September 25, 2013
Day 69: Valence to Lagruere
We said goodbye to our new friend Patrick (from Bordeaux), leaving him to head south toward Sete. Surprisingly his target for today is Grisolles, which is where we came from, just 60 km away. Clearly, Patrick could go further but he is taking it easy, something that is not in our repertoire.
The canal today looks much like the canal yesterday, but I snapped the photo for the record. The end is coming, though, and by tomorrow we will likely be just outside Bordeaux, which is about 150 km from where we are now, at noon, in Agen.
Agen is quite a big town and the canal lead us right in to it. What we saw, though, was pretty much anonymous buildings, distant churches, and traffic on bridges over the canal. No immediate sign of any bakeries, restaurants, grocery stores, or water, - the things that matter to us. Eventually we asked a pedestrian and got directed to a bakery. Back on the canal we just carried on, and soon the scene was back to water and Plane trees. So much for Agen.
One thing, though, the baguette from that bakery was really good. We can now distinguish quality differences in baguettes. A good one is crunchy but not tough, has flavour, slices without making too many crumbs, is chewy, and has visible gluteny strands. A bad one is a dry, tough, crumbly, bland hunk of white bread. There are at least three franchise suppliers of flour that an artisanal baker can be affiliated with (Banette, Label Rouge, and one other), and maybe it does make a difference. Unfortunately, we can not find a good baguette baker and stick with it. As travellers we just roll the dice each time. But hey, sometimes like in Agen, we win!
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I noticed a house withna large banana plant, but thought nothing of it. However by the time I saw my third, I decided it was a trend. We also ran into large plantations of kiwis, and an orange fruit that looks a bit like kumquat. Meanwhile, the dry heat we had experienced further south seems to have switched to the kind of humid heat that makes you suffer. Suffering in this case includes the rashes and chafing that comes from moisture. We have baby powder to help with that, but it does seem we have entered a different climatic zone, with moist heat and kiwi vines.
We had another stroke of good luck on the other side of Agen. We came upon a cyclist talking to two youngsters. The cyclist looked up and said "Steve and Dodie", " I know you from the internet: Crazyguy". Philippe, as he turned out to be, lives in Bordeaux and has a son in Toulouse. So he sometimes nips down there along the canal. On this trip, he checked Crazyguy just to see if there was anyone on the trail. He had read carefully, too, because he asked after Dodie's health and discussed which way the wind was blowing now.
The two youngsters were Dylan and Lucas, and unlike all the other French fisheremen we had seen, they actually caught something. It seemed to us that it might be an eel, leaving us to speculate on what eel recipes they might bring into play when they got home. Anyway, here's to Dylan and Lucas, the two greatest fishers we have found in France!
We had the usual issue of finding camping at the right distance, and discussed it with Philippe. He pulled out his phone with Google Maps and identified a camping at Lagruere, which was not marked on our maps.
At Lagruere we found a closed Halte Nautique and an adjacent camping spot that we took to be the municipal camping. There was a locked toilet building and a sign advising the reader needing a toilet to apply at the Mairie in the town, wherever the town might happen to be!
There was also a covered shelter with some tables, and one live power outlet near the roof. Covered shelter, tables, power, that a recipe for Grampie heaven! And if we need a toilet, I guess we can go discuss it with the mayor in the morning!
Today's ride: 77 km (48 miles)
Total: 4,614 km (2,865 miles)
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