Today started as a perfectly normal day. We got up at 6am (yes, that's the daily "routine"), had a bit of toast as breakfast and left around 7am. We found out that we could take the ferry across the river, saving us around 8km of cycling, that's a nice bonus plus it's a great way to start the day.
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| On the ferry from Kantang in the early morning (and Ellen trying to be out of the picture) |
We cycled for a bit more than an hour, and then came to a junction where both Google Maps and Bikemap sent us left. It was an unsealed road, but it still looked all right. I was not sure if we should take it, as it did not look very promising on the map further on the road, so I suspected it could be a very small track. Nevertheless, it looked ok, so after some short deliberation we decide to take that road... it was ok for 3km, then became a single track for another km or so, and then mud, slippery, up and down... would even be hard to do on a mountain bike
without all the gear loaded that we carry. Because it was so steep and slippery, we had to drag the bikes up - not so easy, in parts we had to push 1 bicycle up at a time, together.
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| I parked my bicycle to walk ahead and check the trail... |
It seemed it got better a while later, so we decided to still carry on. Another km, and we came to a junction where the narrow trail we should take was overgrown... so in the end, we had to decide to turn back, it was too hard and becoming more risky: very remote and no more network coverage to use our maps. Turning back by itself is not a problem at all, that's part of it, but it was a tough, muddy, slippery, unpleasant stretch of trail which we had to do twice. Aaahhhhh...
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| Always happy Ellen was not so happy for once... |
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| Later on in the day, before getting to our homestay, we stopped at a fuel station to give our bicycles a good rinse, they were full of mud everywhere |
Nevertheless, once we got back on the road, it was a nice, beautiful road first through a green landscape with some villages, then we rode about 10km along the coast - an area which is part of the Chao Mai national park - and that was absolutely fantastic. The road, lined with trees, followed the impressive coast closely, and there were hardly any cars.
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| Once at the beach, the tough part was soon forgotten. This place is so impressive! |
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| More beach impressions |
After that it was mostly just pedalling... Nothing special, although there were still some very nice stretches. And in the end, we arrived around 4.30pm in our guest house, a very special and nice place (see pic).
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| Our home for the night: KrabiLife homestay (about 50km from Krabi), quite special. |
So, tough? Well, only that early part, the rest was "normal" and even very nice in some parts. But also, we did 93km, including all the efforts pushing the bicycles on the muddy slopes, made it a tougher day than average. Good to build the condition further! (And increase that hunger even more)