Took the 'luxury' of a sleep-in and a hotel breakfast before leaving Cognac and a few more photo's of landmarks in the town. A quick detour to Jarnac and the Courvorsier factory, a lengthy wrong-turn in the hillside town of Angouleme...and 45 roundabouts later we were on our way back to Lignac!

Then disaster ...... low on fuel we stopped at Magnac Laval, just 40k from Lignac only to find that our debit-card won't work in the petrol pump...no worry we'll use cash........but no.......the shopping-mall, to which the petrolpump is attached, is closed for the obligatory 3 hours, until 3pm....as is the rest of the village except one cafe (that doesn't serve food) and a tabac. So we had a couple of cold ones and waited. Imagine our surprise then at 1500 upon returning to the supermarket, to find no sign of life anywhere........they'd just decided to close for the day....perish the thought they could put up a notice. So a call to John to come and rescue us with his card!

We figured out later that the village was probably closed so they could all go to the brocante further back up country that we'd passed earlier. Anyway, back at John's we decided to go into St. Benoit to get groceries and something for dinner.....wrong again....their supermarket was closed too as was the one in Chaillac!...and were still none the wiser as to why!

As a last resort we went to the Red Fox pub in nearby Beaulieu ...... very pleasantly surprised with a nice meal, but John wasn't too keen on all the English patrons.