Tonneins to Agen

Tuesday 3rd November
Tonneins to Agen
In the gathering gloom of last night we had passed a farm with an enormous crop of what looked like tobacco leaves drying in his barn so decided to return to take photos today. Needless to say, we somehow took a wrong turning, (there are so many tiny unmapped roads) and missed it altogether en route back to the canal. So still don’t know if it was tobacco or not. It had been really wild weather in the night but we were very lucky and having dressed for the worst were only caught once. We shot into a village called Serignac to get out of the rain and discovered a tourist office which was open ALL day and on Tuesdays , and also had a lovely girl in it who was most helpful in giving us hotel names for Agen.
Serignac was very pretty and boasted a helicoidal tower. (I didn’t know what that was either) and there is only one other in the world and that is in Chesterfield. (told that in the tourist office) It is built rather like a helter skelter, not sure why but fun to have designed in the late 15c. We also passed some ports on the canal and Alec got talking to a couple of Yorkshire men who spend the winters on their barges down in this part of the world. It seems a particularly relaxed way of life and when we were talking about it taking another 3 hours to Agen, they said it would take 2 weeks on the barge! We only saw a couple of other cyclists on the canal path but the dept (council) men were busy sweeping all the leaves etc off it for us. The only wildlife around now are kingfishers, lots of herons, red squirrels, (why aren’t they hibernating?) and in the large poplar woods, hundreds of cormorants roosting. The wind was behind us which is always a bonus but even so, we only just made it to Agen before dark.
Those of you who like to keep the digestive system working well will know that Agen is famous for producing the best prunes. We don’t know what a prune tree looks like, but passed mile after mile of orchards with some fantastic apples, and also bushes groaning with kiwi fruit just being harvested now.
On arrival in Agen the heavens opened as we reached our hotel which did not do dinner so to ring the changes we took ourselves to a Chinese restaurant for supper. To our amazement the waiter having taken our order popped next door to the Vietnamese takeaway and returned 5 minutes later with it steaming hot – and very good it was too, and a lot better than eating the same on a bench in front of the cathedral with the pikeys in the rain.