What a classic Neil/Ceri day full of twists, turns and surprises. We started off before dawn as usual, cycling up hill, singing with the larks as we watched the glorious sunrise. About 5km in Neil realised he’d left his credit cards at the hotel! We didn’t want to cycle that hill again, so we decided to keep cycling and I emailed to ask them to post them on. Amazingly, there was a bar open early Sunday morning in Lessac with a few ruddy faced characters propping up the bar sipping their first Rose of the day as we enjoyed our coffees and croissants. With no reply to my email, I called the hotel. The wonderful lady from the hotel found the cards, jumped in her car and drove a good 15 minutes to find us, leaving her hotel in the hands of the cleaning lady. Wow. What a kind lady – great fun too.
So on we cycled following our chosen route through the absolutely beautiful town of Confolens where lots of extremely fast cyclists wizzed past us smiling and waving as us tortoises. Neil got that familiar buzz and decided to follow their route instead of our flatter route. I warned him about the hills but he’s so super enthusiastic now he didn’t worry. He’s amazing. So up and down we cycled on our detour generally along the river Vienne. It felt like the best cycle day yet as we crossed the river at various bridges. Then inevitably, Neil stopped and hung precariously over the edge of a particularly high bridge trying to find a spot to swim. It all looked pretty dangerous to me, so I took out my phone and found a nearby campsite on the river guessing we could swim there. It was beautiful as we enjoyed our picnic and swims and we stayed far too long but it was worth it.
There’s very little accommodation in this area so after a lot of searching with maps and internet last night we found a chateau for tonight with yet another great restaurant. Because of the delays and swims, we ended up cycling for hours in the 35deg heat of the day up and down hills and we knew we’d be in trouble. I was OK as I could keep my heart rate down by pressing turbo on my bike. But Neil was cycling with no help up those hills. We stopped very regularly whenever we found shade and waited for Neils pulse to calm down, both of us swigging loads of water. Neil wasn’t exhausted but he was overheating.
But he has this uncanny knack of finding bars in the most obscure places! We found one full of British ex-pats who’d had a ‘few’ with their Sunday lunch. Some were interesting but not all!! So we moved on faster than we would have liked and carefully cycled the final 5 miles. This chateau is beautiful but our room is on the top floor! Hilarious! We lugged our stuff up, the grand circular staircase then immediately had cold showers and rested, looking forward to our supper. What an eventful day! We’re off course, but that’s fine. It’s all a great adventure and we’ll probably be a bit more sensible tomorrow!
Ceri's Blog with Neil 