5 July 2013

Slight detour

This evening I went slightly wrong trying to get back from Bordeaux. I should have gone this way:


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Instead I ended up doing this route:



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I thought I was going the right way and suddenly realised I was going down a one-way street - the wrong way. I turned around and ended up on the quais, but heading south. I thought I'd be okay, just rejoin the boulevards and make my way to Barriere de Pessac and back out, but noooo. I ended up at Villenave d'Ornon and thought, okay just turn right-ish, Pessac's to the west of Villenave and it would have been easy if I could go on the rocade on my little scooter, but no. I ended up in Caudaujac and saw a sign for Léognan, so thought "aha, the wine is Pessac-Léognan, right? They can't be too far apart..." but whaddya know, they ain't so close either. Finally saw a name I really recognised Gradignan, where I teach so headed that way only it wasn't Gradignan, it was Gradignan-Malartic but I was still hopeful only I was running out of petrol. On my reserve tank and pulled into a petrol station that shut just before I started to fill my 6-litre tank and didn't have a 24hr card pump. My luck changed just outside the station because two lads on motorbikes were stopped because one of them had broken down and I asked where the bloody hell I was and if there was a very nearby petrol station that might be better than the poxy Avia that shut and one not only lent me his phone so I could ring Fona to let her know what had happened (my phone was dead thanks to an extended Ingress session otherwise I would have used the maps on it to get me right before things had got this ridiculous), but also guided me to the nearest station where I could fill up and make my way home! That first route is 15.1 km, I did 42.1... still at least it was a lovely evening for a longer than planned ride.