day 1

We reached the Hotel de Harmonie early, about 11 ish.  There was a large envelope waiting for us containing all the route notes and maps for the first week.  As our room wasn't ready yet we sat in the resturaunt and read through it, well, looked at it.  We then went and put the bike together, it travels in pieces as it won't fit in the Volvo any other way.  It caused a bit of a stir as tandems aren't that common round here due to the number of bridges which you would have to get off it and push it over.   You would be right to expect to hear more on that subject later. 

Once the room was ready we could unpack, change and head out for our first ride, in the rain.  It had been raining on and off all day, not just little showers but fairly heavy downpours and of course now we were ready to go out it was going to keep it up.  The ride we chose was a fairly short one round the local area to get me used to using the route notes.  It is beautiful here even in the rain, although the twee content might be too high for some.  The cycle routes go along the small canals with thatched cottages on small islands that have little bridges providing access. All the gardens seem immaculately kept often with small hedge mazes in the front gardens.

The routes themselves are quite narrow, not easy to pass a bike coming the other way.  They hop across the canals and back again just for the fun of it.  As the bridges are not spanning a great distance, but require a bit of head room underneath, they tend to be quite steep.  They are also perpendicular to the narrow paths which doesn't leave much turning room for a 10ft long tandem.  There was only one occasion when we nearly lost the front wheel over the edge of the bridge and into the canal, but there were quite a few occasions where the bridge was so steep that the pedals caught on the angle between the ramp and the deck.

There were more windmills, loads of windmills, but this was our favourite of the day, topless, thatched and converted into a house

I supect we could make up our own top trump windmills set by the end of the holiday.