1st August
Despite a huge journey today, things just get better on this trip.
Yesterday evening the campsite proprietors served me a three course meal, salad, then a raqulette type dish which I could not finish followed by creme brûlée. She came over to chat, telling me about her and her family’s plans to camp in Florida. She says in America there is a freedom that you don’t get in Europe. If you are awake at 4 am in the states you can go shopping at Walmart. Her plan is for a seven week trip through Arizona with her family, a rented car and a tent she has already bought. She also told me that she couldn’t believe I was born in 1956. Modesty forbids me to recount the rest of her comments. Later with a cigarette and music on headphones I watched the sun go down. I was awoken in the night by a rusting noise and I was convinced that there was an animal in the tent after my food. I am not sure there was but I got back to sleep waking up three or four times. I packed up after breakfast of croissants but not coffee as the last nice strong black coffee did not agree with my tubes. More details can be provided by personal approach. I was on the bike by 10.20 bimbling down the twisty lane until joining the main road in the town nearby I could see that today was the day that the French all get in their cars and start their holiday. There were queues of traffic at most junctions. I rode a mixture of motorways (the limit is 81mph) and some lovely twisty roads giving Limoges a wide berth. I only stopped twice very briefly to drink some water and munch some cheese. No sitting down. I left at 10.20 and arrived at 4.20, so six hours on the bike, a little less with the stops and only 203 miles covered. I was slowed down a lot by the traffic but it could have been worse. The weather was bright to overcast.

However, arriving here was very welcome. After some twisty small roads my GPS took me up some steep paths to the campsite and I made a hesitant entry on a small inclined parking spot that took some reorientation of the bike to make work to get the side stand down and leave it. The site is Les Quatre Seasons. One of the owners is according to the website a chef so for 25 Euro they serve a three course meal which I have booked for tomorrow night. I am hoping that it is communal as well as delicious. The owner here is interesting a white haired English man (I presume) well spoken for such a role, with something of BBC’s reporter John Timpson, but more whimsical. Very welcoming after a moment or two trying to recollect who I was. There is no shop and I am under supplied with food but he provided a lovely bottle of local ish beer with a metal clip top unlike the distinctly iffy little bottle I got elsewhere. This site is unlike any other I’ve been in, it’s much larger than the previous two, but it’s spread out in an orchard with a number of pitches levelled out from a beautifully sloping area of five acres with apple trees. There is a Dutch family in a tent fairly near by by there is still a sense of space and some privacy. Belinda made her usual entry on sloping grass ending up just about under control not really where I wanted her to be, right in the middle of the pitch. But at least I get a chance to spend the evening and night very close to her. (I have to say that if no one else was around I would spend the time inspecting her very closely.) if no one else was on this site I would really appreciate riding around on this bumpy terrain, I would get a lot of confidence and fun and falling off on grass would hurt neither me nor her.

I’ve discovered that while my three legged camping stool is exquisitely uncomfortable(and won’t be taken again, thank you very much) these Touratech panniers make extremely comfortable seats, especially with the sheepskin on top – and tables. Tomorrow the weather forecast says it will reach 29degrees. It’s a shame there is no pool here. Apart from a three mile stroll down to the nearest town supermarket that closes at 12, I have no plans. Then Monday morning I ride about 75 miles over to my last campsite where the pitches are in a shady wood. It may be that I can extend my two nights to four and then go straight to La Rochelle on Friday. Tonight’s meal is going to be improvised. It’s a shame I have no meat but I have cheese and bread and olive oil and something sweet for later.

France is funny. The beauty is off the beaten track. The roads I have taken have mostly been through rather dusty unattractive towns and only occasionally through beautiful countryside. I don’t understand the French psyche if there is one- they have their obvious intellectuals but the strikes at Calais remind me that they have a real hard core aggressivity too, like their revolution, a mixture of rationality and beheadings.