Balade a velo jusqu’a le gare de Jouet avec spectacle spectaculaire

Our hosts Sophie and Pierre (on the left) organised a lovely pic nic for us. Everyone came along, including uncle Bernard and the wrong son Andreas. We had a nice and gentle ride along the Voie Verte from Belin Beliet to the Gare de Jouet, all tout droit and very flat.
The pic nic was delicious …. clafoutis with cherries from the garden, gooey chewy almondy crunchy biscuits with the coffee….



Ray Mundo is ready and waiting to get on with the show…. note the empty pic nic cageot on the front and the magic floating hat !

Here’s our beautiful audience, all replete after the pic nic …. can you see their happy faces !?


And here some highlights from the show….
Friendly pixies and scary monsters….

                   
Dans le nid de poules…. the pothole of the rat bike chickens….

And then a quick fire repeat performance of the show for the late comers from Hostens….


On the way home, following Andreas, la reine du jour enjoying the ride and her guitar – or is it his guitar?

E voila! A perfect day!

A happy week with the Recyclerie Repeyre a Belin-Beliet

Grace a L’Heureux Cyclage we found ourselves amongst friends at Repeyre, a little, fast growing recyclerie and atelier a velo auto reparation, in Belin-Beliet.


Our first day here we spent ‘a depalletage’, which does not mean pulling out hair, but turning pallets into pieces of wood ready to be made into something else. In this case a pedal powered watermill to send water up a tree we think…. It’s all part of a greater plan to create a spectacle in September. 

The next day we brought our pedal power and had some fun, pedalling our blues away, while everyone else was fixing bikes….




                

And then we joined the convoy to deliver these two bicycles in the neighbourhood…

The weekend came and we were invited to be part of the Repeyre team. There was room for us and the bike in the van, so we went to Rion de Landes to the Fete du Printemps at the Ecolieu Jeanot and pedalled all the blues away….

Eco-lieu Jeanot stands for - Jardin Educatif d’Agroécologie Nourricier et Ouvert à Tous and there is a lot going on here, ‘tis cool and loads of fun and inventive, we like very much these places

  here’s a link to their page

http://www.jeanot.fr/

They had a tandem powered water pump to water the garden….



and some other things made from old bicycle bits…
       

And of course there was a giant! What giant? A big one, with a limp, scaring all the kids around….


….. including these fine young italians who took refuge under the gold hat and pedalled the giant away.


Vive Repeyre !

http//www.repeyre.fr/

Vive L’Heureux Cyclage !

http://www.heureux-cyclage.org

Vive Les Eco-Lieux !

Plus on partage, plus on possède !

The more we share, the more we have!
Says Cedrik from the Ecolieu de Galinette in Taller.
http://ecolieu-galinette.puzl.com/ 

We certainly had a lot. A lot of work that is, helping with the 'three sisters maze' covering the ground and planting the seeds in time for the right time to plant the seeds in a biodynamic fashion, which was now. All hands into the earth! Happy hands.

The three sisters recipie
La milpa, recette millénaire d'origine Inca c'est l'association favorable de 3 familles de plantes : courge + mais + haricot
Dans notre cas c'est du golden bantham pour le maïs doux
Du haricot à rames borlotti ainsi que du noir basque
Et pour les courges c'est potimarrons, melons, butternuts et concombres.
Les 3 familles s'entraident, repoussent la vermine et n'occupe pas plus de place qu'une monoculture !

And then it was time for sharing the fun on the pedal powered chestnut grinder or
le châtaigne moulin a pédale
here it is

Here it is in action, making chestnut flour for Serges breadoven which is in his little house in the first picture...



Weren't gonna share any of this....


But we went for a ride on this homemade beauty what does the schoolrun to Castets - 7km each way


We had a lovely couple of days at the Galinette and we hear the maize is doing well already.
Next time we'll stay longer. But for now it was time to say goodbye and go and visit a new friend, Thomas at
La Courgeyre, Onesse et Laharie and stay in his olde, olde house in a typical Landese style.

There wasn't any cows in the house, so we took the bikes in...


And in the morning, before breakfast, we went to adore Thomas's steam engines and a wall of death under construction. Exciting days!

Going the wrong way

Everybody started telling us we were going the wrong way, in the wrong direction. But we knew we were going in the right direction, north east, to France.

So it was with great joy that we discovered these arrows. Now we knew we were going in the right direction, in the wrong way. Phew!

We went through the gates of heaven!

JRPA

Jolly Route Pas de Autovia

and were greated by this gentleman with a plastic bag on the end of a stick.

The gods were on our side!

They were indeed and helped us up to the alto El Matorro.

Is it the highest we’ve ever been?

It was fun and we were definitely high on fresh air and gorgeous views.

If we don’t stop that car thing soon, these are the kind of places that will get destroyed first by fracking …. out of sight, not many people there to fight for their land…  

Anyway, the angels staid up there on the Matorro and we were left to struggle up the last big pass by ourselves.

El Perdon no tiene perdon.

And then yet another excellent example of ‘Strassenfuehrung’, where the only way is to go on the motorway or to take the dirt track next to it which might eventually end in a hedge….

this one in particular ended in the city of Pamplona, at a motorway entrance where there was actually a pedestrian crossing. The crossing with the highest curb in the universe, about half a meter.  

But there was still little blue arrows and once we managed to wind our way into town we found these…

A bright light shining over every little cyclist…..

… leading us straight to the first proper bike shop we had seen for months!

2 Eskua in Calle Carmen, run by 2 brother clowns de Euskera. We immediately spent all the money we had on useful bicycle bits.

Later in the main square, whilst playing football with the little people, we encountered these two aliens and shared an ice cream with them.

They informed us about the jelly fish flowers which, if we follow them, will keep us save from the witches in the forests of the basque country.

And they informed us about the giants living there too and that we better take care because they like moving and hurling rocks about to make menhirs and things and to share our food with them.

So here we are in the woods, no giants or witches anywhere…

just a giants foot path which we followed ….

We crept passed the witch who had already captured one child!

And quickly headed for the railway tunnels to hide…

Vite vite! Fuga! Lauf!

Luckily there was many tunnels…..

…. to hide in.

Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel, built by gnomes (they had to hide from the witches too)

Until we finally made it to the finish line, by the sea and the sand of the north.

At last the Atlantic!!

We’re in France again, greeted by a giant riding a bicycle and flying an aeroplane at the same time.