After checking out of the hotel and retrieving my bike from the garage there, I headed directly south along the coast roughly towards Perpignan, and more broadly, Spain.

It was nice to stop at a few places on the way down the coast. The first one was an extraordinarily wide stretch of sand just south of Porte-la-Nouvelle where the beach was fairly empty, but there were quite a few campervans parked on the hardened sand away from the sea. Then I continued on a track alongside the railway line. I stopped for lunch at La Franqui, and then went up a very steep and rough track with many rocks. This necessitated getting off the bike and pushing it and the attached luggage up through the rocky terrain. It was hard to tell in advance what the terrain would be like from looking at the route on the phone. The views at the top of the hill overlooked the coast and the mountains further south were visible too, and they would become larger and more clear as the day progressed.

Later I stopped at Leucate Plage and Le Barcarès. Both were very nice, particularly with the silhouette of the Pyrenees on the horizon, and I was really enjoying cycling through this region and the almost subtropical feel that it had. By now there were multiple palm trees and a dedicated cycle path.

Having attempted the second repair of my airbed earlier in the hotel, there seemed to be many campsites around the area of Canet-en-Rousillon and this town was roughly horizontally parallel with Perpignan on the map. I checked in to the first one I found there, and visited the beach in the evening. I wasn’t sure what to expect. The air still felt comfortably warm and the beach looked incredible, with the colours of the sky graduating from deep blue to warm orange and the setting sun illuminating the sea and the palm trees against the backdrop of the mountains.

Distance: 27 miles

Maximum temperature: 27 degrees C

Sands south of Porte-la-Nouvelle

Leucate

Le Barcarès

Canet-en-Rousillon

Canet-en-Rousillon

Canet-en-Rousillon