Viki struggled a lot with the hills yesterday. Since it’s only going to get hiller, we decided we would divert to a flatter route to San Sebastian. We had a nice sleep, but very slow start, and when we were finally ready to depart, I noticed I had a flat tire. I patched the tire and we were on our way – a nice smooth downhill on a relatively busy rural highway.
20km in we stopped for a delicious almond croissant and pain au chocolat. We continued along, up our first of two 300 meter climbs of the day, which went past interesting rock formations amd overall went pretty smoothly. We passed some people halfway up a rock wall doing via ferrara, which looked like fun.
At 40km we stopped for lunch in a tiny village square where a few kittens watched us make and eat our lunch (fancy baguette with pungent watery Roquefort that had been sitting in the sun all day and some spanish ham).
The afternoon brought a continual headwind that brought our average speed down to 12km/h or so on flats for a sustained period. Finally we had a steep climb up the col de saint louis, which got to 12 percent incline in parts. I got out the drone to try to get it to follow me, which vaguely worked. We were then fortunate to get a gradual hill nearly the full 15 km to where we are now in Quillan.
We’re sleeping in a large parking lot marked as free camping for RVs. I ran 5 minutes down the street in my speedo to wash off in a river and some police told me that it was not permitted to use soap in the river. I got back and some RVers shared their dinner with us, which we were super grateful for. It was grilled chicken with a potato-cream-bacon-cheese dish and half a baguette. Definitely beat what we were planning of a can of cassoulet along with the dregs of our 3 day old lentils!
