Day 4: Bouin to Les Sables D'Olonnes

After Tuesday's marathon stint, Wednesday was supposed to be something of a half day, with only around 40 miles to cover over the course of the day. The day began as Tuesday had ended, with a number of long  straight roads through the marshy flatlands of the region helping us to rack up 20 miles in quick time.

Flatlands around Bouin, near the river Loire

This led us to our first stop of the morning, and our first sighting of the Atlantic at St Hilaire de Riez. As Les Sables D'Olonnes is a major coastal resort, we decided that by following the coast as much as possible, we couldn't help but reach Les Sables. However, we had not anticipated what seemed like the migration of the majority of France's holdiaymakers to the region at the same time. Hordes of pedestrians and countless renaults, peugeots and citroens made the going extremely slow through the various coastal resorts that stood between St Hilaire and Les Sables.

First sighting of the Atlantic at Les Sables D'Olonnes

Nevertheless, despite a rising temperature, the terrain remained reasonably flat, and thus despite doing a few more miles than anticipated, and taking more time over them, we still arrived in Les Sables by early afternoon.The town is by far the largest we have visited thus far, and the amount of restaurants and bars would cater for the most extreme of tastes. This makes it all the more surprising then, that Dad managed to order the one dish that when faced with he hadn't a clue how to go about (see below). Making a complete mess of the crab, I did rather better with mussels - a speciality of the town - before we took a stroll around to get our bearings as we would be staying here for a couple of nights in roder to take a well earned rest, and enjoy some of the festivities that take place nationally to celebrate Bastille Day.

He might know his way round a cow, but seemingly has a lot to learn about crabs!

 After having had problems finding places open over the past few days, and passing through countless sizeable towns where nobody was to be found, we soon realised where everyone had been. The beachfront was saturated with crowds of families, couples and kids enjoying the sun (see below for evidence), covering every spare patch of sand going. We avoided wandering down to join them, and instead took refuge in a bar a little further away from all the action, around the adjacent marina . A good meal that evening was again washed down with a few beers in the 'Havana Bar', before getting the water taxi across back to the hotel. Today (Thursday) we have enjoyed something of a lie in, and have no plans to get the bikes out at all, instead exploring Les Sables some more, before heading to the seafront later on this evening to take in the live music etc. that is being put on as part of the Bastille Day celebrations.

Distance: 52.1 miles

Now we realised where everyone in France had been hiding.