After all of the bell ringing last night,I had a slow and sleepy start to the day. I rode through the town, looked around, tried another bike shop, found a bakery and a grocery store, loaded up and got going.
The first ten or fifteen kms of the ride were again, just perfect. Then some drizzle started, got heavier, became intermittent, then got really heavy. I had the poncho on, in the rain for 25kms until I got to the beautiful (really impressively beautiful) town of Souvigny.
There, I went to a restaurant and had a coffee. I simply had to get warm. Everything was wet. The poncho had done its job well, but I was starting to get damp and cold.
The rain didn’t let up. The forecast for the afternoon was for 20mm over 3 hours. That’s not something to ride through or camp in, so I decided to look for a room. The best choice was 10kms up the road at Saint Menoux. I checked that there was a supermarket and restaurants – all good, so I booked it and headed out to get wet again.
The room was great, the people were great, but the facts turned out that there was no restaurant and only a small supermarket that would open later. They did have a microwave at the hotel though – my saviour.
Dinner was uninteresting but all of my gear dried out. As I was going to bed I realised that the church bells were rung every 30 minutes here too – and the church was over the road. Luckily, they stopped it at 11pm and didn’t start until 7am. That’s smart !
