A fairly sedate 65 miles cycling day today as we eased down, like marathon runners in smelling distance of the finishing line. Last night we were amazed to find some life in one of these quiet rural villages that we have been staying in. Musical fetes are held on mid summer's day evening and one was held in our village of Confolens. Inevitably it was raining so the event was staged inside in the village market hall. The music was surprisingly good and we both e...

On mid summers day we were glad to leave Perigeuex, the definite low point of our trip. Alan's face when we crossed the town boundary told me he was the happiest man alive. A typical cycling day then took place with twenty mile blasts interrupted by R&R breaks, an approximately 80 mile day powering through rural France. We are now confident of our campsite rendezvous on Monday. We (Alan) found our hotel for the night, it ticks all the boxes for reasonable pr...

A day on the road today that tested our resolve. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was mid summer in central France as the weather told us it was autumn in England. It was chilly and we got very wet. Even Alan, with his warm blooded constitution and elephant's skin put on a rain jacket. We stopped off for mid morning coffee in medieval Bergerac, it started lashing down and better resembled Bradford in mid winter. We did well to get in our scheduled 70 mi...

After our toughest day cycling yet (more of that from Alan later I am sure) we have settled into a regular routine, based on R&R (rest and refuelling). Punctuating long spells of cycling we have stops for morning coffee, lunch and an afternoon ice cream, before seeking out a hotel at about 6.00pm. We are getting to know provincial French towns and villages well as we visit them for our R&R. They are quiet, all shops shut for three hour lunches, just when...

We finished last night and started this morning poorly and finished today in great style. In our hotel in dull town last night we could find no eatery open and the hotel bar closed at 10.00, things were so bad we finished our beers in our hotel bedroom. But we did eat as Alan had lots of food in his tardis-like panniers. There were violent storms in the night, a negative change in the weather. We spurned the hotel breakfast for a McDonalds (normally against my re...