Monday 12 May 2008

Recumbent trip to France - holiday plans


Made an official start planning our summer holiday of this year today. We had some cautious plans to go to Japan again, but because of my new job I had to buy a car which seriously cut our holiday budget. But, no worries, we have other plans! Eise's parents have a holiday home in the south-western part of France (roughly 100 km. north of the French-Spanish border a few hundred meters from the Atlantic coast) and they are staying there in August together with Eise's sister (plus boyfriend and two kids) and Eise's brother (plus wife and three kids). Initially, our plan was to take our recumbent bikes and cycle to Moliets (where the house is located). Nice detail is that Moliets is about 30 km. from the cycling variant of the Camino de Santiago, leading from Haarlem (NL) to Santiago de Compostella (ES). Unfortunately, I don't have enough days off to cycle this route all the way from home to Moliets (at holiday speed, that is), so we decided to cycle the second part of the three-part route only (see picture). This second part runs from Tours to the French Pyrenees, which gives us about 600 km to cycle (we will leave the official route a little north of Dax). The plan now is to take a cycle bus from Amsterdam to Tours on August 15th and to cover the distance to Moliets in one to one-and-a-half week. There we will spend another couple of days and take a plane back from Pau to Amsterdam. We will leave our bikes behind so we can bring those back when we go to Moliets by car a next time, or perhaps we'll cycle the third part of the route next year, we'll see. But anyway, the bus is booked, we have the route maps and we still have all the cycling stuff from our trip four years ago. Looking forward already!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Karin,

nice idea! Perhaps a little warm in August, but in a slow pace this should be ok.
I do not know if you also want to keep a diary during the trip. I think our magazine Ligfiets& would be happy to receive a nice story. When you make the story online i could refer to it in a news item on www.ligfiets.net

Greetings,
Jack, editor www.ligfiets.net

Karin said...

Hoi Jack,

Ik was wel van plan om m'n blog bij te houden tijdens ons reisje (mits we internetfaciliteiten tegenkomen). Leuk als je daar een link naartoe wil plaatsen!

Mocht onze reis nou een heel mooi verhaal opleveren dan zal ik nog eens contact met je opnemen voor Ligfiets&.

Groet, Karin