I'm Finally Here! - Bikepacking The Bordeaux Wine Region

I'm riding the Eurovelo 3 from Paris to Bordeaux and I'm only about a day away from my end destination The wine region of Bordeaux. Last time I found the start of a wonderful greenway that would propel me toward Bordeaux And my luck would continue on this day as well The route would end up spoiling me with numerous greenways, exciting tunnels and one of the highlights of the trip The world heritage medieval town of Saint-Emilion Located in the heart of the Bordeaux wine region And for those of you that are sick of hearing me complain about the heat Well, I guess I had it coming. Here comes the rain But as they say, after rain must come sunshine Good morning and welcome to day 8 of my bikepacking trip here in France You know that I've been complaining about it being too sunny and too hot Well, maybe I should have kept my mouth shut Because this night it has been raining and storming and there's been lightning and thunder Basically all throughout the night So I've had a really bad night's sleep here Thankfully I got to bed pretty early last night Still managed to get a couple of hours of sleep in before the worst of the storm hit the campground here And I was out running like a madman making sure that the tent was secure And the bike bags were closed and folded up But with this much rain it makes everything so much harder in the morning Plus the fact that I don't have a picnic table to help me out here Packing up in the morning is gonna take quite a while Rainfly and the groundsheet of the tent is basically drenched in water What I do then is that I try to separate the wet parts of the tent with the dry parts That at least the inner tent will be dry when I get to camp later on in the evening here But let's forget about all that it's been throughout the night and look forward to this day And I've got a feeling that this might be the best day of this whole bikepacking trip I'm so looking forward to getting to St Emilion And I've also read up on the campground that I'm staying later tonight And it looks really good So keeping my fingers crossed that this will be the best day of the bikepacking trip Well what a lovely start to the morning here I found the old abandoned railroad again that's been turning into greenway And it's basically straight for as long as I can see So I love riding on these types of roads Especially now when it's a bit cooler in the morning And we also have a slight overcast so it's perfect riding conditions right now And I'm also guessing the rain and thunder through the night cleared up the air a bit here So I'm guessing that's why it's a bit cooler this morning than the other ones So hopefully it won't be that hot today like yesterday as well It's just so lovely to just take a break and listen to the birds surrounding the greenway here in the morning And all along the route here there are these rest stops for cyclists to use whenever they need to take a break And have a bit of snack to eat or something This one is perhaps not the most fancy of them There are a lot of other ones that are much nicer with a tree canopy that kind of shades you from the sun So you don't have to eat out in the sun here Unfortunately I've been looking at the map and it seems like this greenway is supposed to end here in a couple of kilometers time So I'll be heading on to more regular car roads although very small ones But still I've really enjoyed cycling on this greenway It's been super fast, basically been all alone And I've been away from the sun for basically all of the stretch Finally ended here. Now I'm on to these small curvy and somewhat undulating roads here in France I've done something really silly. It's not stupid, it's more silly I've navigated so much wrong that I ended up in the same town that I passed about like 20 minutes ago I've basically just been driving around in a circle So the thing is that I don't have any navigation on my Garmin. I just use my phone So I sometimes pull it up and watch where I am on the map But usually this has been so easy to navigate. I've just followed the signs along the road Somehow I must have messed up here and cycled back in the wrong direction Made myself a detour of about 10 or so kilometers If you look on the map it looks a bit crisscrossy So I think I somehow made a wrong turn after this town and made it back to it Well that's life I guess The only bad thing now is that I have to go up this very long steep hill that I just came down to This little town here Those are probably the first pine trees I've seen on this entire bikepacking trip In Sweden you see them everywhere but here not that common It's as the vegetation around us is changing a bit From leaf trees to more coniferous trees When you meet 10 people in vests like that out in the forest it can only be one thing Hunters Same as we have in Sweden. In Sweden they're out hunting moose at the moment here in September I wonder what they're hunting here in France My guess would be wild boar Seems like the rain is coming in now and quick I have just over a kilometer left until I'm in Saint-Emilion so I better make a move on it So I barely made it in time I'm just final underpass here. I'm just gonna wait out the worst here for a couple of minutes And see if I can find a park bench or a picnic table or something Let's take it from there It looks like the rain is heading in again so I'm gonna see if I can find some place where I can take cover for a couple of minutes again The rain has passed and I've calmed down after hurrying to get over here to Saint-Emilion I'm now sitting outside the city walls of the old medieval city of Saint-Emilion This is a UNESCO world heritage but it's probably most famous for being one of the premier wine districts in the Bordeaux region I just felt I had to get out of there. It's a little bit too crowded for my taste That's the thing with these famous hilltop villages. You always want to go and and see what they're all like. But usually when I get there I get sort of panicked by all the people And when you're walking with a bicycle it's no fun at all. Maybe if I was just a normal tourist with my wife I would probably enjoy sitting down and having some lunch and a glass of wine but not this time. The hills never end do they? I'm just glad that it's a lovely temperature today. Even though it's still 30 degrees celsius Compared to the other days this is my kind of temperature. I'm sweaty as beep but it's okay Today and yesterday was the first two days on this backpacking trip where I didn't have a constant headache for the last three hours of the cycling day. I mean don't get me wrong I don't mind being sweaty and all when I know I have a shower waiting for me at the end of the day. But when you're that empty in your head and your head is just pounding, bikepacking is no fun I really like these kind of weather scenarios a lot better. Even though we get a couple of drops of rain here and there this is my ideal temperature Hey look at this! Nice! And just like that we're on to a lovely greenway again. I think this will take me all the way to my campground for the evening and perhaps even all the way into Bordeaux tomorrow So it's gonna be a pretty smooth sailing from here on out I was afraid that this tunnel was pitch black. I was almost stopping and started looking for my bike lights when the illumination in here turned on automatically because there was some sort of Sign back there at the train station told me it was only five kilometers left until I'm in Creon which is my end destination of today. So I've just made it to the campground and you can certainly notice that they've jacked up the prices as we're getting closer to a big city in the form of Bordeaux If you remember the campground so far I think I've paid between 6 and 11 euros per night and this was a whopping 19 euros for one night. But the perk of that is that they have a swimming pool here and a couple of water slides as well. So I'm not really able to pitch my tent yet if you remember what the tent looked like in the morning. So I'm just gonna spread it out over my picnic table here and maybe go and enjoy a nice swim in the swim pool to sort of celebrate that this is the last night on the way down to Bordeaux. I have one night left up in Paris later but this sort of marks the end of my travels towards Bordeaux. And later on tonight here I thought I'd celebrate this even further by going back into town. It's about two kilometers back and see if I can find a nice restaurant or a pizzeria to really celebrate that this is the last evening on my trip towards Bordeaux. And maybe have a glass of local wine as well. They're pretty good at it here in Bordeaux You know we gotta give the slides a try here Here we go! Just a minute to the center of this town that I'm staying in tonight called Creon. Seems like all the restaurants were basically closed again. It's a Monday and seems like Sundays and Mondays are the So there were basically just McDonald's and this nice little pizzeria open. So I decided of course to go for the pizzeria and sort of celebrate the last night here in the Bordeaux region with a nice pizza and some local red wine. Cheers! I was gonna end this outside of the restaurant but it started to rain just as I came out. So I had to hustle to get back here to the tent And now it has stopped again. So it's basically on and off the whole time here in the Bordeaux region And I'm guessing we're gonna have some rain tonight as well. The weather forecast says that it's supposed to rain during the night. So maybe I'll have to pack up everything wet in the morning again. It's quite a bust here at the campground because there's a world cup in rugby going on here in France and Bordeaux is one of the host cities. So there are plenty of Englishmen and people from Wales that are staying at this campground. But I hope they will turn in pretty soon here. Usually I have no problem sleeping after a long day out on the roads Well, I'll see you in the next one and until then, have a good one!