clairedavieswriter

In a moment of linguistic over-confidence, I tried to tell our hostess last night that I’d seen a red squirrel on our ride. Unfortunately what I actually said was that I’d seen a Russian squirrel. In the circumstances, her reaction was impressively neutral. I guess I’d better keep going to my French lessons. Animal of the day: Écureuil roux.

It was chilly when we set off, but the sun was shining.
We knew we had a long road ahead, so it was a little worrying to come across this sign when we’d already ridden 12k. It turned out that Guillaume had some sensible short cuts up his sleeve, but when we reached our destination, I was disappointed not to have ticked up 100k. He really can’t win.

We were riding north and then north east, so you can guess which direction the wind was coming from in the morning and which way it veered in the afternoon. Luckily, we spent nearly half the journey on another old railway line:

Whose trees sheltered us from the worst of the blast, and carpeted our path with confetti:

Unfortunately, the same trees slso carpeted our path with roots (word of the day: racines), but we mustn’t grumble. And we certainly weren’t complaining about the scenery, even when it exposed us to the wind:

They say not to mix grape with grain, but that clearly doesn’t apply round here: we found them growing side by side. And everywhere, people were working on the vines.

Towards the end of the day, Bernard and I came across another old friend from last year:

And as always we were entertained by sights on the route. We spotted this one outside a metropolis consisting of no more than four houses:

I declined the chance of a dip at Châteauneuf sur Charente:

But this was my sign of the day:

Tonight we’re at my first Warmshowers stay of the trip, and Jon’s first ever. With Cath, Thierry and Mamie as our generous and entertaining hosts, I think it’s safe to say he’s a fan.