I think I saw a group of clowns being arrested, or at least getting a serious telling off by the gendarmes. They were standing heads down with their dreadlocks sympathetically limp a puddle of bubblywater nearby with two policemen gesturing their disapproval with their fingers. When we rode by again they were gone and an African man playing an instrument out of a Tim Burton dream was in their place. That was toulouse, a trendy quirky university town, I was sorry not to have more time there.

Once again we were rushing to the train station with ten minutes to spare. I just don’t know how we do it, time seems to stretch infinite, we relax, we leisurely pack, find a meal and whoosh time disappears and is replaced with panic. We made it, but the rush wasn’t over we arrived in nîmes at 5:30 and had to make it to the campground before 7 when it shut.

All I saw of nîmes was the station, two possibly homeless, middleaged cyclists bulging with luggage and three or four dogs in a trailer behind their bikes and red, pink and white flowers. Then it was just busy roads, not dissimilar to those from bordeaux airport, but they just did not end. Hot, black, flat and not a shoulder to call our own.

I had a romantic notion of Provence and like the shanty towns of hawaii, this was my “real Provence” moment. No lavender and sunflowers here, just endless fields of rice, wheat and the silos that processed them. Afterall we’d be pretty hungry if all we had to eat was flowers. I still hoped that sometime in our week in Provence I’d walk through a picture postcard.

Shadow was creeping over the surface of the pool when we finally made it. My legs burned from the most intense non stop push to the finish line I’d had on the bike, fear of cars and lock out making me hit reserves I sneakily knew I had but didn’t like to publish as it might mean I’d be tapping in more often.

Dusk, mosquitoes, a young man, obviously fond of his own voice, who walked throught the campsite singing Islamic songs. The campsite next to ours overflowed with spanish men, one particular overweight specimen took to walk to and from shirtless, wobbling with every stride. We went to bed early to the sounds of all of them having separate phone conversations where we could hear both ends and woke to the same. How strange people are. Picture book moments are reserved for the two week traveller where everything has to be perfect before the fortnight is over and the work day grind begins again. I’m kind of fond of the slightly odd, I feel like I know our world a little better now, how it is different but mostly how nowadays it is just the same.