Budgets

After lunch I pulled up another, shorter, climb over a pine-covered ridge and dropped down, past a deserted village, to the edge of a large reservoir.

Deserted village

The water was impossibly blue. Not the clear, crystalline blue of a mountain lake but a pastel, opaque blue suggesting some kind of mineral deposit.

I rode round the lake and wondered if I was bored of the trip yet. The cycling hasn't been so enjoyable today and I felt a little lethargic and began to notice a few aches and pains.

I tried thinking about the blog - which has kept my mind well entertained so far - but lacked inspiration. Perhaps I was tired, perhaps I didn't sleep well. Perhaps the novelty is wearing off. Perhaps I was getting over my rest day. Sometimes, it takes a day to get back into the swing of things after a day off. Maybe that was it.

Getting bored. The Pyrenees in the background.

By now it was getting close to 8pm. I had planned to camp by the lake tonight and couldn't find the camp site so I cycled up to the village of Sigues intending to eat dinner there before rolling back down the hill to camp wild by the lake.

The quiet, smooth road up to Sigues brightened me up a bit. This is what I would climb tomorrow and it was a nice, well-surfaced road with not much traffic.

When I reached the village, the first thing I found was a tourist information centre. This is perhaps a grand name for what was, in fact, a lady sitting on a bench playing with her infant daughter. I asked for the camp site and was told it was 13km back the way I had come.

I have stopped thinking of distances as distance and now think of them as time. 13km is about 40 minutes. I also felt no irritation at having to turn back the way I'd come. Cycling has become transport; it's just the way I get about now.

I arrived at the camp site and the owner's teenage son told me it would be 4.25 for the tent and 4.25 for me. I had decided not to carry a tent - just a sleeping bag and a tarp - to save weight. For some reason I felt embarrassed about admitting this.

But four euros is four euros so, sheepishly, I told the teenager that in fact, it's not really a tent. "You don't have a tent?" He said, matter-of-factly, "Oh, then it's just 4.25 for you."

Evening on the lake: the view from my campsite

I felt inward joy. Since my bank card stopped working, I have been operating on a fixed sum of cash which has forced me to keep to a daily budget. I have begun to enjoy the discipline. Adding up my expenses has become another exercise to occupy my mind while cycling and beating my daily budget gives me a feeling of triumph and a little boost.

Such a cheap night's accommodation will help me beat my budget by 50 euros today.

BC