The trip to Rambouillet (part 1)#
Day 1 of our trip to Rambouillet. This morning I drove from Lugo to A Coruña, with a short stop to pick up my father on the way there (so he can drive my car back home afterwards).
We arrived in Coruña near 10:00 and we meet my friend Dani near his home. A few minutes later Ferreiro and Manolo arrived on the big Mercedes V “Marco Polo” van that would take us to France.
We got to work and we attached Dani’s bike rack (with space for up to 3 bikes) to the van. Manolo and Ferreiro had their bikes already packed inside the van, while the other three bikes were going to travel on the bike rack.
With the bikes in place, and our luggage in the van, we left Dani’s home and went to pick up another member of our expedition, Felipe. A while later, his bike was already loaded on the rack, his bags in the van and we were ready to go.
We left Coruña, taking first the A-6 highway, then the A-8 along the Cantabric coast. We drove for a few hours until we arrived in Unquera (Cantabria), where we did a stop to eat something.
This first stretch passed really fast. We were excited, lots of things to discuss and talk about. We talked about literally everything regarding PBP, our ideas, plans, expectations, etc.
In unquera we had lunch and Dani decided to buy a little thing for dessert (and to carry with us on the van!).
We tried to make the stop as short as possible, so after lunch, pee and a very short walk to/from the road restaurant, we got back on the van and resumed our way to the next stop, Bourdeaux.
The weather was good (maybe a bit too hot for me) and the highway along the Cantabric coast gave us some very cool views a few times. The Mercedes van was amazing, with lots of space for our things and ourselves, super comfortable.
Once we crossed the border, we entered a really big highway. Having 3/4 lanes almost all the way to Bourdeaux, that highway was full of cars. We had several big traffic jams, which were worse and worse as we were getting closer to Bourdeux.
After a while, the sky got covered with dark thick clouds. It looked like it was going to start raining soon. And soon it did, easy at first, then stronger. Our bikes on the rack weren’t covered, but I had brought with me one of those big waterproof covers for bikes, so we did a quick stop in a gas station/rest area. We filled the gas tank of the van, put the cover over our bikes and resumed riding.
Finally we made it to our hotel around 21:30. The hotel was not in Bourdeaux, but in one of the service/parking areas by the highway passing by the big city. We parked the van in the hotel parking lot and did the check-in. A few minutes later we went out looking for a place to have dinner.
First big difference between Spain and France: dinner hours. While in spain we start to have dinner around 21:00 (and that’s early for spanish standards) in France shops/restaurants start closing around 21:30/22:00.
We already knew that, but we tried our luck with a nice small pizzeria near the hotel. When we got there the oven has been already turned off, so no luck. We looked for other options nearby, but all we could find was… McDonalds.
Riiight… not exactly my choice, but there weren’t any other options without driving, so McDonalds it was.
There was actually a lot of people in there, so we had to wait a bit to make our order in one of those automatic ordering machines. Then we looked for a corner a bit separated for the big mass and we waited a bit for our order to be ready.
I don’t like McDonalds (and its sibling franchises) at all. Usually I refuse strongly to eat there, but if there is no other choice, at least I try to avoid their so-called “burgers”. This time I decided to order some pasta salad. It wasn’t good, but it was better than the burgers at least.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel and went to bed. We still had another half of the trip to do tomorrow.