Teacher caught in wildfires on France bike ride

A British teacher cycling through France has described his efforts to get out of the city of Bordeaux to avoid wildfires raging in the area.

Rob Fox, from Telford, said his dream was to cycle through the woods and pine forests of France, before the blaze broke out.

More than 220,000 people have been forced to leave their homes as firefighters battle to contain some of the country's worst fires in two decades.

Fox, who is headteacher of Donnington Wood Junior School, described it as an "apocalyptic landscape" and said Bordeaux was "drenched in smoke and smog" with an "acrid smell".

After the route he was cycling had shut, Fox had planned to get a ferry to continue his ride, before deciding to travel via Bordeaux which he thought would be safe.

"I was planning that, I had mapped out the route, it would all be fine," he told BBC Radio Shropshire.

"Then they shut down the trains and the roads."

He spoke of how he had checked into a hotel along the way and then realised there were no more trains going south.

"I had to go, I had to leave that minute," he explained.

"I put all my wet clothes back on and I cycled 26 miles in about an hour and a half, to get the last train to Bordeaux... I got there with about five minutes to spare."

Fox paid a taxi driver to take him out of Bordeaux, before embarking on a 125-mile cycle ride to get around the fires and eventually ending up in the coastal town of Biarritz.

"I planned a route that was so far around it that surely there wouldn't be a problem, but it just shows the scale of the problem, this was 20 miles away from the main fires and it was desolate." he said.

Firefighters are working around the clock to contain the fires in the Gironde region, while bracing for another new heatwave, with wildfires also raging in Spain and Portugal.

Fox, who is flying back to London on Wednesday, added his motivation for the cycle ride was to "celebrate the value of perseverance".

"I kept going, I kept doing well... Eventually got back to the coast a long way away and life carried on normally," he explained.

"I knew I had to get in and out of Bordeaux as quick as possible."

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