogne rivers meet.
