Day 26 — Wednesday 25 May 2011

Aramits – Orthez

In the morning there was a heavy dew and my washing was not remotely dry as I was on the wrong side of a tree and the early morning sun had not reached me by the time I left, so I had to festoon my panniers and let it all flap in the breeze as I rode along. Having dropped to a lower altitude there was no cooling breeze and the sun was hot. I arrived in Monein at one o'clock and asked a couple of children for the nearest restaurant and they pointed uphill to the town square where there was a restaurant heaving with a mixture of working people and families. The waiter spotted me and addressed me in English asking whether I wanted the à la carte or the menu du jour. I chose the latter and a three course meal arrived without further questioning. That meal was the best bar one of all the meals I'd had in Spain.

The road to Orthez ran along the top of a ridge and was quite beautiful, with steady undulations and occasional short sharp hills making me puff along sweating buckets. Road surfaces are a lot rougher than in Spain with annoying metalwork just at the wrong place for a bicycle. Traffic is heavier and although lorries will often give way for a bicycle sometimes the road is just too narrow and the only thing to do is to stop and let them get past. In parts the road lead through villages and small towns interspersed with farm land, in all much more built up than the Spain I had come through.

I got to Orthez at about five o'clock and asked around for the camp site, but then found that I had missed the signs to Camping de la Source. I ordered bread for the morning from the campsite manager and made good use of the excellent clothes washing facilities, showers and toilets. Everything worked and the water was piping hot. Later I walked down to a cross roads and found a pizza bar, so I had a beer and wrote up my diary and sent a text message to Liz.