Up Date of France

So After Pugz got the shit as he so politely says, we made our way to Amplepuis, then Tarare. The hills and small mountains around Lyon prepared us a little of what was to come. For example, after a 94km ride in hilly terrain, Ais could only manage another 37km of hilly terrain the next day and we camped in a lay-by on the top of a hill. Then a big thunder storm came and Ais was a little scared of creepy people coming to get them... you never know what will happen in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere!

We headed into beautiful countryside, going through small towns and even camping at a four star camp site! (It felt a bit like Butlin's and we were surprised that it was quite reasonably priced too). Our route took us through Condrieu, near the river Rhone where we met some other cycle tourers, Julia and Paul, who had cycled from Germany. We spent a very nice evening drinking some wine and talking. It was really good to talk to someone else apart from ourselves...
We had started to do some fairly big climbs now and Ais is still quite rubbish at them. So we have agreed to stick to rides of 60km when we have alot of climbs. Ais has also improved her map reading skills and can spot climbs on the map in a 10 second glance! Pugz is pleased that Ais can finally read a map a little better, but does not like alot of flat, as it is 'boring'. Ais can get up to 25km/h and sustain it for a while and thinks this is why Pugz does not like the flat!

We stopped for a day's break in St Jean-en-Royan, a pretty little town with what seemed to be a pleasant community campsite. But we discovered a big poo in the showers. We discussed what to do and as there was no staff around and we wanted showers we decided to clean it up. We went and bought bleach and returned to find that a fellow camper had started to clean it up too. Between the 3 of us the shower block was cleaner than it had been in ages! We can only guess that someone had no bog roll and just pooed in the shower to wash their bum after. Nice isn't it! We tried to tell the staff member when he returned and of course a number of people had told him already!

So on to Die, very close to St Jean, just over a mountain to the other side. We set off early and although tough going (1415 metres high) we made it to Die, without dying! BUT when we got to Die Pugz basically collapsed into a sleepy heap and the shits returned, luckily for one night only... Maybe it was sun stroke!