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Wednesday 17th June 2015 Poitiers to Verteuil Sur Charente The day started badly and ended well. I took breakfast at the Continental - acceptable, typical French petit dejeuner - and then went to pack up for the road. I couldn't find the key to the bike lock! Grr! I looked in all my pockets, twice, under the bed, and then unpacked the panniers and went through everything. No key. I looked under the bed again, in the drawers… and resigned myself to using the pliers to snip my way through the cable. I went down to the bike after repacking everything… and there was the key, still in the lock! [exasperated sigh].
About 25 minutes later than it should have been, at about 9.10, I finally set off. The weather once again was clear blue skies and warm. After a while I reached a point on the route where, on checking the GPS, I seemed to have overshot by half a mile - exasperatingly all uphill, of course. I cycled back and found that according to the GPS I'd gone past the turning again! This time I cycled very slowly back and managed to find a track like a bridleway or footpath, leading off into the forest.
OK. I set off along this track but a loaded bike with road tyres was not best suited to it. I got half a mile, very slowly because of numerous ruts, tree roots and pot-holes, before stopping to reconsider. Who plotted this route, I wondered? (me). I looked at the map on the GPS and saw with dismay that the track continued like this through the forest for several miles. Oh well, time to accept defeat. I turned round and plodded back to the road where I then had to ride up the hill I'd already ridden up once before. Not to worry, eh.
I pressed on and the day remained fine, the roads easy - so inevitably I didn't pay attention and once again on looking at the GPS I saw I was miles off course! The Old French word 'Bollocks!' may have been uttered more than once at this point. But bollocks didn't change the facts and the fact was that I had to look at the map and plot an ad hoc route back to rejoin the proper route somewhere. But the roads were still easy, the day still fine - and it's the errors that can make the journey interesting.
Later in the day than expected I finally pulled in to Ruffec, my destination for the day, fairly glad that the day's cycling was now over as once again I'd had no lunch, just a couple of rather nice pear-flavoured jaffa cakes I'd bought from a Carrefour supermarket in Poitiers the night before. To my dismay, however, I now found that there were no hotels in Ruffec. The woman I asked turned out to be an English expat and said she'd never heard of any there, while her irritating dog seized the opportunity to slobber over my shorts. The Tourist Information office was shut despite the opening hours on the door saying it should be open, and after searching out the hotel I'd noted from the internet I found it dusty, shut-down and cobwebby. Oh dear. My heart sank a bit at this point for Ruffec was a fair-sized town and if it didn't have anywhere for me to stay that didn't bode well for the smaller villages my route wended through next. Still, 'something will turn up', I told myself, and do you know what - it did! I rode for a few more miles and came to the village of Verteuil sur Charente. You come down the road and suddenly there in front of you are the cone-topped towers of a Grimms' fairy-tale castle looming over you.
I slowed down as I entered the village and stopped by a shop in the main street. I went in and asked if there was a hotel in the village. The girl, very friendly, told me there were no hotels but there was a B&B and it was run by English-speaking Australians. She gave me directions and I went along and found 'Les Bruyeres', a great B&B charging only 50 euros for the night including breakfast - compared to the far inferior hotel accommodation in Tours for 87 euros without breakfast! Also the village was full of flowers, a couple of stone bridges, the clear, fish-filled waters of the Charente, duck ponds, old barns and hollyhocks. Swifts were barreling around the place, zooming up to the eaves of cottages where their nests were glued to the walls. It was a lovely village and so much better, by sheer chance, than a hotel in Ruffec would have been.
Adam, the patron of the B&B, told me that there was a restaurant in the main square, the 'Porte Bleu', which would sort out something vegetarian for me to eat so I wandered along there and met the owner as he was going in. He turned out to be English too and said he'd do something for me so I said I'd be back at 7.00.
At 7.00 I turned up and had a nice meal - Greek salad then a sort of goat's cheese and spinach pasty, chips and more salad - very nice - followed by a crème brûlée and accompanied all along by a large Leffe. Several other customers turned up in the Blue Door, surprising for such a small village and mid-week, and they were nearly all English. Strange, eh. Bike computer: 58.41 miles GPS: 59.5 miles 10.3 mph avg 27.8 mph max English miles: 117.8 French miles: 493.7 (First section of today's GPS stats was lost when I changed the route but I'd noted the mileage before I did it. 40.1 miles plus the subsequent 19.4 miles) | ||||||||||||
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