Dit zijn de afstanden die er per dag gefietst zijn. Dag 4 was de rustdag.Dag 5 en 6 waren de dagen dat we rond hebben gereden in de Veluwe zonder bagage.
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France - Day 12 : Swimming in the mediterranean sea
The ants were still busy hauling our food back to the ant hill in the morning. The guy in the other tent briefly left his tent without saying anything. Then he started putting stuff in his pants with his back toward us. I said 'Hi' in three different languages, but he didn't reply.
Besides ants there were other animals on the campsite, which was called 'les Cigales', which means 'the cicadas'.
We had already seen Casis' center so we needed to decide what to do next. According to Stefan's book, Cassis was mostly known for a trail running to Marseille. The bay we visited yesterday was at the start of that trail. We decided to walk to Marseille and go swimming in the mediterranean sea. It was a long walk just to reach the bay. The trail turned out to be closed because of fire hazard. There was a 135 euro fine if you ignored it, so we turned around.
At the campsite we put on the clothes best suited for swimming, because we didn't bring any swimming pants. We were surprised there were many people on the beach but none in the water. The first beach was completely packed, so we walked onto the next that was equally full. Then we went into the water. When I got in up to my ankles I noticed it was freezing, I think it was about 12 degrees Celsius. It took 15 minutes before I was fully submerged. Everybody else also went in really slowly. Bram went for a swim, but after being in the water for one minute I went back to lie in the sun. A bit later, Bram also came to warm up. An hour later, he wasn't all that cold anymore. It was pretty mountainous in Cassis, which we didn't expect so close to the sea. We thought it was around four o'clock when we returned to the campsite, but it was already 18:30.
We were getting ready to have dinner when a car stopped in front of our tent. There were a man and a woman inside, and it seemed like they were looking at us. That wasn't really the case, as they were looking at the tent behind us. The guy was super tanned and wore a necklace. He also had his hair combed back. He asked who had thrown the tent there. I quickly said it was the campsite's owner. He was pretty angry and unsure about what had happened.
A bit later, they returned with some personnel. He asked when we would be leaving because now there were two other people on a spot that was supposed to be theirs. Fortunately, we planned to leave the following day and had already paid. The couple kept fighting with the campsite's owner and asked us to move our tent so they could re-pitch theirs.
We started eating. I was glad we hadn't cut their tent when taking it down because I don't think they would have believed the campsite's owner would have done that. The tent was super cheap, however. They also needed more pegs because I had hidden a couple underneath my tent. After half an hour, when they had put in the tent poles, they asked if we could hold the tent in place while they tried to drive the pegs into the ground. The guy was still grumpy. Bram and I held the tent on opposite ends while the man sat between us, hammering the pegs. He clearly wouldn't succeed in a million years. He kept getting angrier and angrier. Eventually, he found out it helped if he straightened the pegs before trying to hit them into the rocks. Bram and I couldn't stop laughing, but we also couldn't make a sound because the man was sitting right between us. When he finally managed to get a few pegs in, he discovered he had too few because I still had three of them underneath my tent.
We had eaten when the couple started pitching the tent. After we finished helping them, we were hungry again. Therefore, we ordered some fries at the restaurant. The lady behind the counter barely had enough energy to take our order. I asked for 'Deux gros frites', but we got a large and medium one. When we returned to our campsite, the couple's car was still there, while we needed to pitch our tents there. It turned out their car was broken. They had a lot of luck today.
When the couple was gone for a minute, I quickly pitched my tent with their pegs. Then we went to sleep. We hoped their tent would be blown away and land 100 meters further, but that didn't happen. When the hiking guy would get up in the morning, he would probably be surprised to find our tents pitched almost inside his tent, a car right in front of us, and the angry guy's tent up again.