Day 3: Oh brother where art thou

05:00 am, I hear someone half whisper half scream my name to wake me up from a 5 hour -if even- sleep. Dozing into the world thinking about the 2 hour preparation into starting a 100km-ish ride  And this is how we decided to spend pur holidays, and I can't be happier (most of the time).

After the get-ready ritual, we manage to start by little after 7 am and it feels the world's different from starting one hour later the day before. However, that margin would quickly slip away as we went back and forth, turning, stopping, checking routes around an annoyingly tricky quai area. Furthermore, our -completely unfounded- prospect of a glass submarine waterway in which we could ride our bikes surrounded by fish didn't come to happen. Surprising.

Instead, ground level bike paths traversed the water reservoir, granting us a marvelous experience to cylce "entre dos aguas" as we went at close to 30km/h, profitting from the route's flatness, the lack of wind and the temporary benevolent temperatures. Marvelling at the scenery, I (Sergio) had to ask Alfonso to snap a picture of the scenery (with me on it) much to Franco's contempt on the precious morning time spent vainly.

After having bordered a sretch of 60km of bay area with the Mediterranean on one side and the reservoir on the other, we started cycling inland. Not too far from our destination and having just crossed Aigues Mortes (dead waters in Occitan, an omen perhaps?) a small inconvenience took place. An ill timed distraction caused Alfonso and myself to crash onto each other while going at over 25km/h, making us both lose control and fall (heavily!) on the rocky road. Never have we been so grateful about wearing protective gloves, although we were far from unscathed. Knees and elbows -left on mine, right on his- were bleeding profusely at the same time we had the sun at it's highest point -on one of the hottest days- scorching us. After recovering (and a reasonable amount of swearing from my end) we made it to a restaurant, retrieved some ice and made our way through lunch (serrano ham, camembert sandwich + 1/3 of a fuet each). Deciding it was not wise to keep going, we decided to go to a camping 2km away, which was quite enough to arrive to the 99.8km milestone (yay). Incredibly friendly staff at the best camping so far bandaged my wounds, we ate an icecream and went ahead with the tent-setting ritual, this time with an added excitement: canned duo of cassoulet and chile con carne. A fusion delicatesse, for sure.

Day 2: it's just three brothers (on the way to Montpellier)

 Day two started relatively early, although not as early as our campground neighbors (also biking) who leave camp as it is barely light out. Of course, they probably didn't bike 160 km the day before, but I digress...

The morning starts a bit slow. I (Alfonso) am still quite tired and the heat never really went away fully. As I hope you'll discover by reading this (and me constantly complaining about it) the heat is and will remain the main challenge.

Sergio brought something important besides himself: we know have some sort of hydration mixing powder that will remain key in the coming days. These are the boring parts (the heat and the constant looking for water) but I guess it's what you think of the most when your head is being broiled by the southern France heat.

The way starts relatively cool, something like 28°C, which allows us to make a relatively good distance early. However, we soon start to wonder about where are we going and how to get there. The general consensus is East, of course but recent experiences with the French cycling infrastructure and Google maps apparent disregard for our lives force us to be more strategic. We finally settle on a target: the area around Marseillan, a small town on the coast and the route: follow medium and small departmental roads.