12°C, bright and dry. Light wind.
The sea defences are made of muddy clay. Today the surface is firm gum and deeply rutted by cattle hooves. That’s quite a difficult surface for a ‘cross bike even with 38mm tyres. I had to walk some sections. If you have front suspension, you wouldn’t have any trouble with this surface.
16°C, bright sun, dry.
It’s pumpkin time! Does it look odd to you that the fruit are all laid out evenly on this field but there are no leaves?
I have have a strangely sore knee. It’s awful when I kneel down on it, a problem because I’ve been doing DIY today. At least that job is done; I rewired the telephone point so the router is now at the centre of the house. Trouble was, that moved it a long way from the desktop computer. The solution was to run a long Ethernet cable under the floor and down to the router. All done now.
16°C, still windy but not destructive.
No really DofE but this in school activity days are meant to raise the school’s appeal to new intake.
We’re working with year 7 doing the kind of stuff we did at Bibby’s Farm. That includes bushcraft, orienteering, shelter building and slacklining. The slacklining was the most fun, especially when I consider how little experience I have with it. I had tremendous fun delivering this and some of the other sessions.
From the ending assembly.is sensed that the staff were bemused by us camping in their field. Our company are hoping to turn this activity day into a DofE contract. Let’s hope we clinched it.
27°C, 0 cloud, light breeze.
Thought I was getting tired of cycling yesterday but then did this fun short route this morning. Everything was right, felt fit and happy with the bike. The photo above is the stop at Aregnu spring to fill up. There follows a steady climb and a thrilling descent.
Ideally, this bike needs a longer stem; the 175mm cranks felt right though. I’m saying that considering that frame in the box at home. 180mm cranks are hard to track down, so perhaps I should settle with 177 5mm instead.
31°C,full sun.
This one left me tired. The route extended into the next valley east and came down to the coast via Montecello.
27°C, bright after this morning’s thunder.
Good distance for an end of afternoon outing. Postponed this morning’s outing because of slow persistent thunderstorms. It was exciting, however, to watch the lightning bolts strike the sea from bed.
That poor Kona is getting creaky once it’s warm. The bars are slightly bent but the handling is great. I can only look forward to my own Kona Zing’s first rides.
27°C, patches of thick cloud clearing later.
The trunk road was mostly clear and cooler this morning making the climbs easier. A blast down from Lumio was a scream!
This year I have 2x 750ml bottles and made full use of the springs at Zilia had Aregnu. Wonderful.
30°C, fierce sun and thunder at end.
It’s that bike again. I’ve hired this one before but.some bits have changed. The gears and.wheels are new. It handles very nicely apart from a bent bar and slightly too short stem. The reach is a little short for me such that my knees can knock on the bars on steep climbs. 12cm would be better than this 10.
I have a frame the same at.home which remains unbuilt. This will spur on to get that project finished.
I’m encouraged by the handling, the bike holds true on straights and corners and feels light at the front end. No doubt this is helped by the Aksium wheels (which I will use at home also).
Bergerie de Vaccaighja to Corté
21.5km (13½ miles)
Ascent 300m (985ft)
Descent 1,420m (4,660ft)
7h 30m
With a heavy heart, I have to leave the trail and make my way East to collect family from Bastia airport on Sunday morning.
Descend to Corte: a long escape route, over 12 hours walking. Edinburgh Dave left too after a cold night. It was only 7°C at dawn and he slept in a sleeping bag liner only.
The Belgian lads also left here with bad knees; the German guys went down yesterday with an injury, and I with a deadline. The route is long but a refuge split the route in two.
We saw the Belgians showering in a waterfall just after the Alien trunk. It curved over on its side, of great bulk that reminded me of the film by Ridley Scott – Alien.
The route went on forever, it seemed. Open scrub turned into mature laricio forest turned into deep gorges. A few glimpses of Corté enabled a check-in phonecall before the signal was lost.
Dave and I set targets for rests, the Refuge and then a bridge by s spring source. The Refuge a Sega formed a perfect lunch stop. Approaching, there was a grim sight. Men were skinning a boar hung on a wooden frame. We still have a natural flowing conversation which included some quite personal stuff, relationships, family and stuff. Mostly, I lead from the front. Part of my mind was dealing with the sadness of leaving paradise. At times, a knot formed in my throat. At times, it needed a grip.
The campsite is on the trail side of Corté and we grabbed pizza while they were still serving. I had a folded pizza – Calzone. Notice a pattern there? Arrive in the dark and quickly order food before it’s too late.
The campground is flat but the pegs needed a twist to get in the hard, dry ground. It was more like drilling.
Saturday would be a day to enjoy the town and eat well. In the square, restaurants competed with 3-course meals for €15. I did well here. I estimate that 8 burnt off 5lbs during my days on the hill.
Afternoon, I set off for the train initially following bad directions from Google Maps. I asked a local in the end. The station was across the road but G. Maps wanted to send me around an industrial estate. The Belgian lads were there already with tickets to Vizavona.
Notice another pattern coming up. I sat on the train with a Belgian student and 2 athletic looking German guys who were probably about 20 years old. The Belgian lad was only 18 or 19 but was interested in the UK university system.
At the camp near Poreta Airport, the two German boys arrived not long after me. There seems to be an overlapping moving community operating here. We latch on to familiar faces like stepping stones. Such is journeying. All of this prevents the feeling of loneliness getting a lookin.
Micycle 