Carcassonne to Lyon

Several long days, struggling into some headwinds and a train have taken me from Carcassonne to Lyon.

I met a nice Welsh guy called Rich who had just done some hiking/tramping in the hills south of Carcassonne. He took a photo of me:

From Carcassonne I had a slight tailwind which sped my ride. I kept generally following the Canal-du-Midi:

One of the things I’ve found a little difficult is keeping my water supply up. I’ve always drunk a lot of water, and especially when I’m doing decent distances on hot days I’m drinking heaps. That’s why the public fountains in little towns like this one are great!

I managed to find some nice quiet roads along beside vineyards to follow. I haven’t bought any maps yet- I’ve just relied on the OpenStreetMap data on my GPS which has generally been accurate.

Anyway, I rode on through the day, and found that a few of the campsites I was hoping to stay at were closed. I kept pushing and finally made it to a nice one after 9 hours (and 130km) of riding. The sun was getting low as I was riding around in circles trying to find it!

The next day I made it to Montpellier, which has a great inner city- it’s all pedestrianised and is still a vibrant living space. Much more so than our car-centric CBD’s in NZ!

I stayed outside Nimes that night, and the next day got me to the Pont du Gard, a massive Roman aquaduct built to get water to Nimes. It was pretty impressive, and great that it had free access and I could ride Indie right up under it!


I pushed on and made it to the Rhone for the first time. This is the river I’ve now followed north to Lyon. It’s pretty big, and even has navigation beacons on it.

Avignon used to house the Pope back in the day, and is correspondingly pretty ornate. Even the walls are pretty:

This ended up being another long day due to campsites being closed and me not being ballsy enough to find somewhere to freecamp. I rode for about 10 or 11 hours that day, usually into a headwind, and arrived at a campground just after the sun had set.. There were very strong gusty winds overnight, and these had settled into a more constant 35km/h blow by the next morning. But the flowers looked nice as I was struggling along at 8-10km/h!

I made it a short day (distance wise)- only about 40km, but that still took 5 hours to go from Bollene to Montelimar.

I’ve been seeing a few nuclear power stations up the Rhone- obviously something rather foreign to a New Zealander with our nuclear-free stance.

I made it to Valence yesterday lunchtime, and decided to take the train to Lyon. I just felt like a change of pace, and figured I’d seen enough of the Rhone for the time being. I was also pretty keen for a rest day after pushing myself a bit hard in riding 350km over 3 days.

The train was great, so easy to use with a bike, and pretty cheap (16 euro for 120km). I think I might try and use them a bit on this trip- will see.

So I’m now in Lyon- a great city with amazing cycling infrastructure! I even had an amazing pizza for 5 euro last night as my treat for making it to a big city!

So I’ve got another night in Lyon tomorrow, then I’m moving on about 30km to a friend of a workmate’s parents place. The plan then is to head towards Grenoble and Chamonix, and cross into Switzerland.  I’m a bit worried to see how much France shuts down over Easter (or becomes crazy at the campsites), but we’ll see. I might have to hunker down in Grenoble for a few days- how terrible.

I’m off now to see if I can find a bikeshop to take a look at Indie- it’s (I haven’t decided if Indie has a sex) making some noises that I’d rather it not make, and it’s beyond my limited bike-maintenance experience.

One thing’s for sure- the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty tough physically. I’ve become pretty fit on the flat, but the steep hill to the hostel in Lyon almost killed me last night!