Hotel Pau La Palmeraie 3m

... nothing much new awaits. Meanwhile, the prospect of your own bed begins to appeal...
So, there we are: mission accomplished. Above all, I have to say that I for one am mighty relieved that we have managed without any mishaps. Always a worry, whenever you leave home. There were moments - say, in the hills of deepest Albania - where I did wonder what the hell we would do if we broke down. Fortunately, this wasn't a problem.
Overall highs: without a ...

... the same statuettes and bottles in which to collect your holy water. It was difficult to feel any empathy with the people there when it seems to us to be little more than a huge sales opportunity for the church. Difficult to like but interesting to visit!

Mike could recognize very little of Pau as expected. It seemed a lot bigger, but it was interesting to revisit the were Mike spent a miserable and lonely month all those years ago

... occurred. My rear wheel hit a rock, flipping the bike out from under me, and I crashed on the road, face first, then elbow, and hip. My left eye socket was fractured, the left side of my face abraded, and my hip dislocated, hitting and shattering my left pelvis.

This was the start of my own personal odyssey of self discovery and recovery, encountering the breadth & depth of ...

... 169m) and the Col De Pinodieta (176m) before lunch.

The walled town of St Jean Pied de Port offers a perfect lunch stop, and then we cycle on to our first proper climb over the Col D’ Osquich (500m). The sign of the small town of Arudy will no doubt be very welcome at the end of this 180km monster day! We get our Raid carnet stamped twice today – we are well on our way!

WHAT I EXPERIENCED:

So, nearly ready for the off! Thankfully, false alarm about arrival of guests to take over house in absence means we have one more day in which to prepare... much needed!
We will just about get there - I think.
Round about now it occurs to us we really ought to have assembled scooter on trailer and gone for little spin to test strapping arrangement, etc... just to make sure it all holds up. Oh well, the road will be a good test of all that... I guess.

... have changed since, hence why first impressions aren't always right. After an introduction to the rest of the housemates there was the small matter of food for the evening. Due to the dietary choices of 2 of the group - Lisa the German is a vegan and Andrei is a vegetarian Polenta and vegetables was the food of choice. Then some of Adrian's housemates took us to a bar in town for a drink and then a walk of the town at night. This first nights sleep ...

I hit a car the other day on my bike. The car didn't hit me. Rather, I simply T-boned it at an agreeable enough angle that I didn't go flying onto the hood. Cursed round-abouts. The driver sped off/continued on, either out of fear or habit. As I regained my composure and picked my bike up off the ground, another driver who had had witnessed the whole thing scolded me with his finger and pointed toward the road that I should have been taking, according to my lack of ...

... by one of the girls to a crepe party later that week. What? An authentic French crepe party with authentic French students? Je suis fort à l'aise! I left the bar that night feeling sufficiently comforted that my experience as a whole was worth arguably more than the five euros I'd spent on the Corona. Of course, I concluded all this while ignoring the fact that I could have received the entire experience (save the Corona itself) for free. Bah oui.

... borrowed adjective, fraternal. By the way, all of what I just said could very well be false, seeing as how the book I'm reading is written in French. Therefore, my comprehension is never 100 % precise. Plus, I do not have a very good mind for retaining facts in the first place. So I may have just polluted your minds with misinformation, but I hope you agree that if it's true then it's certainly useful to know.

... e" or "preférerais". Those are harder than they look. I showed my family a "sandwich typique des Etats-Unis", my personal favorite, peanut butter and banana. The two younger boys really took to it, despite their unfamiliarity with peanut butter. They already love bananas though; and of course bread is more popular than Rugby here in Pau, so it wasn't really much of an acquired taste. Other popular fruits in the household include pears, grapes (always seeded ...