Day 21, 22 - Rain, Wind then Boredom

We had gone to bed with high hopes for the morrow, but the morning soon dashed them on the rocks of dismal weather, yet again.

The first leg of our journey was to the town of Margueron, a short walk away from Bergerac, but it took us hours! The wind was slamming right into our faces, and there is nothing more demoralising to a cyclist than to be putting all available effort into cycling at a mere crawl of 10 mph (I cannot understand people who do this as their normal speed). Absolutely miserable the entire way, which was only worsened once the rain started.

After Margueron we had to make it to Duras, a lovely town sitting atop a hill. We stopped in a little cafe to warm up and take stock. In there we met a lovely English couple living in France, who we entertained with tales of our exploits and our extreme dampness. One very odd oddity about the french cafe and french cafes in total, is that amidst all this traditional wooden decor and the like, there sat this completely surreal orange desk for the purposes of gambling from. It was so out of place in this little traditional cafe, yet the locals seemed to think it far more normal than two bedraggled cyclists on a cycle tour in the middle of march when the weather is bad.

The coffee was good and after, saved from the wind by the buildings, we ate lunch in the freezing cold and with freezing cold feet. Hating to continue but having to nonetheless, we once more braved the abyssmal weather in our attempt to reach Langorn. The next leg of the journey was to La Reole, sitting along the river and only a short 20km from Langorn. We knew we needed the advice of the Tourist Information, and as it was getting late we decided to try the one in La Reole for information on campsites or other forms of accomadation. It was here that the French signs utterly failed us. We tried every road several times for an hour or so in our attempt to find this blasted thing, only through trial and error were we finally able to find it tucked away inside this ancient 17th century building, the only indication that it was a Info place was a small "i" sign in the window. Obviously not fond on Tourism in La Reole.

Anyway, I went in to inquire about the campsite we had found in the Michelin Guide (we weren't sure it was open), and was treated to much amazement by the people inside that we were camping in this weather (a common exclamation from the French it seems). After a little help from the helpful staff, we discovered that the campsite we were heading for was open, but wasn't a campsite. Michelin's mistake had seemed to propagate itself through the Tourist Info business because even their official guide of the region had it down as a campsite. Anyway, looking for other campsites proved unfruitful, and Danny and I decided upon a cheap little hotel in a small village just south of La Reole. The staff phoned ahead and we cycled not knowing what we were going to find there.

When we finally arrived in Pondaraut, we were not suprised by how easily we found the place, the town was tiny. I walked into this rather sparse bar with a few tables and chairs mingling with French locals (we finally found out what they do of an evening - sit in a bar and talk about what they did all day) and shuffled rather uncomfortably toward the bar and bartender there to say in rather awful french that I had a reservation and that I was Mr English with the bicycles. He grinned as I said it, I cannot imagine how badly it sounded, and signalled to follow him. He took us round back, where there seemed to be the skeleton of an even older house, and into the garage where we stored our bikes. Then he took us upstairs and showed us the room. He asked us if we were going to come down for drinks and I said yes we would (all in french).

When had got suitably settled, we headed downstairs sat at the bar and the barman poured us this wierd liquour. It was quite nice, but we moved onto beer afterward. We spent the entire evening sitting at the bar attempting to tell the inhabitants of the bar (mostly the barman - who was incredibly paitent) about our trip so far. Most of it was Danny asking questions, the barman looking confused and then me with a lot of help from the barman and hand signals translating for Danny both the question and answer. A lot of fun all round.

The next morning we woke to an early breakfast at 7 (stupidly early, and we think we may have pissed the barman off a bit). It was a simple fair, but tasty enough, of croissants and coffee. We packed slowly, but left just as the weather changed to bad. Not as bad as yesterday, but the rain and wind were certainly back. We made it to Bazas with little trouble however, whereupon I discovered with some shock that I was no longer in possession of my wallet and, more importantly, my nationwide card. Danny decided that he would go back on his faster racer sans baggage to look for it back at the hotel (a good 10 miles back). I waited paitently feeling the fool by the lidls where the discovery had been made, hoping that hope might just shine through. As the time lengthened out it became obvious to me that it was unlikely Danny had found it, which was to turn out to be the case.

Severely worried and not looking forward to the rest of the trip, we continued onward, after Danny and I planned on an alternative until I could get another card. We left the disaster that was Bazas and followed the road that entered into the most boring part of our trip so far - Parc Naturel Regional des Landes de Gascoigne. It was essentially 30 miles and more of non-stop Pine Tree plantations. The only break in the monotony of the journey was the delightful monster K6.

Has we were about 6km from Sabres along the road from Luxey, we cycled past a house with its front gate wide open (it had lots of classic cars in various states of disrepair in the back garden) and standing there was the biggest do I have ever seen. Huge thing. It barked, and I immediately thought "Crap!". Out it ran after our wheels, as apparently the noise the spokes of a wheel make sends dogs crazy. Usually we pass dogs trapped in their gardens and they just got frothing at the mouth launching themselves at the fence trying to get at us. This time there was no fence and as I looked behind us I saw this huge lumbering shape following us. Following us? He was damn well gaining on us. I shouted to Danny to look behind us, and has he turned around he saw the Dog pass me on the left. On and on the dog ran in front of us, but it didn't look like he was going to turn round and attack. Had he we would have been easily on the road and our spokes in his mouth. Danny noticed it before I did, and suggested that we outrun him. He wanted to race.

To wham, we lauched into a frenzied and extended race over 4km with the dog able to keep up with our stead 17mph. We still weren't sure whether the dog was friend or foe, so while our legs ached, we pressed on and on. After about 4km, the dog could not keep up with us and he started falling behind. Eventually he left our sight and we slowed our pace as we entered the town of Sabres. There was a garage just as we entred so I took the liberty of filling our water bottles and buying a can each to cool us down (the weather was perfect now). As we sat there we saw our doggy friend lumbering up the road toward us - he had followed us all the way here. After a small time playing around with our now beloved friend of K6 (for he had ran 6km to catch us), we decided to move on. K6, eager for the exercise looked ready to join but we were worried that he might get hit by a car on the road so we tried our best to get him to go home, but he wouldn´t. In the end the best way to get him to give up was to just cycle as fast as we could. For the next 15k we sailed along at speeds of 17mph. So fast, so flat.

Darkness was creeping in, and hopes of finding our campsite were slim. Eventually we found a small side road into the pine plantations and made camp in the dark and quite dead wood (there didn't seem to be any wildlife at all here). I was worried at first I could see a strange window hanging in the air not far from where we had decided to camp through the trees. It was such a strange sight. However it turned out to be just the largest moon I had ever seen, perching itself on one of the branches of a tree. Reminded me of some childrens tale or something.

We slept badly, my two man tent is not big enough for me and Danny.