The camp breakfast was quite good value. The demi baguette, two jams and humongous hot chocolate were easily worth the price. I scoffed all that down and set off at 8.24 am. I think that might be a record for me :)
A fast days ride today. It was a bit cold so I wore my jacket all day today. It was also a bit windy which made it worse. I had decided on a plan yesterday. I was going to go slightly off course to start with in order to get onto a nice quite white road. Good plan. It was up hill of course. The first town of note was Bouzonville. I made very good time to there. I think I got there, bought morning tea (another chocolate eclair) and was on my way by 10 am! From there I had a short yellow road and then onto a very (very) small white road. Route number C1 as it happened. Only one car on the entire section. Actually I had chosen very well again today. Most of the day on the white roads the cars were counted in kilometres per car, not the other way around. Very pleasing. A little less pleasing is the presence of so many wind turbines. Not because I mind the turbines, I think they are good, but because it means it's windy, and it is!
In no time at all I had made it to my target town for the day, 11.50 am to be precise. The reason for the haste today was because it is an important day on the tour, the first mountain stage of note and I don't want to miss it. I got to the tourist office just as they were closing for lunch. The whole town closed down at 12, even some of the food places. Weird. Anyway, the only hotel that was actually in the town was around the block, I had already seen it. I went and checked and almost went into to shock at the price, 65 Euro. If only Paul had been here, it was only 70 for two :( After checking that it included a TV I decided to stay anyway!
The room actually has a toilet and shower as well, very nice in fact. They were showing the end of yesterday's tour which I hadn't seen, so after a shower I watched that for a while. Then had very nice pizza at a pizzeria and then went back to the hotel to see the end of yesterday's tour. Then before today's tour started I did all of my washing, everything except the clothes I was wearing, even the tea towel. By the time they had gotten over the penultimate major climb I had done everything, even popped out to buy a temporary bike computer.
I then lolled for the rest of the afternoon and watched the tour. Actually it was a bit of a dud. There was, eventually, an attack, but it wasn't until only 3 K's from the top. A bit disappointing. Surprising to see that at the end of the day neither Contador nor Lance were in the yellow jersey. Given the terrain over the next few days he may keep the jersey for a while, unless he's stuffed from today of course.
After all that I went out for a long walk around town and dinner. I ate at a bar. The waitress was incomprehensible, we both had to revert to pointing to get the order through. I got spag bog again as it may be a big day tomorrow. The spag was very, very soft, I had to use the spoon to help roll it onto the fork, the sauce was very meaty. By the time I left I was feeling like some chocolate, fortunately everything was closed. The route I have chosen for tomorrow is a little longer than needed so that I can take in a Col!
At least that is the plan.
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