We're coming to the end of our rest day in Aix-les-Bains. It's been a very laidback day, filled with copious amounts of sleep, not one but TWO hot chocolates (the first was awful, the second was much better), some great pastries and a waffle with a caramel butter and salt sauce. Generally gastronomically great.

For the last two dinners we've been patronising the local 'Geant Casino', a hypermarket which is rather like the Asda to Carrrefour, France's version of Tesco. Each time as we've walked back from the store along the 'hippodrome' (a local athletics / recreational area) to our hotel, we've experienced the opening salvos of a series of impressive thunderstorms. Carrying a bag full of bread, cheese and miscellaneous salads and desserts, we were unlucky to get a good soaking yesterday - Phil was quite depressed by the soggy bread. Today's baguette (a campagne - i.e.brown bread from the countryside, a novelty) survived much better and Phil was much happier.

Yesterday's ride was deliberately short - being the last of our first section - intended as a warm down. What was meant to be just 34 miles ended up being over 40 as we decided to follow our planned route accurately instead of sticking to the direct road into Aix-les-Bains. This proved to be our folly though when all the planned elevation gain that had yet to appear that day suddenly appears in a steep ascent up a mountain to the left of Aix-les-Bains. It's a little tricky to make out the exact nature of the road on our Garmin units and we didn't notice until we arrived there that half of the section of the route which lies parallel to the road going into Aix was actually a footpath. Unwilling to attempt a steep off-road descent with 23c tyres and a touring load, we elected to go around the hill, a nice fast descent and then quick bash down another D road.

Hotel Campanile, where we are staying, is a motel without any pretenses of being anything greater. It borders a golf course, which gives a pleasant backdrop and the rooms are comfortable. Our room is one of the few ground floor rooms that has a table with two chairs outside the front entrance. We made extensive use of these - for making various adjustments our breaks ahead of our section across the Alps, to sit somewhere within wi-fi range and for eating our huge Casino dinners

Aix-les-Bains itself is a quiet town that appears to be a gateway down to the Alps. It is also on the shores of the stunningly blue Lac du Bour and is a popular summer holiday destination for French tourists.

While yesterday was consumed with the chores of laundry, we walked down to the shore of the lake today and down to the main port. At this point an incoming thunderstorm made itself known and we fast walked up to town where numerous restaurants rejected our custom for lunch because it was past 2pm. I also visited a pharmacy and, in a groundbreaking acceptance of the fact that I probably do actually suffer from hayfever, purchased some antihistamines. I later connected to the matronly head waitress at a waffle restaurant when she admitted to using the same medicine (which I had left out on our table)

We're hoping to head off early tomorrow morning. The rain and thunder is forecast at 2pm and we calculate that we should be able to escape that. However, given the geography of this area, I suspect we might find the next microclimate doesn't respect the forecast we are relying on. Oh well, all part of the adventure

In other news, my 'technology stack' here is starting to annoy me intensely. Perhaps it will teach me for buying a cheap keyboard but it is struggling with my rapid typing speed. I have to type at a maximum speed of 2 characters per second or it will skip characters or insert duplicates. Highly frustrating. Additionally, turning Bluetooth on seems to interfere with my phone's ability to hold a connection to a weak wireless network. The lack of a reliable wi-fi connection is also limiting the speed at which things can be done on this smartphone and I have yet to find good way of managing photos locally and being able to upload them to both Facebook and Google+ in a way that can handle dropped connections. I may just wait until I get back home.

I've been trying to debug my knee pain. The main culprits look like either my saddle height or my cleat positioning, both of which I've tweaked. Let's see how it does going into some tough climbing.

Onwards over the mountains to Italy!