Distance 184k
Time 7:47
Climb 600
Weather Sunny
Had a terrible night. Major break down of rear end, caused I think by an unhealthy combination of long days cycling, rich meals and stupidly not heeding advice in French Revolutions not to put orange juice in my bidons.
I will spare graphic details. Suffice to say that over the course of the night I became intimately acquainted with my bathroom and was in severe danger of running out of toilet paper.
Getting breakfast proved a bit tricky as I seemed to be the only person actually staying in the village/hotel. Eventually I tracked someone down and forced myself to eat some bread and jam.
Not surprisingly I started the day with some apprehension and did not book any hotel in advance as I was not sure if I would be able to manage 10km let alone 100.
I recalled stories I had read about Greg Lemond on the tour and how he had ridden one stage in a condition similar to mine. He had bravely pedalled on (equally bravely the rest of the tour had allowed him to), I was not so sure I would be able to.
I only had one priority, to find a pharmacist to get some anti-poo pills. Fortunately I found one quite quickly. Equally fortunately the French for diarrhoea is the same as the English and I knew enough of French customs not to be embarassed asking for some pills for my bottom. (The French for reasons known only to themselves seem to quite like sticking pills up their backsides, a frequent danger when buying medicines there is to get them home and realise you have been given suppositories rather than pills. Fortunately they are not sufficiently wierd as to give you a suppostitory to fix a runny bottom. That said had it been a Sunday and the shops closed I guess my only resort would have been to buy a bottle of wine and use the cork).
After popping a couple of pills I felt remarkably better. In fact strangely despite being very tired in the head after next to no sleep I felt quite strong pedalling. Things were helped as the going was very easy, long flat straight roads linking village to village. The weather was great as well, lovely and sunny. Too sunny in fact as no sooner had I sorted out one orifice than another started to cause me problems and I had to make the second chemist stop of the day to get some lip balm.
Lips balmed I pushed on, trusting this would be the end of my drug stops.
It proved to be which was a good thing as apart from my internal disorders I had one of the scariest bits of my trip ahead of me. To avoid a massive detour I had decided to head down to St Nazaire, cycly through the town and over the big bridge that spans the Loire. (For bridge fans here are the details:
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?ID=s0000046
When planning my trip I had blithely assumed that I could cycle over this bridge. When I got closer I was not so sure, it had no cycle path and very little separated bike from truck. However I did not fancy the alternative of cycling north to find another route so I pushed on. It was hard work cycling up to the middle of the bridge, but then very fast going down the other side. So fast in fact that I almost cycled through a road crew working the other end. They looked very surprised to see me so I guess not many French are mad enough to take this route.
Had several more encounters with cyclists and rues barres.
Regarding the latter I decided following my puncture experience to ignore them. This policy worked remarkably well and every time I managed to get through the road works, usually without the French workmen batting an eyelid. (Looking back I did push my luck once. The road barred was in fact a pont non-existant with just a plank going 20m or so over a river. I picked my bike up and walked over this only later realising how tricky this must have been given the fact I was wearing cleats.)
As the day wore on my anti-poo pills started to really work, to the extent I was even able to risk breaking wind. This being a sure sign things were on the up I stopped of at a Logis and booked a Logis ahead in La Tranche (great system, you can do this for free).
When I finally got to my hotel I had done 184km, the longest day of my trip so far, and way beyond how far I thought I would get given the condition I started the day in.
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