Chinon , Abbeville

Sunday dawned bright and clear in Cahors and as the hotel only served a typical French breakfast (coffee and and a croissant), I was soon on my way.

My plan for moving north was simple and for the most part has worked reasonably well. It was to pick towns on the Michelin map which have a green box around the name (meaning it has some sights/interest etc), on a northerly trajectory and then to set the Garmin to avoid highways and toll roads and to navigate from one to the other. My Garmin has been steadily losing her marbles for the last few days, taking an age to recalculate, repeatedly cycling through recalculations and so on, plus the voice has been going potty pronouncing the same place or road name in different ways  - all of them wrong! However, provided I didn't ask the thing to calculate more than a 30 mile section it worked well enough.

The weather was flawless all day with bright sunshine and temperatures up to 26 degrees. I stopped and had a look around a lovely town called Sarlat-la-Canéda which although unashamedly touristy, does it in a nice way with no tackiness and the old buildings were splendid on this sunny morning. Wikipedia says of it "Sarlat has remained preserved and is one of the towns most representative of 14th century France" also "Sarlat is one of the most attractive and alluring towns in southwestern France". Definitely true in my book.

Then it was on through the back roads of some of the prettiest parts of rural France, the Dordogne and Perigord regions, to Chinon located on a tributary to the Loire, where I decided I had ridden enough for the day.

I picked my hotel for the night using Tripadvisor which ranks it as number 1 in Chinon. What a fantastic place the Hotel Diderot is! I cannot commend it highly enough. Beautifully situated to see the town, it is a 14th century building built around a courtyard. The family who own/run it were all very welcoming and friendly people, the room and breakfast were superb. Breakfast was miles better than the standard French offering and featured some wonderful home-made preserves. At the owner's suggestion, I mixed some soft local cheese with crumbled walnuts and honey to spread on my toast - fantastic!

Joan of Arc trampling a foe in the dust

That's my bike in the rose arbour!

This Monday morning, well fortified by my breakfast at Hotel Diderot, I again set off in sunshine, following the same route finding method as yesterday. Along the way I came upon a chap who was pushing his motorscooter along the road and working up a fine sweat doing it. I stopped to see if there was any help I could give him but we failed to get the engine started and he wasn't too keen on the idea of a tow. However, he was delighted that I had stopped to help and we spent a while chatting. He told me that he had once been to Scotland to hunt birds in December (I guess Grouse shooting but we couldn't find a word in French that seemed to quite match that). When I proposed again the idea of a tow, he said he only had another 5km to go and that it was good exercise!

As I got further north, the countryside became less interesting, much flatter and with huge fields of wheat, barley and rape (that had finished flowering). These crops were so high and the roads continued to be fairly twisty, so riding became rather a chore as the crops easily hid cars and small vans coming in the opposite direction. The road surfaces also deteriorated to the point where they reminded me of the washboard I had encountered in the Sierra de Demanda - really teeth rattling stuff.

It might have been the Sierra or this bit of French road but the dreaded LampF warning light came up to show me my headlamp had failed again. Upon inspection, it appeared that the screw holding the retaining clip had vibrated loose, allowing the bulb to move backward where its heat had melted the plastic clip. Fixing this took a quite while and I decided then to abandon the back roads and to move quickly north on the autoroutes. I made it as far as Abbeville where discretion suggested I stop as I was getting pretty tired. Still after 300 miles of, at times quite difficult, riding, it is hardly surprising.

So this is the last night of my journey. I will be taking the Eurotunnel train from Calais in the morning and all being well, should be back home by lunchtime. It has been great fun but I am also missing Mary and the family so I have that to look forward to. Also, to hearing from my granddaughter Kate about her adventures in South America - she already got back this morning.