Sail round the world in two easy legs... NOT

Today we had an early start and went into the town for about 07:30 🕢 so that we could get a hire car 🚗 for the day so that we could go sight seeing, now it turns out that we went to 5 different car hire companies and all except one were without any vehicles 🚗 the only other one, was an expensive taxi ride to the airport and that we could only get the car for 2 days at €175 because they were closed on Sunday. So whilst wandering around I came across a mountain ⛰ bike 🚲 rental company, so I am now going to have a go on a maheusive electric fat bike, I have booked the fat bike for all day on Monday with a guide from 10:00, the cost is €55 including lunch 🥗 on the beach 🏖 the bike that I will get has never been used because the company has only been trading for 4 days. They also have 6 brand new Mini Mokes, for a reasonable €75 per day, we are tempted. On this boat ⛵️it is so relaxing 😌 and the company and conversation is intriguing, Len is an interesting retired businessman who has made $ millions and lost $ millions, now I have spent some time on the boat she is well laid out and clean.
We got up at early o'clock again this morning, in order to get me to the mountain ⛰ bike 🚲 place. Allan was there to meet me and told me that there would be another two people with us, which I was really pleased 😀 with. So I got my new helmet on along with my new bike ready, checking that it was fully charged. So off I went on my own aiming to be back for 09:45, I did a bit of a road trip and as usual almost got myself lost again, I was heading out away from Le Marin trying to complete a circular route, but as time was running out I decided to back track. For this ride I did 8.2 miles, climbed 1266 feet and my maximum speed was 33.6 mph.When I got back I met up with Allan again and also with Maria and Louis. At 10:00 we got riding. This is where we started our guided ride with Allan as our guide, he was very knowledgeable with the route that we had, and was very professional. The first 3 miles or so were on the road. Then we got onto the single track, mostly firm sand but also very soft and deep in places. The trails were brilliant for me, however at times we were reduced to a little pushing due to the very difficult terrain (rather large rocks strewn completely across the trail and over a considerable distance). Now the bike that I had was an electric ⚡️ assist fat bike, with no suspension apart from the 1psi tires. I was on flat pedals, which always causes me a few problems with my left leg bouncing off especially when I try to go over some of the larger rocks (or ones that are close together, bounce bounce off, as usual for me ☹️). Another small problem was with the huge thorn trees overhanging the trail, and ripping my arms to shreds. We blasted around the coast line some times down to the beautiful waters edge, at one stage Allan warned us that we were about to pass through a nudist beach 🏖, as usual it was mainly old men and a few women (Maria seemed to take her time at this point (lm only joking 🙃)).
After what seemed a short time in the saddle, we stopped at what is the only restaurant on the beach 🏖 (there were others but they were across the road some way away) the food was outstanding, we had a starter with a lovely (very) hot sauce than nobody else would eat. Then I had a whole large red snapper fish with chips 🍟 it just melted in my mouth and was beautiful, 3 scoops of ice cream 🍨 followed, to finish we had coffee. I met Allan's wife who sells bikinis 👙 on the beach 🏖 the bumpy road was lined with hundreds of cars 🚘 all wanting to go to he same beach. The view was awesome, I almost had a massage here.
When we set off again we came to a nice 👍 little wooden bridge in the middle of a salt pan lake. We needed to cross over, however there was knee deep water both in front of and after the bridge. Both Louis and Allan carried all 4 of the 25+ kg bikes 🚲 over to h other side, then pretty much picked me up and did the same for me keeping my leg out of the water 💦. Then we were into the moon 🌓 scape area hi he was just rocks and the salt pan, there were hundreds of little trails going off in many different directions, we spent a good while here which took us up to the Atlantic coast, again beautiful in its own right the waves were crashing into the 40 foot vertical and rugged cliffs. In this area there is the Devils table (a small flat topped island just off shore ). We then went into the mangrove swamps and pedalled round the edge and over quite a fair distance on some north shore (wooden planking raised above the soft mud). At this point we turned right and then did a loop in the trail which took about 1 hour, the disappointing thing is, it was very difficult to ride and sapped our strength just to get back to the very same place. I felt sorry for Maria because of how difficult it was for us, she looked very tired 💤 , but she never once complained, I was very impressed with her (well done Maria 👍👍) after a short while we got back to a proper bit of tarmac road and zoomed back to Le Marin. Where my skipper was waiting. On this ride (my second of the day) we did 10.6 miles, with 623 feet of climbing maximum speed of 26.8 mph. To date this is the best day here in the Caribbean (Martinique is a place to visit, it is beautiful when you get away from the tourists )