Yesterday’s train problems meant that I arrived at the hotel at midnight. Ok, I bought a kebab on the way but it was still midnight and part of the time was spent manoeuvring the bike up three flights of narrow windy stairs.
Breakfast was beautiful french bread and coffee. So nice, I didn’t want to leave.
I decided to have an easy day after the late night, so I went to a bike shop to get a new mirror. The bike had fallen over on the train and broken the mirror. Unfortunately, they had nothing suitable, so I wandered through the centre of town. It looks to be a very livable city.
I was struck by the massive width of the tram tracks and thought that the trams must have been absolutely huge. Then I realised that the trams here have other wheels and only use one rail. D’oh.
At a boulangerie, I got some food for the day. The guy thought I was Dutch and spoke Dutch to me when he handed me the sandwich. That has only ever happened in France, and it’s a few times now. I guess, I’m tall and skinny and ride a bike, but really, I’m sure they can do better.
Leaving the city was uneventful, and I was soon on some small and quiet roads. My lunch and coffee was under a tree beside a farm and it felt idyllic. It was a strange dirt road in that there were joggers and walkers every 5 minutes. They all stared at me for some reason – jealousy ? wondering who the homeless guy was ? Or admiring my bike ?
I was soon back onto quiet roads weaving between hills and villages. I love this kind of riding – plenty of ups and downs but nothing too serious,and plenty of villages and people too. Not riding on a bike path means that you interact with locals more.
One guy was rendering the archway over his driveway, saw me coming and called out ‘bonjour !’. I responded and added, ‘Nice work’. That brought a big smile and ‘Thanks but I’m only learning this’. That wouldn’t happen on a bike path. I know they are safer, but they are quite more sanitised than using small roads to get around.
I started to get hungry and went a little off course so I could go to a supermarket. The first one on Google maps didn’t exist. This has been a frequent occurrence in France. The second one was something out of the movies.
It was a small and ultra neat grocery store, the kind that an OCD person would run. Nothing was out of place. The shelves weren’t overstocked, and the fruit an veggies were immaculate. All the while, the cashier just stood there and smiled mysteriously. It could have been the start of a horror movie.
I got to the last ten or fifteen KMs and turned onto a pretty busy road. That’s not like Komoot. I stopped and was messaging with Miles and Clare, and there must have been twenty trucks thundering past in about 5 minutes. Not fun. So I backtracked and took a longer side road which had almost no traffic.
I pulled into the campground in Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule around 5ish. I hadn’t expected to go this far today, so I got busy, cleaned up, cooked dinner and went to bed.
Unfortunately, the church bells rang every half hour through the night, and in a small town with the church on a hill, you can hear them loud and clear.