Saturday 25 February
Unfortunately, no sunshine today, but good for walking around the lake. There's a good path all the way round that sometimes is shared with bikes, but sometimes they get their own path. When they do come whizzing past, it can be quite unnerving. Strangely, there are no seats by the path, but there was a bench in a bird hide - so this is where we are sitting having our picnic and looking out over the lake.
Further round we found the reason for umpteen young and (older) kids arriving at our campsite late afternoon/evening yesterday, complete with bikes. They were taking part in a televised event that started during the morning (all we could hear from the other side of the lake was the rather loud commentary) but when we arrived here early afternoon, the elite cyclists were preparing for their race. (middle of picture)
We could see on the electronic display board that they were going to do 6 laps which took them around the track then uphill,
then down and up on this hillside
then up the steep slope - they are carrying their bikes up here
then off not sure where, but ending the lap coming past us. The chap in the lead at this point apparently is the French National champion in this sport. We are not sure what it's called.
But the event was obviously pretty important - here's the cameraman by us - others were up on a cherry-picker and on drones.
It all looked far too strenuous to us - and they had another 5 laps to do! We didn't wait for that, but no doubt the best man won. We were quite pleased when the extremely loud commentary came to an end and quiet reigned over the lake!
Among the ducks near the lakeside were this pair of Mandarins. He is rather splendid, no wonder she is following his every move ....
We stopped for a drink at the Nautical Club for a rest, then carried on walking,
looked across to the little church we visited yesterday
and close up to a couple of the posher fishing houses.
This evening, the cycling fraternity on this campsite have been having quite a noisy time under a tarpaulin fixed up between caravans very close to us! Last night they settled down around 10.30 so we hope that will be the case again tonight!
Comments
Post a Comment