events

I think there is more than one campsite in La Bastide but I've stayed twice now in the one that is just out of town south on the D6.  It's great.  Nice clean and very friendly site with a small bar/restaurant attached and the owners couldn't be nicer, very helpful and the food is excellent.

This is the pitch I had, just next to the river that runs along the side of the site, which is, you guessed it, the Allier!

A pity my photo has come out blurred but you get the idea, happy smiling hosts who just make you feel at home.  And that's not even to start to mention the superb mushroom omelettes that they make, with fresh wild mushrooms they pick.

So, I got my washing done, had a demi-pêche, then the set meal with my usual petit pichet de rosé.  Actually when the cheese arrived once again I was given a pichet of red wine to eat it with, it's obviously important in France.  It was good cheese, I said that it was as good as many English cheeses, jokingly of course, to which he simply said 'haagh'.

There was an interesting parallel story going on back in England.  Pippa had rescued a seagull with an injured wing and was keeping the bird in a cardboard box in the house, waiting for the RSPB to come and take it away.  I was trying to translate and explain this drama of girl and bird to the owner.

I think that seagull is mouette which I pronounced as mouyette I think it was, which the guy explained is actually dippy egg with soldiers.  Anyway, the cause of much laughter, english woman rescues dippy egg.

Tuesday 19th July.  La Bastide Puylaurent to Les Vans: 45km, avg 20.1km/hr, max 49.3km/hr, 2.14hrs riding.

Out of La Bastide I took the D4 then turned off onto the D151, a tiny, curving, swooping little lane that takes you on what is, more or less, discounting the odd 50m bit of uphill, 40 odd km of descent.  It's fantastic.

It's a long descent but because the tarmac is sometimes a little worn and the curves tight and blind you can't really let rip so my max speed isn't that high.  Nonetheless I wasn't hanging around.  In part because I was keen to get a phone signal, there was none for most of the descent, in order to book a table for lunch at La Feuille de Chou, a restaurant I'd been to before in Les Vans.  I'd decided today was going to be a short day and I'd stay in a hotel too, perhaps even swim in the pool if the weather brightened up.  Which it didn't by the way.

It sort of reminds of the Lakes this shot.