We anticipate that Tunis will be one of the more painful places to find bike boxes. The few bike shops are spread out across a huge area, and while the city’s taxi app is great, cheap and reliable, the traffic is gridlocked everywhere so this chore takes ages. We eventually find some in a high-end sports shop and are given them for free – the only place besides Cairns in Australia where this has happened.  

We fly to Marseille and arrive mid morning. I’m very relaxed about getting going for some reason, taking ages to get changed, faffing around with the bags and chilling out having coffee. We have the ritual of re-assembling the bikes down pat now, but there are gale force winds outside, so we spend half our time chasing after things as they blow away. Despite the fact we guess correctly that we’ll be heading directly into the wind, we’re both upbeat and happy. We know we’re going home for a bit and we have a plan. We anticipate that the ride back across south west Europe will be a kind of victory lap; easy and relaxed. Silly us.

The day is exhausting, but good until I get a front puncture near the end, and almost come off as my bike slides out from beneath me on a roundabout. We’re tired and just keep stopping to put air in rather than change the tube. By evening we’d only done about 60 kilometres, but it felt like a long day.

The next couple of days we roughly follow the coast west then south, around Montpellier and Narbonne, with the vague plan to head directly for Spain after Perpignan. I have never been to Spain, which seems like a lapse for a Brit. We pass through the Camargue nature park full of flamingos, and pick our way along gravel bike paths, stopping to eat croissants, baguettes and cheese. Exactly the way days in France should be. The headwind makes it slow going, so I decide that if we’re going to be working this hard we might as well do it in the mountains, and we divert to the west with the idea to ride through the French part of the Pyrenees and cross to Spain further along.

We’re on the roads in the south of Aude, passing Cathar castles and travelling through vineyeards and their attendant wine shops, which are sadly shut in low season. We’re buoyant but full of hubris, which should spell bad times ahead.  
 

We summit our first real col. It’s not a big one, but the top is signposted so we count it as a big deal. We’re a bit disappointed by the scenery, but prior to Tunisia we were spoilt by Sicily, Montenegro and Albania. We’re confident that when we get to the high Pyrenees it will be comparable to those places. That afternoon we arrive at our first proper campsite, and we’re the first guests of the year. The owner goes out of his way to make us comfortable. He spends longer than us deciding which site will be best, then drives round to us later with a plug adapter and an extension lead so we can run electricity into the tent.  

On our big climb the following day a cyclist on his lightweight road bike catches up, says hello and comments how difficult this climb is in the heat. Cyclists in France so far have been really rude – not returning waves or greetings – so I was chuffed that someone had said hello, that I’m not so slow that he isn’t able to just whizz passed me, and that I had understood him, even though all I could say in return was “yes it’s hot.”

We ride through a spectacular canyon on our way into the higher mountains. There’s the dizzying feeling of being hemmed in by the cliffs on one side with the thundering river next to us. Some of the road is carved into the cliff, leaving a series of rock arches across the lanes. The road gets narrow in places as we pass under these, but fortunately traffic is light and larger vehicles can’t use the road due to the low clearance.

At the end of the day we treat ourselves to a night in an auberge. The one place in the village to eat turns out to be a local brewery, which I swear I didn’t plan. It’s a Friday night so it fills up quickly and it becomes clear that every person in the crowded place is British, including all the bar staff. Somehow we’ve stumbled into a weird entirely expat community in a village in the middle of nowhere. It’s a nice enough place, but hard to see why they would have moved here en masse.

After leaving the auberge it rains heavily and persistently, and in hindsight this is the turning point in France. We hop from shelter to shelter each time the rain eases. First in a cattle pen, then under a bridge, then a covered picnic area. A woman is surprised to find us in the first of these and offers drinks, but otherwise the day is miserable.  

The weather turns even worse the next day. We’re quite high up, but the area is shrouded in fog, grey clouds and constant rain. There are no views. We get our tent set up and prepare food just before the rain gets even heavier, and then it keeps us trapped inside for nearly 15 hours, and this becomes a pattern. We make a break for it in the morning, but hardly get anywhere before it starts again. Taking shelter in a cafe, we’re soaked through and the temperatures have dropped now too. The rain doesn’t ease off until early afternoon. With more of the same forecast, we make a snap decision to ride north away from it, make our way out through the Ariege region and head towards Toulouse. It feels like we’ve made very little progress into France. We cover a normal day’s ride in a few hours, keeping the rain at bay behind us. We make it to the outskirts of the city just before dark and find a cheap motel for the night where we can dry our stuff.

Finally some sun, and after a pleasant ride from Toulouse we arrive at a nice campsite on the river Tam, with what looks like a pretty town the other side. It’s the first day of the year that they’re open and we’re given chocolate eggs because it’s Easter. They lend us a plastic table and some chairs, which makes cooking dinner easier, if only we can keep the stove lit and out of the wind. It’s a lovely spot by the river, with a nice ride into a town with a weekend market and a beautiful church, so we decide to stay a couple of nights.

We’re in two minds where to go after this. Spain still seems like a good bet because we assume it’s warmer.

A storm hits in the night. Our tunnel tent is side-on to the wind and it feels as though it’s going to collapse. The wind and rain are so fierce that the poles are bending inward and I have to go outside and do some re-pegging and tightening of lines, but it survives the night.

Another cycling couple have arrived when we finally emerge into the mudbath outside our tent the following day. They are from Germany and Argentina respectively. It’s been ages since we met anyone else bike touring. We’re invited to have breakfast with them, but I’m asocial, moody and have been dreaming of going into town for coffee and croissants, and the refusal is out of my mouth before I’ve considered how rude it is to say no. And I regret doing so because they seemed so nice. We chat briefly before they leave, and find out they have ridden from Spain in search of better weather, which is what nails down our final decision to stay in France. Before heading off, the German half of the couple tells me there’s a saying in her language “Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben” which she translates as “you always meet twice in life.” So maybe we’ll see them again on another road and I can be less miserable.

We pick up the Canal de la Garonne from here, which we can follow on tow paths all the way to Bordeaux. It feels like a defeat to ride along the flat paths, but the cold, wind and rain provide different challenges.

We pass a man walking the canal path pulling a trailer on foot, and we gather from our limited French, the pictures he has and the regional flags on his trailer, that he is walking across France in memory of someone. We stop shortly after for coffee at the next town, and anticipating we’ll overtake him a second time I buy him a drink to try and make up for all the times people have shown us kindness, but he adamantly refuses it. So sod that then.

Along the pretty and flat canal paths, we make it to the Atlantic coast in no time and skirt Bordeaux through the Medoc nature park. The headwind has become brutal, and it follows us like a curse as we turn north. We’re burning so much energy despite the terrain, that I buy a new huge frying pan so I can eat even more. We also discover sauce algérienne, probably the best of the French condiments which have not made it across the channel, and which forms part of our daily lunch routine.

Into the mix of wind and rain has now been added a haze of orange pollen, which coats everything. There’s a film of sticky orange on the tent and all our stuff, which lasts for a couple of days until it rains heavily again, and then the cycle continues.

A short ferry across the estuary to Royan, and it now feels like true Atlantic France, with its beaches and white buildings. We hit La Velodyssee, a bike route that follows the coast to the north and into Brittany, which is as far as we’ll go on it. We’ve decided now that we’re heading for Roscoff where we’ll get the ferry to Ireland and make a detour to visit family, rather than going directly home.

In addition to the rain and pollen it is now freezing. We aren’t really geared up for such cold, so we are tented by the early evening because sitting outside is so uncomfortable. Our progress up the coast is slow. We stay in the tent for as long as possible in the morning, not wanting to go out in the cold or rain, so we don’t make much ground each day. Plus I’m as aerodynamic as a potato and about as fast going into a headwind. The cycling is uninspiring, and we are getting a bit tired of the same routine, which seems a bit spoilt given the privilege we have to do this in the first place. But as a species we have been to the moon and then lost interest, so I don’t feel this is a particular flaw of mine.

On the last day with any good weather, we meet a cyclist heading the other way, who stops to say hello. He’s got lots of experience of long-term travel and when we chat about where we’ve been, he warns us that after travelling for so long we might feel lost and low when we go back. He tells us about a bike trip he did along the west coast of Ireland, and before he says goodbye he turns to me like a seer and warns me to be careful of the depression which will creep up when I get home.

Midway through our ride north, there is another massive overnight storm. We can hear the rumble of the rain getting closer; it sounds like an avalanche. The wind is so strong that it feels like the tent is caving in, and when it starts getting pelted with hail as well I sit in the vestibule and hold it up like Atlas. We periodically have to move the ice off the tent because it’s becoming too heavy.

It’s so cold as we head through Brittany. By the end of each day we still haven’t warmed up at all from the night before. Our sleeping bags are constantly damp and not keeping us warm enough. Some of our clothes have holes in and my sleeping mat is covered in mould. I haven’t been able to feel my feet for days.

The upside is that the food in this corner of France is some of my favourite.  I cannot get enough of galettes or of the sliced cold meats, which accompany Algerian sauce now in my daily baguette. And the cider is truly out of this world. We eschew andouillette though. As keen as I am to try everything, a food that is described by someone as “tasting faintly of shit” is a step too far.

We get to the town of Josselin on the day of an important anniversary, so we’ve agreed to a stay in a hotel. A few weeks ago I would have said that mankind’s greatest invention was either transistors, antiseptics or sausages, but I was wrong. It turns out that our greatest invention is the radiator. When we get to the room I spend some time hugging then pressing my face against the one in the bathroom, before spending so long standing under a hot shower that I’ve cancelled out how environmentally friendly travelling by bike has been.

Our last stop before the port town is Carhaix-Plouguer, and what a town it is. It is the weirdest and most unnerving place I’ve ever been in. It’s mostly deserted, but there’s an unsettling feeling of being watched all the time. I half expected to be kidnapped by Papa Lazarou, but we make it back on the road unscathed.

We arrive in Roscoff on our bikes in heavy rain, and leave a few hours later by ferry. We have a lot to do back in the UK before we can continue. But although our minds are turned to home out of necessity, that isn’t where our hearts are.

A playlist for the ride: