Circling Aquitaine

(Click http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/circleaquitaine2012 

for our day-by-day journal with many more pictures)

France is our favorite place for a cycling vacation for many reasons: the food, the varied and beautiful scenery, the food, the friendly people, and the network of small roads with great drivers.  Did I mention the food?  Realizing it had been six years since we’d been there, it was time to choose a new region and go exploring.  Bill doesn’t get a lot of time to train for trips, so his request was “Please don’t try to kill me this time!”  Hence this trip, while not flat, didn’t have any big climbs, and the days were quite short to allow for lots of sightseeing.  We had a wonderful time!

We’d never been to the city of Bordeaux or to Southwestern France, so Aquitaine, one of the 27 administrative regions of France, met all our criteria.  In September, 2012 we spent 13 days riding unsupported for 500 miles roughly in a counterclockwise loop around Bordeaux.  An additional two days involved short rides around the city itself.  Aside from that city, we dipped our toes into the Atlantic Ocean, rode through miles of pine forests, even more miles of picturesque vineyards, saw several prehistoric caves, evidence of the Romans and British who have occupied this area and countless Châteaux.

City of Bordeaux We hadn’t planned to use our bikes to get around Bordeaux itself, but found it to be the best way to see the city.  Bordeaux has a population around 250,000 and an incredible bicycle infrastructure that is well-used by its residents.  Evidently most of this has been created in the last five years or so.  The Garonne riverfront is no longer a seedy dockside with a large highway, but now a wide parkway with walking and cycling paths, and various green spaces along it.  Many of the one-way streets through the city are signed to allow cyclists to go the wrong way – which actually turns out to be quite safe!  In addition, some sidewalks permit cyclists, and say “Priorité aux piétons”- give priority to pedestrians.   Streets are often not very wide, and some of the marked bike lanes seemed incredibly narrow, but they are there.  What makes it work is the cooperation between the drivers and the cyclists.  Well-marked routes out of town come complete with special signal lights for cycles and great signage.

 

Bordeaux’s riverside site has been occupied since at least the 3rd century B.C., so the city is full of historic relics and buildings from throughout the ages.



Remains of the Roman Coliseum in Bordeaux



An amazing dessert after our 43rd anniversary dinner

Once we left Bordeaux, we cycled through a variety of landscapes:

Atlantic Coast –Even in September, there were lots of French vacationers near the seashore, often headed for the beach with picnics and sand chairs tied to their bike racks.  We were near the water for parts of two days, but when actually riding on the coast bike route, you often can’t see the Atlantic because of the large sand dunes.  We climbed the highest dune in Europe, the Dune du Pilat and enjoyed eating fresh oysters in the tiny village of L’Herbe on Arcachon Bay.  I’m sure there must have been other Americans in the two resort cities we stayed in (Lacanau-Ocean and Arcachon), but we never saw them! 



Our bikes rode on top of the ferry – a little worrisome, but they were fine!

Les Landes is the name of one of the “departments” within Aquitaine. This is a large flat region south of Bordeaux that has changed dramatically over the years.  Originally a sandy, boggy area devoted to agriculture and sheep, it was heavily planted with trees beginning in about 1850.  Trees were planted to harvest the resin, which became a huge industry.  By 1906, 20,000 men were employed as “tappers”.  It was rather like getting maple syrup!  The development of synthetic resins brought an end to this industry.  Now lumber from the skinny pine trees as well as corn and other vegetables are the important crops.

I’d read about the large living history museum in the town of Sabres, and that’s why we rode through this mostly empty area.  Knowing there was a “destination restaurant” there didn’t hurt, either!  Picking roads off the maps with no knowledge of what the riding is going to be like is a little scary.  In most parts of France there is a dense network of roads that evolved from the walking paths between the villages, but due to the marshy origins of this region, there weren’t a lot of roads to choose from.  I spent time on Google Earth trying to decide if riding through here was possible, and decided it was.  Fortunately, it was easy! 

At the large and interesting Ecomusée de Marquèze at Sabres

As we entered the area called Entre-Deux-Mers, we started to leave the forests and cornfields behind for slightly hillier vineyard landscapes.  The historic châteaux visits began about now.   Each had its own design and history.  Of course, we toured each one very thoroughly!  We didn’t visit any wine châteaux in this region – most require advance reservations and want only serious buyers.  Several hilly days as we headed north to the Dordogne River at Bergerac.  One of the most common cycling trips out of Bordeaux is to head eastward along the Dordogne.  We had already ridden much of the Dordogne River to the east on a 1997 trip, so didn’t want to duplicate that, lovely as it was!

Chateau Roquetaillade

This is actually a road, not a path!

After two lovely days celebrating my birthday in the famous and picturesque wine town of St. Emilion, we headed to the Medoc.  This large peninsula north of the city of Bordeaux is full of the famous names of Bordeaux wine – Château Mouton Rothschild, Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Margaux and on and on.   These wineries and their surrounding vines are gorgeous, and make very appealing riding country.  It’s similar in some ways to our own Napa Valley – many busy roads, lots of tourists, but still a great sight to see.  We had to work hard to keep off the “Route des Vins”, which was also the “Route des Trucks” as far as we could tell!



Bill riding toward Château Margaux

After the Medoc peninsula it was time to head back to Bordeaux.  Sad as it was to see the trip coming to an end it did feel like a homecoming to return through the city to the same Bed and Breakfast we’d stayed at when we arrived.  We were greeted like long-lost friends there.  Then we had a free day to pack the bikes back in their boxes, and walk around the city for a final look before our 5 am departure the next day.

Some questions we often get asked are:

How do we figure out our route?  I read everything I can get my hands on – bike tour books (even fairly old ones have lots of ideas), bike tour company web sites, individual trip journals (mostly on crazyguyonabike.com), regional travel books, especially Michelin guides, and all sorts of web sites.  For me,  this is cheap entertainment!  By the time we leave, I have a map and direction sheet for each day for each of us.  This year I did “turn by turn” directions using ridewithgps.com, but found they give a level of detail well beyond what is needed.  “Stay on the D999” is often all that is needed for a long stretch, but this site generates a direction every time the D999 veers one way or another, or crosses another road, causing the directions to be unnecessarily long.

Where did we stay?  We had a reservation for each night.  Yes, this eliminates some spontaneity, but it does ensure that we don’t arrive in a town to find all the hotels booked or closed up tight, and has proved to be a system that works well for us.  I start to plot places for overnight stays at the same time we’re working out a general route, sometimes revising the route to stay at a particularly nice place.

Did we bring our bikes?  As is usual for us, we packed our steel-framed touring bikes in cardboard boxes (discards from local bike shops- look for the biggest ones), and took them with us on the plane.  American Airlines charged us $75 each on the outbound trip, but we weren’t charged anything when we checked in at Iberia leaving Bordeaux.    The cost is unpredictable is about all we’ve learned over the years.  We’ve had excellent luck with boxed bikes, even on trips like this with 3 flights.  We pack very carefully, but do realize luck is still involved!  Luggage showing up a day or so late is the biggest problem, and we now usually spend two or three nights near our arrival airport for a little “cushion” in case of delays.  The most difficult part of bringing the bicycles is the transportation from the airport to the first hotel.  Unpacking and riding out of the airport is ideal, but we’ve managed that only once – in Burlington, Vermont.  After long flights to Europe, we’re just too tired to think about bike assembly and riding 10 or 15 kilometers into an unfamiliar city, especially as darkness is falling.

Did we get lost?  Depends what you mean by lost.  While I’ve created maps and directions for each day, we often vary our route from the planned one as we learn more about the area we’re in.  We had two times on this trip where we were “misplaced” for awhile, but so far we’ve always made it to our destination.  With GPS it is possible to have everything exactly planned, but not really necessary or even desirable from our point of view.  Fortunately, each of us has a pretty good sense of direction, and we always bring a compass.

Were we afraid?  No.  I’ve had several occasions to be quite afraid when biking in the U.S., but none at all so far anywhere in Europe. Never even chased by a dog!