Day 72 and 73: "La Rochelle" and "Les Sables d'Olonne"

I had no internet access yesterday and was not able to create a blog post. So I'll combine both yesterday and today in one blog post. Also ridewithgps is pausing itself sometimes for whatever reasons. This then causes a straight line on the tour map :(

But let's start with something completely different: Laundry. While I really enjoy the lower temperatures, it makes drying the laundry much harder and sometimes causes the laundry to smell :( Yesterday the smell was different. Barbecue. My tent was placed next to the barbecue place yesterday and someone must have had some nice food. Not sure yet if this is an improvement. At least it will confuse the dogs even more that are often afraid of the velomobile.  

The only confused creature believing
my socks smell of flowers

After packing my stuff I went on to take a look at Rochefort. Small and dominated by its navy history. I wanted to take a look at "l'Hermione", but it was nowhere to be found. Only some training equipment:

Still the city was much nicer than expected (to be honest I did not expect anything ;)

For the last two days I mainly followed the EuroVelo path again. Most of the time it has a surface like the following picture shows:

While this is much slower than tarmac it is at least flat and without potholes. So I decided to stick with it, since the EuroVelo quite nicely alternates between the coast and the swamps of the hinterland.

"La Rochelle" has a nice old center. The huge port and supporting infrastructure are impressive, but not a place where you'd want to spent your time.

"Les Sables d'Olonne" was a bit underwhelming. While it is nice to see the places I know only from videos in real life, the city is dominated by modern buildings and not very charming.

About 20 of the 90 class minis were already in the port, everything was really quiet and almost no one around.

The "race village" is still under construction.

Two of the newer class mini yachts.
Interested in crossing the ocean in a 6.5m long boat?

Continuing north the 3 km long "Pont de Saint Nazaire" is not recommended for bikes (whatever that means, but I won't check it). So I will have to cross the Loire further inland. I am not sure about the way ahead after this. I'd like to see Brittany, but I don't trust my bike enough to make more distance than I really need to... Probably the next blog entry will answer this ;)