Day 26 - Lorquin to Nancy - ride total 1,,998 k, 14,115 m

Snakes. 

Snakes in the wild. 

I had to come to France on a hot summer's day to see my first snake in the wild - there slithering across the cycle path beside the canal was a real, live snake of about 75 cm on length and 20 - 30 mm around its body. I wasn't quick enough to capture it to confirm those measurements nor get it film, however there is a maybe and that is when the movie of the ride is released it may feature in that as I did have my GoPro recording as it crossed my path. 

Not even on my Australian rides have I seen a live snake. So the snake tally so far is a dead snake in both the UK and Australia and a live snake in France.

We were late in getting away today on account of the Landlady not being keen on breakfast at a reasonable hour (like 6:00 or even 7:00) so it was an 8:00 a.m. breakfast and an 8:45 start for todays ride which other than the small 65 m rise at the beginning had us once again following the canal all the way down to Nancy and whereas with each loch yesterday we rose about 2 metres today at every loch we encountered we dropped the 2 metres.

It was a struggle to find a good bakery for morning tea today which is not normal and it took us until the 45 km mark before we came across a bakery (not one of the best I must say). After that it was back on to the cycle path beside the canal which meant our navigation skills for today did not have to be great, other than to ensure that any lapse of concentration did not result in ending up in the canal.

We did however have a wee bit of refinement of the navigation when it came to locating oour accommodation for the night. Let's just say that today we had another of life's learning opportunities offerred to us.

As I passed one of the lochs a nice launch with three people up on deck was making its way in to go up a level and as it was flying a NZ flag I said "Kiwi's". "Gidday" was the reply. So as they were passing through the loch which means driving the boat in, tieing off and then let the rising water lift the whole boat up to the next level we had a chat. The fellow who owns the boat is from Waiuku and the other two were from Rotorua - he's been cruising the canals for the last 17 years and spends from May through to September over here. We didn't bother checking out who each other knew in common back home but I'm sure if we had got on to that topic there would have been someone we both knew in common.

It's never easy when traveling like this knowing what is the best option to adopt as far as ones connection to the internet and phone services are concerned. The best deal I had was in 2017 when I purchased a fixed price UK plan that allowed as much data as you wanted. That was easy to understand and in English. Another time I purchased an Orange plan in France that was very similar not quite as much free data however covered all of the European Union which worked out well (except for the one EU country in which it did not apply and Peter and I separated and needed to contact each other). This time round the research I did suggested an Italian phone plan would be the way to go - so rather than bother my Italian biking friend who lives in Spain and suggested it I thought the easiest thing to do would be to buy it when I got to Rome. That I did. It wasn't the one my Italian friend suggested as that required a postal address for it to be sent to. So I settled on a Vodafone plan and the young woman at the Vodoafone store was very helpful. I thought the plan I bought would be sufficient as it allowed for a reasonable amount of data while in Italy and somwaht less when elsewhere in the EU. 

It worked well until last night when at the start of an important call back home to organise some stuff with a group I'm involved with it decided to say "that's it, all your data allocation is used up and unless you can read Italian and sort out the text messages then go find some free WIFI"! Bugger.

And, of course it just happend at the one hotel that did not offer free WIFI!

This meant that my friends who I had just begun talking to had me disappear from the call not to be connected for the next 24 hours!

Now that I have had my three cups of tea I'm about to head off to find a local Vodafone shop and hopefully sort the connectivity issue out.









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