Trans Europa Day 55 – Salon-de-Provence to Montpellier – 120km

Cristiano promised an interesting day with challenging navigation and riding. Little did he know that his day would almost end at around the 15km mark when he drove the lunch van into a hidden ditch on the side of a small road, not to be seen again until I was well into the hotel. He apparently had to wait four hours for the right machine to come along to extract the van.

As a result of the van mishap, flagging was a little behind so we regrouped as Miles and Eszter took over the flagging role in the blue van. The instruction was “follow the flags” and there were certainly times through the day when the route notes made little sense.

 

I tagged behind Dan again and we had a fun ride through difficult terrain and mistral winds which at times threatened to blow us over. We also had to get through some barricades in one town which was being set up for the local running of the bulls. There were interesting things to see along the way - aquaducts, horses, vineyards etc

The Mistral is reputed to make one a little crazy… but in my case hard to tell.. 

Makeshift lunch very nicely catered by Eszter at around 70km followed by a McSlurry with D’aim at the McDonalds turn on the route notes.

The day dragged on and I was going a little mad as we tackled hills into headwinds but we eventually made it in to Montpellier in reasonable time and placed 4^th and 5^th – not a bad effort!

Dan and I dined out on moules-frites before returning to the hotel for a well earned rest ahead of tomorrow’s rest day.