Today started cloudy with some brightness drifting through. After a lazy start to the morning, we loaded the laptop into a rucksack and cycled into La Palmyre to investigate a cybercafe we’d seen. A couple of pressions (draught beers) and a wonderful connection soon had our outstanding three blog posts published. There was even some French version of MTV entertaining us with a Coldplay track, amongst others. We were glad to see that we weren’t the only nerds in town; in a booth to one side was an English couple complete with webcam and ear buds carrying on a Skype conversation. They were supping a half carafe of local hooch and finally had lunch. Good for them – a most enjoyable way to avoid international phone charges.
In preparation for our weekend and travelling up to Damvix, we called in to a local boucherie to pick up two days worth of meat to go with our fridge full of veggies, then poodled back for lunch – the last of our rotisseried chicken. Maybe now we can have something different. 🙂
Anxious for some more exercise, we cycled south down the coast to St Palais-sur-Mer. By now the wind had shifted around to a more northerly direction and the skies were basically clear with some clouds drifting through. The cycle track through the coastal woodland got a little "interesting": there was one section of the piste cyclable (cycle track) described as "difficile" (difficult). It went up and down through some dune areas and there were some short, sharp shocks of climbs; not too severe, though. We’d never seen road signs beside a beach warning people of sable! (sand!) before, either. No shit, Sherlock!
St Palais-sur-mer was a typical French small seaside town, as far as I could see. There were a couple of architectural curiosities, though, including some interesting fishing constructions just on the way in to town.
On the slog back to La Palmyre, largely into wind, we realised that the excruciatingly expensive local fuel station was completely dry – pas d’essence, pas de gazole. This place was selling diesel at €1.60, a whopping 22 cents per litre more than we had paid, almost a euro per gallon. If that’s sold out we may be stuck here some time. We have a tankful that will get us to Damvix to meet Mike and Linda but we may not be going much further. Another English couple is off out looking for fuel tomorrow so we’ll see how they get on.
We sat outside to have dinner under the clear skies brought by the northerly wind but boy was it cool. I cannot ever before remember wearing a long sleeved shirt and long trousers in France in the summer. Another first!
Finally, a local disco playing incessantly tedious, monotonous rhythmic tosh that some call music started up and we put on our own Coldplay CD to try to drown it out. Hopefully it won’t go on all night. I’d rather listen to the baby long-eared owls.
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