Day 4: Narbonne - Carcassonne
A very typical start to a bike ride today, at around 8.00am we left our hotel and within thirty minutes we were back at the hotel having completely lost our way and gone around in one big circle as we tried to find the minor road to Carcassonne. Unfortunately whilst trying to find our way out of the city Roger slipped on some lose chippings and came off his bike taking the skin off his knee, but with a little help from Mark and Valerie the knee was soon bandaged and we were on our way again. This time we found the road we were looking for and made our way out of the city to Marcorignan and then followed the Canal de Robin to Argens-Minervois, which was simply delightful – a quiet shaded road by the side of the canal, cycling at its very best!
From here we headed for Puicheric and lunch alongside the Canal du Midi. The backup team had done us proud with plates of ham, chicken, cheese, salad and oven fresh bread, unfortunately a cycling touring company was also lunching at the same spot and for their team there was chilled wine and a feast fit for a king, but I bet they found the cycling harder than us after all that wine! After lunch we took a leisurely route to our hotel in Carcassonne and are now sat, chilled larger in hand, with 42-miles behind us, watching England (hopefully) beat Slovenia.
Tomorrow we have another fairly low mileage day and then the fun begins as the distance per day gets closer to 100-miles.
View photos from our forth day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeride2010
If you would like to leave a comment about our journey then visit our comment page
P.S: After lunch Malcolm took his foldup bike out of the bag and made ready to cycle the last 15-miles to Carcassonne. After all of 2-miles he decided that the canal path was too rough and his cycling days were over, from now on he said he intends to stick to lager after lunch!