Day 3: Perpignan - Narbonne
The short day we had planned turned out to be a long day, not in distance but in time as we tried to navigate a route avoiding the traffic. We headed out in the direction of le Barcares and fairly quickly put a few miles behind us but as we tried to negotiate our way around Port Leucate we seemed to pass the same place several times, I think its called going round in circles!
The wind was less fierce than yesterday but it still made the going tough and that, coupled with difficulty in finding the route we had planned, made our progress very slow. We stopped for coffee on the sea front at Leucate and then really did lose our way as we went down the road, up the road, back down the road and then back up the same road only to find that the road we really wanted was the dirt track seemingly going nowhere but actually taking us to our lunch stop at Port-la-Nouvelle!
After lunch we had planned to take the canal path all the way to Narbonne but much to our great delight the route was barred by a fallen electricity pylon that blocked our way. Fortunately for us a friendly local explained that if we took the track leading out through the salt lagoons and turned left and then left again we would find our way back to the canal path on the far side of the fallen pylon. After several miles of bumping along a potholed track we thought we would never find our way out of the salt lagoon but much to our great surprise we did, thank you Mr Frenchman whoever you are and sorry you’re out of the World Cup! Back on the canal path we picked up the pace and headed on towards Narbonne, thankfully we managed to find our hotel without too much trouble and finished the day after 8-hours cycling, which we had expected to take around 4-hours!
We need to do better tomorrow as we want to see England play Slovenia at 4.00pm.
View photos from our third day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeride2010
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