Day 9 - The Road to Nantes

We awoke early again due to there not being any curtains only to realise several hours later that there were shutters on the outside of the windows that we should probably have been using.

We decided to stop being self righteous idiots, or cyclists as they're more commonly known and took our bikes back to the rental place.

We were due to leave the island today and had to wait around for 'tubs' who was meant to pick up the keys at 10. At 11:10 we still hadn't heard from him despite sending texts, calling him and leaving voicemails. So we left the keys under a rock, sent him a txt, and left another voicemail. Several hours later he txt asking where the keys were. Idiot.

The roads were pretty boring, mostly straight with annoying levels of traffic and we soon needed a break so we stopped at KFC where Steve had a sensible wrap while mark and Tim brought a big bucket of chicken wings win. Tim has a wing eating technique that allows him to eat them in about 4 seconds flat, it also has the side effect of looking like he's not eaten in a week as he's shovelling food in his mouth left right and centre. At one point a boy from a French family on an adjacent came over and offered us their spare chicken as they must have thought we were starving. We declined but he didn't offer them to anyone else in the restaurant!

Onward to Nantes, where the traffic was hell and it was getting hot, 30c hot and we were stationary, boiling in our leathers with the bikes also belting out heat between our legs. We decided to filter and hoped people would move out of the way and to be fair most did which was nice, thanks frenchies.

We had a decent sized apartment rented which meant for the first time that we had a room each. Not

wanting to sit around we ventured into the city which was only 10mins walk away. Unfortunately this walk was along stink street which smelled so bad it was like going into times room. There were tramps everywhere too, so maybe we weren't staying in the expensive part of town.

While lying around we stumbled over an awesome chateaux right in the centre which was free to go around so we spent an hour or so exploring. While on the battlements we saw the mass slaughter of people dressed in Lycra:

We decided that it was time to eat and it was getting busy despite it being a Thursday night and there being a million restaurants so we booked a table at a curry house for later and went to get some beers. Tim was ranting about the robbing lazy bastard Greeks and how be should boycott their products when he noticed the Greek restaurant over the road and all was forgiven. We opted to stick with our curry reservation though.

Steve was enjoying his local beer that came in a nice bottle until he noticed that it was only 0.6% alcohol and then he decided that it tasted of piss and ordered a proper drink.

It was finally curry time and after ordering food Steve ordered some beers with his class line "trez beers pour favor". The waiter just laughed and walked off.

We finished the night up in a triangular shaped square which was full of bars and very busy. We chose a rum bar and Tommo ordered a nice run and coke but it came without the coke as the waiter said that the rum was too nice to ruin with coke. Thanks waiter.

Here's the stats so far: 730 miles completed, 16 hours 44 mins in the saddle with an average speed of 43mph.