St Leger to Tonneins

Monday 2nd November.
St Leger to Tonneins
For the second time we came to pay the bill on leaving our B&B only to find the price had gone up by 10 euros over night. We now put it down to Vivi’s posh North Foreland French accent! We had an interesting breakfast with our hosts and another couple from Pau which is we gather in the Pyrenees The man from Pau was in charge of the toaster and as the brioche and the baguette was a lot smaller than the toaster he spent a lot of time digging charred remains out of the bottom of the toaster with his knife. I made very certain that my elbow didn’t accidentally touch his whilst he did it.
Monsieur kindly gave us a small map which he said would connect us to the cycle route by the most direct means possible. There are reasons why the most direct route possible is not always the chosen cycle route and that it because cycle routes use a flat trajectory along rivers and canals and through passes in hills – monsieur’s definitely did not. But it was beautiful, through very picturesque vineyards and farms , over streams, down dales etc etc We had a quick soaking while we tried to get to a bus shelter in time . Eventually we made it to La Reole where we had a jolly lunch in the sunshine and then hooked up with the Canal de la Garonne cycle route which was like joining the M1 when it was first opened. The canal is absolutely straight for miles and miles lined with plane trees and interspersed occasionally by locks, and fascinatingly for a non engineer, with aqueducts. At this time of year there are no other cyclists, no boats moving and the locks appear to open and shut themselves to stop the water spilling over the top and to keep the falling leaves moving. It is heaven for a touring cyclist, a lycra clad formula one job could easily do 150 miles a day, we are content with 38 and that could be 8 too many! We spent the night in Tonneins and got there just before dark