A pleasant start to the day, nothing of great note and made Jonzac at 10. Looking at the sky however did not fill us with great prospect. The sky was still awash with mainly blue, but the clouds seemed to be creeping in. For Geographers out there I would call the sky around 4 oktas, nice touch I know. So a standard stop at the supermarket chain E.Leclerc for the staple diet of pain-au-chocolate and coke can, and for me a sumptuous peach (their peaches make ours seem very insipid, one reason for living in France I suppose).
Hmm now my memory is getting pretty darn hazy, by the looks of it we were heading into the town of Montendre, and the roads were getting increasingly wet. Stopping at a roundabout previously because of a short rain shower, Andy had covered up, I decided my clothes were buried too deep and a shower was nothing to work up a fuss about. So for few miles we cycled in sporadic light showers and wet glazed roads, until we reached Montguyon. Here we found a bakers, our voyage of discovery has led us to find only supermarkets and bakeries are open in France, so a standard stop at the bakers was done. And the rain started to fall again. But this time with a bit more vigour. Deciding it probably was time to be less dishabille I ventured into the realms of my pannier bags and relieved them of my raincoat.
Setting off in the rain, we made some headway and the rain eased. But then in the boondocks, the clouds above us ever threatening overburden with water emptied themselves on us. It happened so quickly everything was drenched. Socked through not even the darkest hermit of hair beneath the armpit was left dry. So finding shelter at this stage seemed beyond pointless. And with this my right leg, more "precisely" a quad muscle (vastus medialis, definitely looked that up!) started to get the most excruciating pain known to man. Sharp almost electronic pulses beaming through my leg, it was like the synapses were fighting with each other with nuclear warheads. Back to the rain. It was pretty much constant very heavy rainfall, falling at such a rate the roads were fairly torrential instantly. At stages the rain would stop and we could start to feel happy again, but as this emotion set in, the rain would pronounce itself again by thudding off every surface possible. As we neared Libourne the rainfall finally eased and were left feeling pretty disheveled.
At Libourne we found a McDonalds and as the sun had come out we strewn our clothes over tables and fences to dry off. Being a bit delusional through tiredness we had a strangely good time. Well this may not be funny to anyone else but we were delirious so I'll tell the story anyway. Basically a family was sitting next to us and the kids had Happy Meals, on the box was the character Sponge Bob Square Pants, but the French for this was just Bob l'eponge, so Bob the sponge. For some reason this was the pinnacle of hilarity and kept us very much entertained. Clearly cycling through small villages shouting "viva Jacques Chirac" hadn't been entertainment enough... We also learnt of how petulant the French can be, though a fairly attractive and happy person the girl serving me for the millionth time (we kept going up for more and more) was not particularly helping me. Due to it being my millionth time up, in said "Hello, me again," she responded with a smile and a cheery, but slightly sarcastic hello back. So I tried my best to order in French, Andy wanted 9 chicken nuggets, so 9 working through the French numbers neuf, yey got it! So I say "neuf..." she interrupts "neuf?", me "oui, neuf", I get a blank look. Oh well seems this vivacious relationship is at an end, so I resorted to the Englishman's point, au revoir mademoiselle...
Now with more of a "spring" to our step we set off towards Saint Emilion. To all wine lovers this region should be known to you, and when we got there it was fantastic and clearly quite a kitsch place as it was one of the first times we had seen an abundance of tourists. Flocks of the little buggers. No edifices here, it was all picturesque ancient buildings and cobbled roads, the ruined church wall in a vineyard being a particular highlight. The cycle to the town was a delight as you could smell the wineries and every now and then a waft of succulent wine would drift by. Though this also made us just want to stop, drink, drink, drink, so in a way a bit demoralising.
The ruins of a church wall, situated in a vineyard in Saint Emilion
After admiring the views of this idyllic little wine town, we set on trying to get back en route. This posed a problem, as there was, as far as we could see, no direct route out of the town. So after cycling up and down, around and around, though we did see some nice caves were the ancients lived we ended up back at the start. Only option, walk with bikes through the centre of the town in the pedestrian zone on the cobbles. Making a right old racket in my clip shoes we trundled through the town, skipping past the vast amounts of tourists.
View overlooking Saint Emilion, clouds ever-present
Admittedly we got lost a few more times on the way to the next campsite and my leg was persistently hurting, but I shan't bore you with such details. Only that we cycled very hard and fast, as the rain clouds were still there and seemed to be building up again. Finally rocking up to a rather wonderful campsite, which had its own resident castle, oh and goats!
Andy molesting a poor innocent billy
King of my castle, this is about the only photo of me on the trip so all hail King Thomas the Chivalrous
We settled down in the campsites restaurant Andy having a glass of a Saint Emilion red and me sticking to my guns with a good ol' cold beer. We were given the menus and ordered some duck, which sounded like a nice change and asked what it came with, and sort of got around to finding out there was chips and salad with it. The food was lovely, though not of a portion we needed. When reading the bill we found out the duck just came with errm nothing, so when enquiring about the chips and salad we were inadvertently ordering them as extras... they were pretty pricey, but we had got used to having to pay over the odds. And to finish the evening off there has to be a story involving Mr Joyce, I'll let you look at the photo first, just to entice the story.
What's Joycey been up to?!?!
I can assure you this is a clean story, and it gets cleaner, well the bag does. Andy obviously decided he would end up with simian features if he didn't bring a shaver and shaving foam, thus the white frothy mess is his shaving foam. This happened during our cycle, during this day, and had exploded inside his bag. This onset a fit of giggles from me, one because it was quite funny and two because I've never seen such a dejected, lost for hope, face from anyone, ever. This onset Andy into laughter and we spent a good while laughing at his misfortune. He then spent sometime cleaning his bag out, as the water caused the foam to bubble more, hahaha. Deciding this had to be the most unfortunate day we would have, we set our route and went to sleep.
Route taken - Pons to Rauzan
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