Our bellies full of Pasta Carbonara and Molten Chocolate Pudding swimming in a custard sauce from Tuesday night and Pain au Chocolat from Wednesday’s breakfast (thank-you Chef Bastiaan at L’Ancien Cafe in Aubigne) we hit the road bright and early on Wednesday morning. It was a frosty 3 dg C and we had a bastardy head wind out of the north that never let up for the next 4-1/2 hours.
Still, we were on fairly flat roads that were relatively untraveled by cars, and we rode through a couple of sweet French villages. We arrived in Poitier in a quasi-perished state (it’s hard to keep your feet from freezing when you are on bikes) but to a warm welcome from a British-Canadian woman who “married a Frenchman”. She showed us to a beautiful room in our B and B Hotel La Maison de Marc, and a hot shower soon remedied our frozen state. The bikes were safely stowed in our hosts’ already-crammed garage. Life in a large-ish city with kids and cars… it looks the same all over the world.
Once our frozen toes recovered from the 76 km ride we went for a walk through town (lots of smokers – ! – and Wednesday afternoons there is no school in France so there were lots of high school kids spending quality time in the mall), hoovered a welcome hot lunch of cheese galette and Cointreau crepes, checked out the cathedral (gorgeous, we liked it so much more than many of the Spanish cathedrals), picked up a bottle of wine, some cheese and toasts and saucissons and came back to our cosy room.
John is debugging websites (damned parasitic hackers), we’ve enjoyed a great FaceTime visit with Marny and Claire (thank-you so much, Claire, for looking after Marny always, without you we couldn’t do these long run trips), our clothes are all dry and the batteries are all charging. Today really was a hard won 76 km., but tomorrow will be the last of the long, hard pushes. Hopefully it’ll warm up just a little and the rain will hold off.
Thursday now: the rain did hold off! After our typically French breakfast (think “croissant et cafe”) we went for a short walk. That was enough to encourage us to double up on everything. It was cold.
However… The north wind lost its vigour and today’s ride, although in the same distance range, felt much, much easier. I really think it’s the wind that does you in; it can be exhausting. We saw some beautiful countryside, the route was fantastic between Poitier and here, there were castles… At any rate, we’re checked into our room in a b and b somewhere in the French countryside 50 km south of Tours in the Loire Valley where there are chickens in the yard but there isn’t even a restaurant open for MILES so we picked up a baguette, some duck rillette, local chèvre (this region is famous for it) (it smells like the farts of Satan and we are good with that) and red wine. It’ll be a room picnic for our dinner, early brekkie tomorrow, and then park the bikes at our hotel in Tours and start walking. We have one night there.
Travellers’ note: if you see upside down town name signs as you enter French villages, those are the work of disgruntled French farmers. They are protesting the lack of governmental support.
Travellers’ note. We are just over two kilometres from where a horrific massacre happened in WWII. French townspeople were killed by German forces in August 1944. They wiped out the entire village. Google Maille massacre. We will see that site tomorrow morning when we leave town. Another senseless slaughter.
