the way to the beach

France, afternoon

I didn't want to do anything yesterday. I made plans in my head for doing things with the two girls I know here, but they already had other plans. So, I was alone. I worked all morning and then around 3 pm I decided to that I needed to force myself to go out, to avoid to be in an awful mood by the evening. My bike has a flat tire. I think there is a small hole in it. I couldn't care less yesterday, I just needed to get out and spend some time outside. I prepared my back pack thinking of going to the beach. The beach is about 10 km from my apartment. There is a bike road, the one that at the tourist information they suggested me, but it is not too nice since it runs parallel to the main car road. But I needed to go somewhere.

So, I jumped on the bike to go in the direction of the bike road, till I suddenly got to the river. There is a nice river that crosses Montpellier. And these two pictures on the left is what I saw as soon as I got to the river. It was incredibly nice. People sitting on the grasses reading and taking sun. I saw that there was a bike path along the river and I decided to change my plans and instead of going to the beach, just keep biking along the river. During all this, I have to stop a few times to put some air in my tire, which was keeping getting back to a flat condition after a few minutes of biking. While I was biking along the river, I saw a bike sign with written "Plage", which is the French word for beach...so I got even more motivated in following the bike road thinking that at the end I would get to the beach!

There were a lot of people biking and when the bike path was turning into concrete there were also people rollerblading. It made me thinking of Amsterdam and how much I liked to bike around there. The way to the beach crosses a lot of nice areas, like this one. I also saw a lot of animals, first because it seems that a lot of people like riding horses here and second before to get to the beach, the road crosses a swampy area, where I saw a lot of birds...too bad I didn't have my binocular.

Unfortunately, the birds I saw were a bit far to get nice pictures of them, but it was such a nice bike road anyway. I will come back there for sure. And at the end it didn't matter if the back tire of my bike was flat, if I had to bike back against the wind, if when I got to the beach it was so full of people that I decided to go back, I enjoy it a lot anyway. And it was good that I forced myself to go out, even if I was alone and not too motivated!