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Day 9 - To Saint-Groux, Charante, Poitou-Charentes - 178 miles
Day 9
Day 9 profile
10:10, late start, still very grey and threatening rain, we travelled the 2 miles to Rocamadour. The Fiat had moved. I was able to get a picture of the bikes with the town in the background.
Two bikes at Rocamadour
Rocamadour
On up the N140 to Martel and then towards the western edge of Brive la Gaillarde. I had only cobbled together this route the previous night as my original plan had been to make some use of the autoroute. However, in spite of the weather, we were making good progress on the country roads so I devised a new route to avoid having to "slab it" as they say in the US.
The country roads were good on this run, although not as exciting as the previous day. They offered plenty of challenges but there were few open-aspect corners as the roads were narrow, dressed with tar and gravel and tended to be closely bordered by trees.
We were fortunate to find fuel in Cressensac since I hadn't realised that it was a Bank Holiday Monday (a saint's day).
We stopped at Lac du Causse for a photo opportunity and were immediately surrounded by a swarm of midges.
Lac du Causse
A couple of the smaller towns and villages gave some me some difficulty. since the junctions were very close together. We made one wrong turn in Larche and another in Saint Pantaléon de Larche. The same again in Objat were we retraced our route back to a public toilet that was absolutely disgusting. Then I missed the turn onto the D6 as I was concentrating on the antics of a couple of car drivers.
So when I missed another turn because the GPS thought that the priority would mean that the turn would be taken I thought "I'm not letting him (Andy) know I have just missed another one." So I took the D8E (the next turn) to Ségur le Château and pretended that I had meant to go this way. My cover was blown as the car we had spent a few minutes trying to get past a few miles back was in front of us when we approached the town!
Le Cars awarded me another wrong turn. So that was 6 errors in about 2 hours. However, Andy decided he had seen a restaurant in Aixe sur Vienne when we had got about a mile and a half outside the town. We returned but there was nowhere to park the bikes and since Andy had soft bags we were disinclined to leave the bikes un-attended. So we continued on our way again having lost about 30 minutes.
At 14:23 we eventually found lunch at Auberge de Veyrac 999ft N45.89938 E1.08760. Andy was persuaded to have a French equivalent of haggis which looked interesting. I had a steak that I ordered "à point" but when it came I think they had just walked past the grill with it, possibly the grill had been switched on as well but I couldn't be sure.
We left there at 15:40, replete. The petrol station that I had counted on being open wasn't and we had done 104 miles since our last refuel. I knew I could make it to the hotel but I would have had to leave Andy to walk, or at least that's what we thought at the time. So we continued to Oradour sur Glane arriving at 15:52.
Since I had been here before I let Andy do the tourist bit and he returned at 17:04 quite moved by what he had seen.
Onwards to the hotel then, and, hopefully, some fuel on the way. I had looked at the GPS whilst I had been waiting for Andy and seen several likely fuel stops but the GPS doesn't tell you if they are open on a Bank Holiday. At 17:22 I pulled into a lay-by and found on the GPS that there was a petrol station 1 km ahead. I announced this to Andy and, luckily it was open. As we fuelled up I said to him. "Now are you impressed with the GPS!" "Didn't you see the sign?" He said. "What sign?" I replied. "The one saying 'Petrol 1km' when we were stopped in that lay-by!" I think I might have said a rude word at this point.
Then it started to rain again!
When we got to Valence at 18:09 there was a detour. as the D739 was closed so I let the GPS do its bit to re-route us. It did very nicely and brought us back to the D739 again .... unfortunately just before the closed bit of the road. So off down another side road. Eventually we arrived at Les Trois Saulles at 18:33, a little later than I had planned.
Since this was the place that Daryl had been savaged by mosquitoes 2 years before I advised Andy against taking any riverside walks.
Stats
Moving time 4:44
179 miles
Moving Av 37.8 mph
Overall Av 28.5 mph
Total Time 6:16
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