Hello everyone ! I'm still alive, motivated and still pedaling. This article is about the first few weeks I spent in France. They were great for starting, not super exotic but fun. I will not cover everything that happened in the past few weeks, just a few highlights here and there. The day-by-day details are on polarstep. This is actually the only place I give news regularly. So if you want to follow closely, I recommend checking that.

I know I have been quiet on the blog since my departure. I'm sorry. It's just that it takes times to write this articles. And time is something I clearly miss at the moment. More on that at the end.

Note: I will upload lower quality photos later. Such quality is not required and the photos takes too much time to load.

Departure and difficulties

First, let's talk about the beginning. Because the beginning was terrible. I wanted to abandon right away.

Five o'clock, wake up. Everything is already prepared, bags in the car and bike loaded. My parents should take me to the train station. I'm excited. Not yet realizing what I've started, but this is the big day. I get in the car with my parents and we start driving. We are not late, we discuss along the road, we do a last check-up : "you have your wallet ? yes. Your papers ? yes. Your phone ? yes. Your keys ? .... Wait, where is my phone ? I had put it in my pocket before departure. It's not there. Where is it ?" The tension immediately increased in the car. My mom calls my number. No sound. We stop on the side of the road to check the car with a light. No phone ! Fuck !

We turn around and go back full speed to the house. I'm in the back, not feeling good, praying nothing bad happened. We arrive at the house. In the lights of the cars we see a black brick on the ground. There ! My phone ! I run for it. As I gets closer, I see it, the screen is under, facing the ground. the back looks fine. I gets closer. Is that dirt traces on the back ? Please tell me the car did not run over it.

I take it and turn it over. The screen is smashed, the phone is slightly bent. I press the power button and I hear a loud alarm sound. Biiip Biiip. Not good, not good at all. I start realizing what happened. I remember I heard a bonk when getting in the car and I though it was my mother vest. Now I know, it was my phone falling from my pocket and hitting the car. I should have check that sound.

I'm feeling angry at myself, and also I want to cry. This is not how it was supposed to start. I had plan everything with my phone. I cannot continue without it. I'm lost !

My parents told me that's not the end, we continue, we push through. They put me back in the car. My father drives over the limitation because now we are late. My mother gives me her old phone she grabbed at the house. I'm devastated but I'm doing as my parents tell me. I take the 2 phones, my mother's and my broken one.

My phone after a 2 ton encounter

We arrive at the train station 10 minutes early. We unload the bike and hook the bags on it. I'm helping but I'm on automated mode. Not really understanding what's happening. We wait 2 minutes on the plateform, the train comes. My parents push me in, they smile and wave at me. The train leaves. I wave at them. I didn't not even say goodbye ... I'm now alone in the train with no phone and completely demoralized. What a start !

But, that's not the end. I charge my mother's phone. I salvage the sim card and the sd card from my phone and insert them into the other. It works ! I have a phone and I have an Internet access. I can finally say goodbye to my parents, by phone, but still.

I will end up buying a new smartphone in Nevers because my mother's battery was dead and would not be sufficient in the long run. I have since downloaded everything I need, I have retrieved every account and accessed all my data. I'm now fine and it took me a long time to recover from this stress episode. Yes this was not the end, but this was close. But after all, I've only lost a few hundreds euros and some life expectancy because of the stress. It could be worse.

The ViaRhona with my friends

After a few days around Lyon, I was joined with 3 friends. We had plan to ride along the Rhone river together for a week.

This was an amazing week. The Rhône valley is pretty easy. There is a river, a highway, train rails, a secondary road and a cycling path all the way. The path goes through villages, natural reserves, bridges and industrial areas. But it's always flat and well indicated. So it was really an easy week.

We started cycling from the train station of Vienne, a small town just south of Lyon

We had a few days of bad weather at the beginning but we managed to avoid it by taking refuge in the Valrhona chocolate Museum and in the tents.

A few pictures of the group. These photos were taken on the road, at camp or at train stations.

We went from Lyon to Avignon, which is around 250-300 km. We even took the last day off the bike to visit Avignon and its Pope palace. The landscape changed so much in such distance. It went from a green, sometimes jungle-like, well hydrated valley to a more dry and "provencal" type. The tree were less present, dry bushes scattered along the road, more dust in the air. We really felt that we were in the south (of France) !

Another round of pictures to show the landscapes and city we went accross.

The week was a bit exhausting : my friends were only here for a few days so they wanted the most out of it. Me, I was trying to preserve myself for the next days. But going to sleep at 11 p.m did not allow for good restful nights. When we arrived in Avignon, as soon as my tent was setup. I went inside and slept for a good 2 hours before being able to doing anything.

Solo traveling in the Alpilles and the Lubéron

Saturday, 29th April came and my friends got back to Paris by train. Goodbye and see you in 6 months !

I was now on my own. I decided to continue for a bit along the ViaRhona and the EV8. That way I can rest a bit and prepare myself for Italy. So south it is. I didn't know, at that time, I will suffer from this decision. Not regret it, just suffer.

Once I parted from the Rhône, the road started to go up in the mountains. While this is gorgeous and I loved the vision of it, this also meant the days got harder, more elevation. And the EV8 is more or less following the road that is in the bottom of the valley. But not strictly. This means, while this road is raising slowly but constantly in altitude, the EV8 takes many detours through villages which are on top of the hills (mountains ?) way higher and go down for a bit after. This means the EV8 has a lot more of positive elevation than it should ! But I managed to cycle it, slowly. I was not ready but I did it and now, I'm glad.

The landscape of the Lubéron is fantastic, perfect for nature lovers

On top of that, add a heavy rain and a heavy traffic road for a full day. You now have all the reasons why I suffered during this week. But in the end, I do not regret doing it and I was finally ready to go to Italy.

My first and only rain. It lasted 1 or 2 hours only but it was heavy and I had to get all my rain equipment out

I need more time in my days

As I said above, I lack time to write these articles on a regular schedule. As I'm writing these, I have already left France for nearly a week. (spoiler : next article is about Italy). So why do I lack time ? Simply because there is a lot of tasks to do when traveling like I do.

From an exterior point of view it may not seem much more than cycling a few hours and the rest is free. But in reality, yes there are a few hours of cycling, but that's not the difficult part. The real difficulty is doing everything else :

• preparing a route
• checking the weather
• changing your route accordingly to the weather
• finding water
• finding food
• finding a spot for the night (whether it is a camping, a bivouac or a host)
• visiting
• taking pictures
• stopping for lunch
• setting the camp
• washing and laundry
• cooking
• managing the phone and go pro battery
• sleeping well and much

And posting news comes after all of that. So for now, I'm focusing mostly on the easiest : Polarstep. That's the only place where I post regularly so far. From time to time, I post to Instagram as this is also pretty quick. And last, there is the blog, which I can write only when I have plenty of time like today.

So get used to it. I will probably be silent here again for a few weeks. In the mean time, all social networks are at the bottom of the blog.

That's all for today, next article should be about Italy, its beautiful cities and its crazy drivers. For now I still have to pedal a bit.