La Port Nouvelle

Over 1000 kms and the first puncture. Not bad I’d say

We only want to do short mileages this week as our friends may be coming over from Pau to see us this coming weekend. I want to stay in La Port Nouvelle tonight , it’s a pretty seaside town with good beaches

It was a mission to get onto the canal from our hotel

This part of the canal was put through the centre of a big shallow lake. Later on the railway followed it which of course killed the canal trade until tourism became its saviour

Port nautique. No road shows up on google maps after this but the satellite image shows some sort of track so we’ll give it a go. It will cut off quite a few kms

Apart from having to lift the bikes onto two footbridges it was smooth going and we found our way back on to the Canal de la Robine.

The first thing we saw was a school of traditional boat building

Closed for the holidays unfortunately as I would have loved to stay and watch them work on this boat

Then we saw our first kiwis on the holiday. ( All black flags ) Two boats together actually. I told them they were our first Kiwis and they said there’s lots of them down south in canal boats. There’s even a Facebook page for kiwis, Aussies and South Africans

That’s not a lawn. That’s green algae! not enough boat use to stir up the water. It sounds idyllic cruising the canals in the south of France but imagine the temperature at 38 degrees and you can’t even dive in the water!

It cleaned up considerably further on. It’s a strange sensation biking across what was once a lake. Very quiet and flocks of flamingos swooping over us.

For the first time since we landed in Switzerland we were unable to book accommodation on Booking.com. Nothing ! So today we are winging it, hoping to find something. (That’s where the tent would be worth having) luckily the 2nd place we tried had a room so even though it was only 11.00am I snapped it up

Cheap and cheerful but I enjoyed the view and it had a *beer Garden*

The best thing to do on a hot day is go shopping. What ! I hear you say. Yep ,there was a Super U hypermarché 300 metres away. Air conditioning, cafe, food. We bought Christine biking gloves , another tube… these shops have everything! Did I mention airconditioning.

A truck full of sausages .yes a bought one.

I went down to the beach afterwards and ended up watching a band warm up for tonight’s show .that crowd in the water stretches as far as you can see

When I first saw La Port Nouvelle years ago, it was just a little river port. Today there are massive breakwaters being built far out into the Mediterranean and I can see it becoming a major French port.

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Published by Wallis Don