2013 Tour - Jour 14

Limoges

The forecast was for light cloud and sunny intervals and mid-twenties centigrade, perfect cycling weather for a day trip to Limoges, site of a splendid gothic cathedral St Etienne where Richard the Lionheart was invested as Duke of Aquitaine in 1169. Well, it only rained a bit on the way out, nothing to trouble hardened Devonian randonneurs. However, it transpired that Limoges is protected by the 21st century equivalent of curtain wall defences, a.k.a a motorway and various ring-roads. Travelling the 10 km from the outskirts to the centre took as long as the previous 30 km along the Vienne river. Luckily, we intersected a cycle path - actually some pictures of bikes with arrows painted on the road at 30 m intervals - which the municipal authorities had clearly deemed necessary in order to guide non-motorised traffic into the city centre. Eventually we got to the centre ville which, alas, turned out to be rather underwhelming. The expected medieval city centre around the cathedral turned out to be no larger than the Barbican in Plymouth, and the city planners had clearly had it in for the place judging by the blocks of concrete flats dotted around the old quarter and practically next door to the cathedral. Oh well, it's not the first and only place to have been so treated. . .

So we visited the cathedral: flying buttresses - tick; vaulted ceiling - tick; stained glass windows - tick; side chapels for the various saints - tick; a magnificent organ - tick . . . you may have guessed by now that it was similar to other cathedrals. I noted that the votive candles were €1 for a small and €2 for a large - I presume the large carried 'extra blessing' mixed in with the wax, otherwise Trading Standards should be informed . . .

On the plus side, we did have an excellent lunch of steak and chips.

We returned along the same marked cycleway, all the time eyeing the evil storm-clouds gathering in the south, and congratulated ourselves on having reached the river then turning away from the evident downpour on the horizon - tweaking the weather's nose if you will. I should have known better because, just as we hit the outskirts of St Junien, the weather decided to divest it's nose of a barrel-full of snot . . .

So, the scorching heat of the previous days has given way to a typical British Summer.

Bon soir

 

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2013 Tour - Jour 12

St Junien

Today we explored the quaint town of St Junien. The tourist office literature proclaimed that it is:

'. . . the French capital of leather glove making . . . '

However, these days, only top quality gloves are made for haute couture such as Gucci etc. because of the inevitable competition from child labour exploiting and tax evading brands such as *******. So clearly, a visit was required to sate S's appetite for luxury goods, as a counterweight for being forced to drag a tent and other accoutrements to southern France. The nice lady in the tourist office provided a map and directions, so off we set off, via the inevitable café au lait, to the gant manufacturer in question, only to find that it was ferme août . . . as was the next . . . and the next . . . and in fact all of them. Clearly, the month of august is 'glove maker's month', much as it was 'miner's fortnight' when I was a lad and everyone decamped to Trecco Bay for a couple of weeks of CPA and and fish & chips. Not to be deterred by such minor inconveniences I took myself off to find an alternative source of hand-wear for S, which you can see here modelled ce soir aprés le diner . . .

That sorted, we explored the rest of the town. Similarly to other manufacturing towns in Britain the indigenous industries have wilted in the face of Asian competition, so along the banks of the Vienne there are numerous disused tanneries, paper mills etc. Probably to be had for €2 or so, and thus ripe for re-development as bijou riverside apartments where we can all:

Unscrew a new bottle of chardonnay

and fill to the brim the long-stemmed glasses;

apéritif to Hello and OK,

aspirational lifestyle of the masses.

Holiday reading

So, at last, we come to the contentious topic of holiday reading. This year, in a spate of self-improvement, I have downloaded numerous 'classics' from t'internet on the trusty old iPad. 'Oi, you crusty old skinflint . . . ' I hear you say, ' . . . you've only done it because they are free', and yes, you have a point, but I will add that there are also a sprinkling of paid-for tomes, e.g. John Grisham, Phillipa Gregory, Dawn French, which S had instructed me to purchase on pain of death (or something worse). Returning to the main thrust of the story, I have been regaling myself with 'Don Quixote' which, as it turns out, has curiously similarities with our current situation:

1. Deluded middle-aged 'Don' who goes off on adventures

2. Same 'Don' who thusly gets himself into all sorts of injurious situations

3. Same 'Don' who drags along his faithful squire (Sancho Panza, aka 'S')

4. Same 'S' who gets into all the same scrapes by association

Here is a picture of us after we have raided the alforjas . . .

Bon soir

 

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2013 Tour - Jour 11

Some observations

Here went the conversation at dinner:

H: You don't seem to hear crickets these days like you used to, do you?

S: What do you mean

H: You know, like when we had really hot summers before, and if you went camping or something where there was lots of long grass you would hear all the crickets really loud in the evening.

S: But they are really loud now, can't you hear them?

H: (incredulous) What do you mean, like now as we sit here?

S: (patiently) Yes now, they are really, really loud

H: (realisation dawning that he has lost his higher frequency hearing capability) S*** . . . .

So there you have it, a portion of my youth never to return, listening to the sound of crickets on a warm Summer's evening . . .

Despite not being able to hear the crickets, apparently we must be beneath the european airspace equivalent of spaghetti junction. There is a continuous background hum of high altitude jet engine noise (clearly at a lower frequency) and the picture of vapour trails (no, they aren't clouds) below shows just how much effect it must have on the upper atmospheric layer.

 

Cultural excursions

Today we went to visit an archaeological site. Not resting our laurels as far as matters cultural are concerned we rose rather late and made for Rochechouart, where there is a significant Chateau. Here, we stopped for lunch after only 8 miles and were informed by a fellow diner that the Chateau did not admit visitors except the the modern art exhibition currently ongoing - so we gave that a miss. Having dallied over lunch for over two hours we manage to stir ourselves and set off for the remains of the Roman thermal baths at Cassinomagus, which are 'one of the most significant such sites in Europe'.

 

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2013 Tour - Jour 10

The gîte is very nice, very rural, with stone walls and a tiled roof, and a mezzanine area for the bedroom (see photo below with clever camera trick of putting two photos together which I discovered in the idle moments that you get on holiday, given that I never read the instruction booklet, and which I am deploying to irritating effect). I think the gîte must be converted from an old barn. Out back there is a kitchen garden with peaches,damsons and greengages, and various other produce - I have already had to prevent S from going into 'Peter Rabbit' mode for fear of the gendarmerie. We also have a gîte cat which S has befriended

 

Today was a rest day of laundering our camping-tainted gear and drying the tent. Exploration of Chaillac was completed in two hours after lunch - it's small, and two roads extend in the general direction of the river but both to dead ends, one ending under a railway bridge and the other at a railway crossing before reaching the river. However, I will mention one thing in passing: SNCF, in a zeal of health and safety (unusually for France) had unaccountably placed warning signs for the railway crossing on both sides, the curious thing being that one of the signs pointed toward a dead end from whence no traffic was ever destined to emerge as evidenced below which shows both ends of the road (top and bottom).

S is preparing the evening meal of boeuf bourguignon while I sip an ice cold beer on the terrace, working hard on this missive. The only faint tinge of gloom on the horizon are the mozzie attacks, but I guess you can't have it all . . .

Bon soir

 

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2013 Tour - Jour 9

Nous arrivons

At last, after a long and arduous journey, we arrive at Chaillac-sur-Vienne, near St Junien on the Vienne river. Last night the thunderstorm broke as predicted, but our tent held out against the worst the tempest could throw at us, and I actually had the least disturbed night's sleep so far. A relatively early start and cool day made for an ideal 'short' cycle of 40 km or so. However, the route that I had chosen (to avoid the dual carriageway and motorway) seemed to transpose us into Devon and Cornwall, so that it felt like an Audax around Gwithian rather than a meander along the rivers of the Charente. The plan was to ride straight to St Junien where we would have a leisurely dejeuner and call the gîte owner to arrange a convenient meeting time, but at 30 km the single banana and pastry from the patisserie had worn off and we were reduced to scoffing the last of the Jordan's cereal bars, a peach and some old baguette which S had luckily stuffed under a bungee on her rear rack. Suitably fortified we continued onwards and made it to a kebab shop just as the gas ran out - so lunch was burger and chips. After that kicked in I called the gîte owner - now I don't know about you, but my French is pretty basic though passable, and I can construct a GCSE O-level sentence and guess the reply from recognising the odd word and contextualising; but this guy must have had the French equivalent of a Glaswegian accent because I didn't have a clue what he was saying. For example, 'gîte' was one word which I was pretty confident of pronouncing correctly and which, as you can imagine, figured fairly largely in my conversation. But he pronounced it 'jeez'. No doubt, someone will write in with the correct explanation or berate me for my linguistic ineptitude, but regardless, by a curious form of telephonic semaphore I managed to arrange a meeting for 3 pm. Amazingly this worked and were met at the appointed time by our host in his Renault van (he had clearly been driving around looking for us because, as it transpired, his own gaff was only 50 m down the road).

I won't bore you with the details of our trip to LeClerc supermarché - we are here, and S is cooking les moules as I write this entry . . .

 

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2013 Tour - Jour 8

Here is another case of the unexpected. we had no particular reason to stay at Chasseneuil other than it happened to have a municipal campsite a a convenient distance on the way from Cognac to St Junien, however, it also happens to be the site of the memorial to the French Resistance, which is situated just a few hundred metres from the campsite, so we went up to have a look. The monument serves as a crypt for the regional leaders of the Resistance and is sculpted with frescos depicting the struggle and eventual triumph of the heroes of the Resistance, with a large war cemetery of over 2000 graves adjacent to it.

Today was a rest day to allow us to re-hydrate after the rigors of yesterday, though S did forego the ice bath which I assured her would speed her recovery. Instead she would have opted for the iced wine but all that was to be had was warm red - the rigors of the elite athlete know no bounds. We will be at the gite tomorrow so I was forced to use all the bits of food in various bags - cue another veggie curry, some of which the campsite cat also enjoyed. As I was preparing said meal the camp commandant came over and cheerfully informed us that we could shelter in the school down the road if necessary because a thunderstorm w forecast to possibly hit later this evening. This wouldn't normally be a concern except that at the last campsite a storm had hit the day before we arrived with such ferocity that tree branches had fallen all over the site, hence the visit if the tree surgeon as recored in an earlier post. Indeed, as I sit here, the storm clouds do seem to be gathering and looking somewhat ominous . . . and we have a tree next to our tent . . . oh dear.

 

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2013 Tour - Jour 7

Onwards

We continued our journey eastwards from Cognac to our new destination of Chasseneuil-sur-Bonnieure. We elected for an early start to beat the heat, however, such a thing does not exist when camping because it takes an hour and half to take the tent down and get all the clobber loaded, so it was 9.15 by the time we left, though I did note that a couple who had arrived on a tandem the previous evening (clocked them as Brits, you can always tell) had long gone - clearly professionals. On reflection, perhaps the extra two beers on top of the bottle of Cotes du Rhone had contributed to the not-so-early start c'est la vie.

Today was bloody hot (high 30s); not if you were sitting on your a*** in a all inclusive enclosure in the Caribbean perhaps, but it is when cycling 45 miles along the sun-scorched tarmac of southern France with a ton of gear on your bike, made heavier by the necessity to take litres of extra water. Despite this, and as usual ignoring any 'Route Baree' signs, we managed to stop for our usual dejeuner at Vars. It did get much tougher after this, exacerbated by the lack of shade, such that I measured my progress from one shady tree to the next where I would stop to let S catch up and then instantly spur her on before she could catch her breath. Eventually I had to feed her 'Dragibus' at every stop (footnote: for un-initiated they are a form of Haribo sweets which your can only buy in France).

Eventually we arrived at Les Charmilles municipal campsite, and very nice it is. Somewhat irritatingly, however, as I was battling to erect the tent in scorching heat, still fermenting in my cycling shorts with the sweat running in rivulets down into them, a German couple pulled up in their car, the bloke got out, pulled an enormous pop-up tent out of the boot and had it up in two seconds flat - maybe we will have a storm and then we will see if my 'DoE recommended' shelter is the dogs after all? (Footnote: to rub it in he has now inflated an enormous airbed with an electric pump).

On the menu tonight is lentil bolognaise with penne - we have become vegetarian for the duration because it doesn't go off. I include a POV of me writing this blog for that edgy 'I can almost believe I'm there' feeling.

Bon soir

 

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