Friday October 5th - little yellow storms

My parting gift to Frances and George was two bulbs of garlic and about 900g of sugar. Being alone, and wanting to travel light, a single bulb and 100g of sugar were more than enough, but it's impossible to buy in such small quantities. I hope they appreciated the generous donation anyway.

I filled up on baguette, jam, warm croissants, coffee and orange juice at breakfast. I was running dangerously low on porridge supplies and had yet to see any in the shops, but Frances assured me that it was available in some larger supermarkets, and should become more available as I got further south.

One of the topics of discussion the previous evening had been the Puy-de-Dôme, a huge dormant volcano in the Auvergne region. A road leads all the way up to the summit, from which apparently the views are spectacular, and the mountain has occasionally been part of the Tour de France. I decided I had to climb it.

I entered the Puy-de-Dôme departement and headed for Pontaumur to try to get campsite lists. The tourist office had closed for the day, so I headed down the D217 towards Pontgibaud, which looked a bit bigger. The road was marked as scenic on my map and turned out to be absolutely lovely.

I stopped for lunch half way up the ascent from Pontaumur, the town just out of sight and hearing. Rocky cliffs ascended on one side of the road, and on the other side a stream gurgled along in the valley below. Autumnal trees shaded the road from both sides and shed tiny golden leaves, from which gusts of wind would create little yellow storms. The occasional passing car stirred up the leaves and caused them to flutter along on its wake.

There were four ascents on that road, but the first was the longest and loveliest. The final climb was into la Goutelle, which was bigger than I expected and had a campsite which claimed to be open until the end of October, so I stopped and pitched up, after which I noticed that all the facilities were locked and the taps weren't working. I wasn't too bothered as I had everything I needed and could buy bottled water at the shop over the road. There was also a fantastic boulangerie/patisserie nearby, from which I got a slice of pizza and a delicious little tarte au citron.

I was about 20 miles away from the Puy-de-Dôme and planned to get away nice and early the next morning to get a good early start on the climb.

Thursday October 4th - la Grande Maison

Dinner clearly wasn't enough, as I woke up very hungry at 2am, and had to munch on the last of the ginger oat biscuits to silence my complaining stomach before I was able to fall asleep again. I was woken at various points in the night by nearby horses making funny little horsey sighing noises (brrrr!). Conveniently, just enough rain fell in the night to make the tent nice and wet and heavy the next morning when I packed up. Nobody had come round to take payment for the campsite, so I slipped 5euro under the reception door as I left.

I started out by taking the wrong road out of la Celle Dunoise, which was at least in vaguely the right direction, but later on I took another wrong turn back onto the originally intended road. Sometimes these mistakes are worth making, as I ended up on a fantastic descent into a beautiful gorge near le Bourg d'Hem, which was the best bit of the day. There were quite a few ups and downs throughout the day, and my legs handled it quite well.

I was running low on supplies. I needed toilet roll, stove fuel and various food items, but the villages I passed through were too small to have shops. I finally reached Chenerailles, a reasonably sized town, at about 1pm when the sun was getting a bit too strong for my liking. The town had two supermarkets, both of which were closed until 2:30, despite one of them being called "8 a huit"! I decided to wait around for a bit. I ate lunch in quiet shadows by the church. I tried to call dgym, who wasn't around, then tried to phone the campsite about 30 miles down the road at Merinchal to find out whether it was open, but nobody answered. I got impatient, waited some more and decided perhaps it was pushing it to get to Merinchal now, especially given the terrain and heat.

I asked around at hotels - one wanted 48euro for a room which is a bit much for one person, and the other didn't have anything available. I waited some more, and then noticed a chambre d'hotes on the street near the (still closed) supermarket. The information in the window mentioned that they did evening meals too and the owner had worked in top restaurants in London, so I was hopeful of a good feed and some English-speaking. I knocked on the door and after a brief conversation in awkward French about whether there was a room (which there was), the bloke said something like "righty ho then", I said "You're English!" "Yes..." "Me too". "Well, that makes things a bit easier!". I had my pick of the rooms, and chose the nice quiet one facing away from the street, Villemonteix, with its wonderful hip-bath.

I took a wander around Chenerailles that afternoon, which was quite nice in the Old Town area around the church, with fantastic little medieval streets and houses which look like they haven't changed in centuries.


La Grande Maison

It was lovely to have a big soft bed, although the hot bath and meal were appreciated a whole lot more. I was served a wonderful meal that evening, in the company of Margaret, mother of Frances who co-owns the B&B with her husband George. Tomato, mozzarella and avocado salad, followed by roast chicken with vast quantities of trimmings (I really wasn't expecting to get a roast any time soon!) then cheeses, and ice cream for dessert, all accompanied by copious quantities of wine.

It was really nice to have some company for a change. Frances and George bought the house a couple of years ago, spent some time doing it up, and opened the B&B in June 2007. They seemed to have had quite a successful summer with it, and had done a really nice job of renovating. They seemed to have had lots of interesting visitors, and I wasn't the first cyclist to visit, they'd had another Channel - Med rider, and one going from Holland to Spain. Margaret was just visiting for a couple of weeks, but was giving some consideration to moving out there from her home in Norfolk. Frances said that the only thing that she missed about the UK was the variety of food you get in big supermarkets in the UK (Indian spices, etc). Most of the family have already emigrated to other countries, so she has very little reason to go back, and would rather just stay in France and integrate with the local community.

They're working hard at this - learning the language, contributing to the economy, trying to do everything "by the book" business-wise, and their efforts have mostly been well-received. There was some hesitance until locals realised they were making a permanent move, and not just setting up a holiday home which would be empty half the year, but people have been very welcoming. There was one exception - that same day, they had been to the Mairie to sort out something business-related, and were confronted by a very bigoted woman who was rude and unhelpful and generally disparaging towards "you English" who come over, ruin everything and cause lots of problems. Hopefully this was just an isolated incident, and won't discourage them.

I slept very well that night and had an excellent stay. Frances and George were great hosts, and I wish them all the best with their business.

Wednesday October 3rd - Creuse

The Creuse river was still, cool and beautiful as I crossed over it first thing in the morning. I left the river and embarked on my hilliest day yet. The uphills were long, mostly gentle, winding and slightly sweat-inducing. The downs were long and fantastic.

Having just left Centre and entered the Creuse departement of Limousin, I had run out of campsite information so stopped at Dun-le-Palestel and waited for the tourist office to open from its lunch break. (In addition to Mondays, the French are also keen on closing their businesses at every other opportunity as well, most notably for at least two hours at lunchtime).

Whilst waiting, I called dgym from a nearby phonebox. He was able to call me back via Voip, which was much cheaper than any other means of phone call we had tried but the quality of our home internet connection made it harder to hear what he was saying. By that point I had given up all hope of my international SIM finding a network ever again, and my mobile situation was not helped by the fact that the wiring on my solar charger had mostly fallen apart. Touring equipment needs to be really heavy duty - things are constantly being stuffed into and pulled out of panniers and generally knocked around. The solar charger worked well until it fell apart, and we are confident that with more robust construction, it will do a great job on future tours.

I got the campsite booklet, and once again had the choice between a nearby campsite which finishes the cycling day a little early, or one 30 miles away. At the kind of speeds I travel at, and with the amount of daylight available at that time of year, and the need to set up a tent and cook, I usually prefer not to set off on a 30 mile ride at 2pm, especially as sometimes things are not open when they should be. So I dropped back down to the Creuse and went for the nearby campsite at la Celle-Dunoise, which turned out to be a pleasant little site in a pretty village.

Once the tent was up, I set off for a walk into the village. It was about 4pm and for the first time I really felt the strength of the afternoon sun and the need to be sheltering from it at that time of day. I stuck to the shadows and had a bit of a look around.

A few miles downstream from la Celle-Dunoise, the Grande and Petite Creuse rivers meet at Fresselines. The impressionist painter Claude Monet spent three months in Fresselines in 1889, resulting in twenty-four paintings of the Creuse and surrounding landscapes.