September 27, 2016

Flat roads are enjoyable to ride on a bike because you can get up some speed.  Mountains are good to climb on a bike because you can set a rhythm, gradually work your way up, have a break now and then to get your breath back, take in the view and when you reach the summit you have a real feeling of satisfaction.  Hills, now they are just annoying.  Steep gradients up and down, one after another.  The profile for today’s stage looks like a Stegosaurus’ back.  Neat triangles set one after another for 50 kilometres.  We are following a rocky coastline and so climb up to the top of the cliffs and then roll down into the next bay and so on….and on.

We only have one small hitch in way-finding though and so don’t waste too much time backtracking.  This improvement is absolutely nothing to do with sign-posting of the route, we literally haven’t seen a single Eurovelo sign for days, but more that we have developed our own strategy for getting along.  Looking backwards at signs on the opposite side of the road, going all the way around an roundabout to see all the signs for every road, and, of course, compass, sun and road map.

We are staying overnight in a small, pretty seaside village.  The only hotel there, fortunately, has a vacant room.  The outside looks fairly modern, but once inside the decor and the rooms are quaint.  All goes well until about 3am when we are awoken by the sound of someone knocking really hard, presumably at the front door.  We lie awake for while – the knocking continues.  Surely someone will let them in?  After a while it seems to stop, only to start again after about 10 minutes.  We have a debate, should one of us go downstairs to see who it is?  What if we let a crazed killer into the hotel?  Why is nobody else going down?  After a further 10 minutes I leap up, get dressed and make my way down (we are on the second floor) in darkness to the lobby.  There is nobody at the front door – in fact the knocking seems to be coming from above.  Then it stops again.  One thing you can’t do is trace where a sound is coming from when it stops.  Once settled back in bed, off it goes again.  Another debate ensued, what if someone in a room is frantically trying to get help after having fallen?  Back go on the clothes and more creeping about in the dark.  Suddenly a women rounds the corner of one of the corridors – “Leave it to me, I’m from the hotel” she says.  A few minutes later the knocking stops.

Next morning, at breakfast, I ask what had happened.  She dismissed my question with, “Oh, it is just a noisy pump in the basement”.  It definitely didn’t have the steady rhythm of mechanical knocking. Creepy, very creepy.