Distance today = 51.63 km; Total distance = 17,824.29 km; Location = St Quentin Fallavier – 45 37.128′ N, 05 05.098′ E; Start time = 0807, Finish time = 1630

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/283579130

And I said yesterday, I really know how to pick the hilly roads. There were some beauties this morning, and quite steep.

I left Hauterives via the Palais Ideal, a fantasy palace built over a hundred years ago. Have a look at the photos to see what I mean. It is entirely the work of one man, Ferdinand Cheval, the local postman, whose round required him to travel 32 km on foot each day. I can relate to him, although I’d go crazy of it was the same 32 km each day, as Ferdinand had to do. The Palais Ideal took him 33 years to complete, after he’d given up his postal job, of course.

The weather was good again, despite heavy snow in the north of France. I believe it will be cooling down here tomorrow.

Most of the day was on quiet back roads through the countryside, although it got busier later in the afternoon, as I neared Lyon. I am now only about 25 km from France’s second biggest city. I intend to skirt around it to the east tomorrow. I have no desire to run through a very large city at the moment, especially with no digital maps, courtesy of the ineptitude of phone company SFR.

I finished just before the town of St Quentin Fallavier, where Carmel picked me up in the car. It appears I forgot to turn off my Garmin, as I noticed it counting the distance as we drove to the hotel. Consequently, I have subtracted from the Garmin data the 2.58 km travelled in the car. It shows up quite clearly in the velocity plot on the link,  if you click on Speed.

Note, the tracker is showing me a few kilometres to the north of my official position.

Just finally, a big thanks to Francoise and Yves Chardon at Chez l’Antiquites. Francoise took us to a friend of hers when the internet wasn’t working in our hotel room, and she helped Carmel out this morning by interpreting at the Citroen service centre, where the car needed to have some work done on it, fixing the windscreen wiper reservoir.