If you've looked at a map, you'll see that we were heading north yesterday. Well, for various reasons we've turned south and are back in foothills of the Pyrenees again. At a place called St Girons. It was supposed to be a shorter day today, but once again we were out of luck with our planned destination (Cazeres), so had to bash on for a few more hours. St Girons is very good though, surrounded by huge hills and has a very nice river flowing through it.

The first few hours this morning took us over some hills in a quite remote area. Then we met and followed the mighty Garonne river through Cazeres to Salies du Salat, before turning east again to St Girons.

This morning I made the mistake of saying bonjour to a random dog in some random village. It was a medium sized ginger dog with long flowing hair. It started to follow us. It was quite amusing at first. But after passing thro a third village it became apparent that it had tagged onto us. Trotting along beside me and kinda 'smiling'. So we tried to lose it by hammering down a hill. The dog speeded up but was too slow. But at the next hill when we slowed up it caught up again. Then a GSD came out if a farm and started to fight with 'our' dog. They soon gave up fighting and both tucked in to follow us. By and by two more dogs joined in. So we now had 4 dogs in tow. Eventually the latter three turned back but ours just kept coming along, at a steady jog. Several miles on we stopped and I shouted at it. And I made pig like squealing noises at it. To no avail: Off we went: and so did it. Getting beyond a joke. I tried squirting it in it's eye (several times) with my water bottle. It didn't like that! But still it kept on coming. I was just considering a medium strength kick to the throat region when we were presented with a long downhill section. A plan was hatched: we turned around and pedalled very slowly on the wrong direction and waited for dog to turn and pass us. Then on the shout of 'go' we turned around again and pelted down this hill. Charged up the next rise then down a second hill. Then turned randomly left and right at junctions until we were well and truly rid of it. Worked!

The Monkey's actually making himself useful. Drying clothes on a bike tour is difficult. You wash them in the evening but they're not dry when you pack your panniers in the morning, so it stays damp. But, I had the idea of dressing him in various items as we pedal along. It's no skin off his nose coz he's just sat on the back doing nowt all day. He's very good with socks and this afternoon dried my pants a treat.

I still don't have a date for when myself and Lily will be appearing as contestants in the TV gameshow Pointless. But it's on here in France! (not with us of course). It goes out on channel France 3 as 'Personne n'y avait pensé!' (Nobody had thought of that!) hosted by some guy called Cyril Féraud.

Plea...
Please check out Phillip English. He's just 23 and, all on his own, is currently cycling, posing and blogging his way from London to Cape Town for charity. Currently in Ethiopia. He'll post online a pic of himself holding up your name if you give him a few quid. He's trying to raise $25K and he's well short of that so far. He's only got 44 followers on Twitter too. He needs encouragement for this Herculean challenge. Pretty please!

http://theposingcyclist.com/?author=1