France et Suisse 2022 – Day 13: Damazan to Le Pécile: 23.4k, 343m climbed (mostly over 2.5kms)

The first leg of my triangular trip is complete – I have pedalled 857kms from Fleet to the Lot et Garonne.

On arrival at Fiona’s house, I literally received red carpet treatment. Sadly my luggage didn’t stretch to a gown, but the paparazzi did their best with the material in front of them.

It turned out that Guillaume wasn’t being grown up at all yesterday – he was just saving up his tantrum for this morning, when he refused to show me the route I’d plotted from Damazan. However, all that meant was that I had to revert to Hugo the headphones. Guillaume really hadn’t thought it through.

Mind you, Hugo wasn’t exactly on best behaviour either, choosing to ‘save’ me the conventional route to Bazens (aka the road), and take me up a farmer’s track instead. It was much steeper than it appears in the photo – Bernard and I were never going to pedal up ..

But at least we had time to appreciate the buttercups.

Speaking of flora: as I cycled along the canal in the cool of the morning, fluffy seeds were falling like fat snowflakes from the plane trees, and collecting in drifts beside the path. When I stopped to gaze in wonder at the flurries swirling around me, all I could hear was the buzzing of bees overhead. It was an enchanting moment.

A little further on, and in less lyrical mood, I was wondering if I would ever find anywhere to get some breakfast, which is when I had my lucky encounter of the day. Yesterday’s trio of Scots cyclists appeared, and told me that there was a boulangerie in Feugarolles, a quarter of a mile away.

In truth, they rather undersold it: Madame la Boulangère not only provided two fine pastries (got to keep the strength up), she also served excellent coffee, made sandwiches to order, and took my request for a vegetarian one in her stride.

Soon after that, I bid farewell to the shady canal path and struck out, under a blazing sun, across the wide floodplain of the river Garonne, crossing back to its north bank at Port Sainte Marie.

With VE Day marked by a jour ferié only yesterday, cycling down this street seemed timely. Virtually every French town has one – another way in which our two countries differ.

This may look like architectural tourism, but actually it was just me taking a moment to recover from Hugo’s cunning agricultural short cut to Bazens.