This was my longest day, a mere 35 kms. with a rest day scheduled for the morrow. Pros get two rest days throughout the 21 stages, but it’s questionable how rest is defined. Interviews, updating social media, sleeping, eating, massage, patching up any injuries and, let’s not forget… a bike ride just in case they hadn’t done enough.
I was now in the Hotel Côte Ouest Thalasso and Spa, my welcome pack scheduling me for Enveloppement d'Algues Essentielles at 9.30. This turned out to be a generous slapping all over with hot seaweed cream, a most agreeable sensation offset only slightly by the disagreeable ritual of donning paper pants. When my body was judged to be ‘remineralised with iodine and trace elements’ I was ceremoniously hosed down and sent packing back to my suite where I fell into a deep sleep.
Lunch was a revelation. Tables decked with each and every type of seafood imaginable; lobster; spider crabs, crabs, oysters, clams, mussels, cockles, bigorneau (sounds better than winkles, doesn’t it), langoustine, prawns, shrimps, I’ve probably left some out. The small mountains of discarded shells and carapaces were cleared as fast as they piled up until even I reached a point when I had to admit I’d had enough. It was ‘epic’.