Penguins Bike

July 4, 2026 - biked 75 km (47 mi), ferry'd 0.15 km (0.09 mi) - biked 742 km (461 mi) total

We aspire to be off route again! The Eurovelo 8 curves north away from the coast around Montpellier, not to return for about 200 km near Cannes. There's a few reasons we want to take the coast road: the other way is hilly, not fully signed and requires a train skip, we want to go to Marseille, a desire to cultivate a spiritual connection to the sea, and flamingoes. We scoured the RideWithGPS heatmap to see which way to take and found a route that was short, but somehow went right over the ocean. That sounded too cool to not do.

It was kind of literally that. A storm surge protection berm that ran for 40 km just inland of the beach, surrounded by salt flats, marshes, and shrubs that all flood in the winter when it rains.

For Sarah, it was the most pretty scenery yet but unfortunately the pictures don’t capture half of it. She loves flamingoes and wish we had a way to actually capture pictures of their beauty.

Halfway on the gravel sand road was a lighthouse, and it ended up being a little shop! Sarah bought some kombucha and it made her very happy. As we were leaving, the attendant told us, "good return". We'll try to live by it. It's easy to get excited about your trip, but really you should get excited about what it means to you once you get back.

1.5 pizzas consumed 4 July 2026

After we spent all day riding on a sandy berm out in the ocean, we rolled into our campsite Les Bois Flottés de Carmargue and we were hungry. When we checked in, they mentioned it was pizza night at the bar, so we wandered over there to eat.

Pizzas Ordered: Linda Rosa, Carmarguez

Absolute chaos here. A co-bachelor/bachelorette party, flies everywhere, bright pink drinks, somehow they had an IPA, a DJ, a server wandering around the whole night with a cold pizza yelling Hernando trying to deliver an order. Pizza night is obviously when you pull out all the stops. And it was July 4th, so we felt we really needed pizza and beer.

Regretfully I did not photograph the menu on a chalkboard. We ordered the Linda Rosa, which listed cheese, tomato, mushrooms, parmesan. And The Carmarguez which listed cheese, tomato, merguez, parmesan. The Dutch woman next to us also ordered the Linda Rosa before us and was surprised to learn it comes with ham. Apparently ham is so good you don't have to list it on the menu. So Sarah went up and made sure they left off the ham. That seemed to go well, but then to our surprise it came out with only ham. After a lot of back and forth, it is eventually revealed that the kitchen misinterpreted "no ham" to mean "just ham". I guess they wrote the menu. Eventually somehow we got just a plain cheese pizza and the Carmarguez. Thankfully service is not traditionally score-driving.

"Carmarguez" appears to be a portmanteau of "Carmargue", in the name of the town, and "merguez" the meat.

Executive Summary

Cheese

I have loved all cheese in Europe. It has an extra "fatty depth" and extra flavor that cheese in the US lacks. Like go out and buy a stick of Darigold and Kerrygold and lick each and tell me how you feel. So I was a little bummed when the cheese on this pizza tasted like the bog standard mozzarella you get on cheap American pizza but with just a hint of that extra fat. Also unclear if there was any parmesan?

3.0 / 5.0 Just above average.

Dough

Bread here has also been like the cheese, it has a slightly richer flavor. I got a bit of that from the crust going on here. Like it had hints of whole wheat but wasn't whole wheat; a sort of "whole wheat La Croix" of dough. That was overshadowed by a chewy interior, yet almost off-the-scales protractor test: zero flop.

2.0 / 5.0 I didn't like it but I wasn't repulsed.

Sauce

Merely there. Light, salty, maybe with truffle? It seemed to lack olive oil, which might have elevated this.

2.5 / 5.0 Unremarkable but not detracting.

Toppings

Stars of the show here. The merguez was incredible. Well into involuntary yum territory. Shone but did not dominate. I want to find this on pizza again.

A Linda Rosa without ham should still have had mushrooms on it, but did not. 🤷‍♂️ I will rate this as a cheese.

4.5 / 5.0 Yum.

Overall

I really wanted to like this pizza more than I did. It looked good, smelled good, we were hungry as all hell. But it was only ok. Maybe that tells you something when you force ham on people.

3.0 / 5.0