Yours truly clambered onto his bike and pedalled the 6 miles or so to Mont-prés-Chambord and back in search of bread and an Aujour d’hui newspaper. The paper publishes five days’ worth of weather maps and that’s what we wanted. Naturally, the further in the future it gets the less reliable the forecasts become but it gives us an idea. Today didn’t look great.
On the return leg, I took a cross-country route and was having great fun until a dry-looking patch of sandy soil turned out to be more like wet quicksand from the recent rains and the wheels threw mud all over my bike, clean shirt and cycling trousers. Oops! Doctor Carol prescribed a swift striptease (unfortunately me, not her) and plunged my soiled clothes into a bucket of hot, soapy water. Since the weather seemed OK so far, it was on with a new T-shirt.
As the morning progressed, things seemed to be brightening up, despite the forecast. Since walking in potential showers seems preferable, to us, to cycling in potential showers, we decided to try one of the local walking routes. As usual, from the point of view of nature, France didn’t let us down. We saw meadow fritillary and wall butterflies and, unidentified, some caterpillars which seemed to be descending from trees on silken threads, twisting and spinning in the gentle breeze. I have no idea what they were but they were intriguing to watch.
After a late lunch, a quick siesta caused yours truly to make his nice new Lafuma reclining chair collapse whilst reclined, spilling coffee all over the recently donned nice clean T-shirt. Doctor Carol prescribed a striptease (unfortunately me, not her) and plunged my now coffee-stained T-shirt into a bucket of hot, soapy water. On with another clean T-shirt. Three years ago, Lafuma had a perfectly serviceable design and were regarded as the Rolls Royce of camping chairs. Last year they started welding the seams instead of sewing them – the welds separated on us in a couple of weeks. This year they are again sewing the seams (bravo, Lafuma) but now the reclining arms appear to separate too readily. The design was perfectly good. Why feel the need to mess around with an erstwhile perfectly good design?
The weather looked reasonably settled and, fancying a little more exercise, we cycled back to the B+B hotel armed with Carol’s mot de passe to try our luck posting the various saved blog entries. Marvelous, success – this time it worked. The signal strength was up and down but it never actually dropped us.
Flush with posting success, we returned for some showers and an evening meal of grilled duck breast with John’s special peppercorn mix and some ratatouille.
Cycling 6 miles for some bread, I knew there was a food crisis, didnt know it getting that bad.
You will have to learn a technique of throwing mud over Doctor Carol which is not too obvious.