2-4 June Offa's Dyke - Chepstow-Pandy 40 miles

I have been walking on and around the Offa's Dyke long distance path for perhaps 30 years with my very old friend Anthony Farnsworth. Mostly we meet in May or June for a walking weekend, usually involving a couple of short urban walks and a longer rural walk, often on the Dyke path itself. We have not tackled the northern half of the walk together, mostly exploring those parts south of Bishop's Castle.

This time we decided on a two day walk with 3 overnight stays and the weather was pleasant, if a little stifling on Saturday. I had never explored Chepstow before, a pleasant market town but with a lot of new estate development. The river Wye and the forbidding castle are the most striking features. Chepstow is doing pretty well. The river, which has a dramatic tidal rise is crossed by an elegant iron mid-Victorian bridge and the walk up above the river is beautiful, mostly through woods with views down into former quarries and a classic view over Tintern Abbey. We met various long distance walkers on our trip, some from New Zealand and Canada.

There is considerable climb and descent on this first leg of the walk and the route passes through the Forest of Dean before reaching Monmouth, another excellent market town with a good ironmongers, as previously noted, this is a high point and market for both of us. The town is somewhat dominated by Monmouth School and has both the Monnow and the Wye as features, There is a wonderful 13th Century bridge and fortified gatehouse over the Monnow. We decided to have a curry and the Misbah Tandoori appears as number 4 restaurant in Monmouth on Trip Advisor but although well run, clean and with prompt service (from Monmouth School 6th formers) the un-marinated tough lamb and sugared massala sauce spoiled the meal for me.

The following day, after an excellent breakfast from Penny Dawes at Ebberley House B&B, we strode off on the final leg to Pandy, just below the Black Mountains. Actually, I walked with care rather than striding, as I had been cavalier in carrying too heavy a pack and blisters were a bane on both days. My feet had softened after a month on a bike and the final few hours of the walk were a trial. The route had far fewer climbs and mainly went through farmers' fields. The high point of the afternoon was a pint of Wye Valley Brewery IPA at the Hunter's Moon Inn at Llangattock Llangoed, rarely so welcome.

Cath said that I looked like a weary little old man as I shuffled gingerly up the drive of our friends Cedric and Fran Mathison, who live a mile from Pandy on the River Monnow and who were generously putting us up. A restorative dinner was entirely welcome and the presence of two visitors in their 20s added life to the table. They were going on with the father of one to cycle 60 miles from Port Talbot the following morning.

I took Antony to Abergavenny station on Sunday morning for his return to Exeter. Cath, Cedric and I had a community lunch at the village hall in Walterstone with many lively and excellent senior women of the parish. Fran was helping with service in a stalwart fashion. They know everyboddy, despite having only been there 4 years, intrepid social creatures that they are. The return journey was a trial, mostly on the A49 to avoid the vileness of the M6, but that went well. The problem was that the air conditioning on our aged Prius needs re-gassing and this had only been revealed during this, the first hot spell of the year. Returning to the coolth of our east facing sitting room was a welcome end to the day.

Prades-Nohèdes, a pretty relentless hill climb for me

On Saturday 14 May, I decided to test the repairs and upgrading to our son Alex's old hybrid. Various contradictory stickers had been applied to it (British Eagle, Ridgeback and others) when Alex bought it from what might loosely be described as a flea market in Shipley, a converted weaving shed with various stalls selling what might to one person be tat and to another, bric-a-brac and collectibles.  It has a lightweight steel frame but had been restored or tadged up by the vendor and what could one expect for 60 quid? The main problems after Alex's crash, about 3 years ago apart from his broken collar bone) were a broken back axle, a little buckling in the rear wheel, excessive play in the bottom bracket and a badly worn chain ring. I replaced the chain ring, had the bike shop replace the axle and I stripped down and repacked the ball bearings in the bottom bracket. I also set up the front derailleur, using good old YouTube. I have found much helpful guidance on there for woodworking and bike maintenance stuff that I would never have known how to do.

Anyway, we took the old bike into retirement in France for light duty, in case anyone wanted to come along on a bike ride. It was running reasonably well and the low gearing made it very adept at hill climbing. It was originally 14 gears but now 21 and the extra 7 are mainly in the lower register. Unfortunately I had been over-optimistic about the bottom bracket and it soon started to have far too much play and it was clear that the ball bearings had converted from association to rugby and were too far gone. I decided to order a sealed bottom bracket from Shimano (more YouTube help) but it was very hard to measure the overall width. I did my best and posted the required parts to our friends Greg and Barbara, so that I could fit them when we arrived by bike from England. The parts included a new seat post, little had I realised when I bought a better gel saddle that seat posts varied in diameter so much. Over a few days I fitted the new saddle and the bottom bracket, which, fortunately, was the right width. I tested it out on a lovely trip up the valley past St Michel de Cuxa to Taurinya and the El Taller Bistrot de Pays but the rear wheel kept kicking out of alignment and causing the brakes to bind. Over the following couple of days I worked out that the movement of the side pull brake was being fouled by the luggage pannier that Alex had fitted and any use of the rear brake kicked the wheel out of alignment by about 10mm. This would have had a major impact when he braked sharply in the rain. Once I removed the pannier rack it was fine and I wanted to try it on a decent climb.

We have been coming to this part of France for 14 years and had never managed to get right the way up the side valley that goes to Nohèdes and Urbanya. We had cycled up as far as Conat, which has a charming church, about 3 or 4 years ago, but no further. I was on my ancient, heavy, steel Kahlkoff "street bike" on that occasion and it had been a major pull. I made the same trip with Alex in 2014 just before we went up Mt. Canigou.

So I set off, and the road goes up and up and up for 14 kilometres and ascends about 550 metres. I plugged away, stopping for water a couple of times and it took me about an hour and 50 minutes.  Luckily the road was formed to allow a horse and cart to climb up to the village and is perfectly manageable by bike, even or  senior gadget and occasional cyclist like me. Coming down took 25 minutes. There is a nature reserve at the top and Nohèdes is very much in the style of other Pyrenean mountain villages: tightly packed rubble stone houses with fishtail slate roofs, some with the traditional bulge of the projecting oven and quite a lot are clearly holiday houses, but there is a mairie and a seasonal cafe/restaurant and quite a number of people clearly live there. Further up there is a hydroelectric power station and some low ranch-style houses overlooking the valley. There are some old hippies but it is not as alternative as Llugols, further down the valley. A drizzly and grey day but a great afternoon out and I got to find out about the Pyrenean desman, a very rare aquatic mole that lives in this remote part of the mountains.

A note on the bikes and the kit

The bikes. In view of the great distance, the anticipated mixed terrain  and the necessary rear panniers, hybrids were a better bet than road or mountain bikes. Mine is a fairly light 6-year-old German bike, a Focus Arriba and Cath's Californian Marin Kentfield is about 18 months newer. It was rather higher geared than her previous Marin and a couple of years ago I replaced the chain ring to help with hill climbing. Both bikes have 3x8-speed Shimano drive trains and V-brakes. They are better than entry level hybrids but not very expensive and they held up very well. The chains needed oiling every four days or so and the dusty conditions led to a build-up of oil cake in the rear derailleurs by the end of the trip. The plastic or composite pulley wheels in the rear derailleurs are now quite badly worn but still performing. The left hand gear shift for the front derailleur on my bike became very loose about a third of the way into the trip, as a result of failure of the lock nut. I tightened it up but it would not hold and eventually it dropped off on our way across Brittany. By that stage it was clear that the remainder of the journey would not have too many steep gradients and I manually set it on the middle chain ring and made do with 7 gears for the rest of the trip, the highest gear failing to engage. I ordered replacement Shimano gear shifts the day after we arrived and I have now fitted them. Apart from that my back wheel is slightly buckled but not much and after so many roots and ruts with heavy panniers and a crash 4 years ago on an old railway line in County Durham, this is not too surprising. We are leaving the bikes here in France and going back by train.

The panniers. Cath has a pair of first rate and completely waterproof Ortlieb Panniers, which have an excellent anchor mechanism and carrying handles that make them easy to take on and off. There are also optional shoulder straps. My Altura ripstop nylon panniers are cheaper, still pretty good but not really resistant to sustained heavy rain, so I pack the contents in a series of plastic bags and this seems to work OK. We only got thoroughly soaked once and one of mine shipped a little water but nothing much. My panniers clamp on but the mechanism is not completely reliable and really extreme bumps can cause the left hand one to jump off. Perhaps I need to make some adjustments. The carrying handles are rudimentary but I lock them together with the Kryptonite D-lock and that provides a handle and prevents them from falling off, if they do jump free. We also use a metre long sheathed steel cable to fasten the bikes to lamp posts and bike stands, as necessary.

Clothing. We both had polyester fleece base layers and fluorescent yellow waterproof cycling jackets that we have been using for some time. These were very effectively waterproof and windproof, the latter being a particular requirement on this trip. We both wore Lycra leggings with gel cushion seats and we both have gel saddles. Zinc ointment cream was needed for a few days, while our calluses developed but saddle soreness was not really an issue for most of the journey. I wore Altura cycling shorts with gel-cushioned Lycra shorts once we crossed the Loire but I did revert to leggings after getting very cold in the violent winds on the approach to Toulouse. We both have Sealskinz gloves but mine are not insulated enough for colder weather and I used Berghaus mitts most of the time, often with a thin pair of cotton gloves inside, having poor circulation in my hands, made worse by gripping handlebars. Cath has Specialized cycle shoes without cleats and I wore 10-year-old Salomon waterproof and breathable sports shoes with a toggle lace that folds away in a pouch. Both performed outstandingly, although Cath had colder feet. Socks were mainly the excellent Endura cycling socks. Underwear was nylon and after some reservations, it turned out to be fine. We also took t-shirts but the weather was too cold to wear them until the last day when I wore one under a long-sleeved shirt. We took a couple of items and one other pair of shoes for wearing to eat out in the evening. We only did this after we had washed any clothes and hung them up to dry in the hotel room. We managed to dry everything overnight, which was a relief.

Other kit. Simple picnic items proved very useful - plastic cups, a knife, forks and spoons, a tea towel and a waiter's friend. A cool bag would have been useful but the weather was on the cold side and we managed with a couple of plastic containers with snap-on lids for butter and cheese. Basic bike tools were fine supplemented by the Leatherman multi-tool that I bought 12 years ago. This has been invaluable, especially the narrow nosed pliers, screwdrivers, nail scissors and file. A short bungee cord has had a variety of uses. Cath marked up and cut down the Michelin maps of our intended route, kindly provided by Annie Mitchell with a map case and a challenge to do the trip in the first place. I also used a Garmin Etrek 30 GPS to check against the map. For this I downloaded a French cycle map based on Open Street Map provided by a German guy who runs velomap.org and this was very helpful. We also used Google maps and Open Cycle Map on Cath's iPhone. I used the excellent ViewRanger app on my iPhone to calculate daily distances travelled using GPS but not mobile data. Nor did I download the many map tiles that would have been needed for the trip because of the data cost and the space that they would have taken up. It is always useful to have multiple channels to check directions and progress. The other source of information that proved essential was Trip Advisor, which we used to select hotels, B&B's and restaurants, very reliably. Airbnb proved much less useful because in France we were only booking at most a couple of days ahead and the delays and uncertainty in hearing from the host didn't really work.

Plus ça change - 50 years in France and Britain

We both had our first experiences of France approaching 50 years ago; our 2016 trip was at a pace that allowed us to look about and to visit many towns and villages, only some of which we had seen before. This reminded us of what we love about France and how much has changed over the last 50 years, in Britain as well as in France. This is partly a result of increasing standards of living but also the catalytic impact when each generation is compelled to cast off the habits and styles of the last. Some eventually adopt more of the habits of their parents but L P Hartley was right, the past is a foreigncountry; they do things differently there. You can't go back because things have changed. The other major pressure for change is external - globalisation, often driven by its rowdy younger brother, Americanisation. Whole aisles of supermarkets in Bordeaux now contain sweet fizzy drinks, as they do in Basildon and Baltimore, and friends mentioned last week that France (France!) is McDonald's fastest growing market. O tempora! O mores! Obesity!

In 1968 things were rather different. I crossed the Channel on a small and ancient passenger ferry, noticeably rusty but with polished brasswork, including a plate proudly commemorating service in evacuating the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940. It was clear immediately on arrival in France that you were somewhere utterly foreign. Electric trains with couchettes for overnight travel and signs saying "EAU NON POTABLE" and "DEFENSE DE SE PENCHER AU DEHORS", almost exclusively French cars, very long, straight country roads flanked by plane trees or poplars, strong-smelling dark tobacco in Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes in beguiling packets and policemen with guns, not a familiar sight in Bridlington.

On that occasion we were passing through on a school trip to Italy, also disocovered to be pleasingly foreign, although my terror of the (actually very good) food might well have convinced my chums that I was not in the least enjoying the experience. But that is another story. Returning to France on later visits, we discovered zinc bars in cafés serving aniseed flavoured pastis that turned milky when water was added, unfamiliar beers in small glasses, boulangeries quite unlike any English bakery, vast amounts of varied wine, dishes in the brasseries like tête de veau and moules marinières, shutters on windows, roof tiles, the Solex 49cc 2-stroke powered bicycle, post boxes, telegraph poles, wardrobes in provincial hotels, bidets, ancient bedsteads with bolsters, bentwood chairs, buildings, everything was interestingly different.

Terence Conran was similarly smitten and wrote a delightful book showing the variety and individuality of French design, largely in pictures, from the Belle Époque onwards. (Terence Conran's France. with Pierrette Pompon Bailhache, Maurice Croizard. Little, Brown, 1987.) This is not just about buildings but everyday items such as cooking pots and chairs, many of which have largely disappeared, except in flea markets. On this trip we saw a huge one in Bordeaux, part of the Spring festival. There was a vast amount of old tat, much of it the worse for wear, having been dragged from cellars and attics, and it was very evocative.

This is not to say that some older designs are not still manufactured but it is noticeable that for day-to-day household and DIY items, very, very few traditional ironmongers/hardware shops remain (that wonderful word quincailleries). We only saw one on our travels, such is the dominance of the edge-of-town DIY stores, which tend to sell mostly standard Euro stock. Web searches have not yet revealed others or any sort of association of traditional shops. They have dwindled severely in the UK but I have had great pleasure in discovering them in the Welsh Borders with my old pal Anthony Farnsworth. Bunners in Montgomery is a particular delight (http://www.bunners.co.uk/) but Devon and other places still have several very good examples.

France and Britain retain their individuality but under constant assault. The EU has made it easier for motor vehicles, clothing, food, drink, building products and everything else to be exported, leading to a much greater standardisation than we saw in our early visits to France. And, of course, things do change. The quality and variety of food when eating out in Britain has improved beyond belief in 50 years. In France it feels as though there has been a decline, although very good food is still to be had if you seek it out and are prepared to pay. On the other hand, pizzas are everywhere, partly because of speed but also because of high margins for restaurateurs. We ate at several  restaurants in the past month that still have a traditional menu but also offer pizza and pasta dishes, with a busy take away service. I have written elsewhere about coffee but it is striking that the coffee bar chains have revolutionised the availability of, mostly pretty good, fresh ground coffee in Britain. France clings to over-roasted, bitter coffee as a fine tradition but we are not convinced. And, mes amis, sterilised milk is pants and only to be used for emergencies. With several hundred years of gastronomy under your belts and all those beautiful vaches in their many and varied pastures producing lovely fresh milk, how can you imagine that it is possible to make a decent cafe au lait without it?

A month on a bike

Work and other commitments prevent most people from committing long, continuous periods to sustained activities. In recent years we have taken several cycling holidays lasting up to a week but no more. It is worth reviewing the unique experience of cycling almost every day for a month. We know that the distances involved are nothing special for the cycling zealots but for us they were significant.

Perhaps the most striking effect was how rapidly we left behind day-to-day concerns. Holidays and travelling by no means guarantee this. People often travel "to get away from it all" but they usually take their mental baggage with them, finding it impossible to escape from themselves. Lying on a beach and scooping up the local alcohol in foreign bars is not likely to give reliable peace of mind. Riding a bike is different. One must concentrate to steer, grip the handlebars, navigate kerbs, potholes, roots, gravel and the like. Not to do so risks missing the route, an unfortunate and losing encounter with a heavy lorry or perhaps disappearing into a canal. 

This is not to say that the journey has been a white-knuckle, clenched-jaw test of endurance. There have been long stretches of well-surfaced, clear routes where it was possible to achieve a state of mental flow, thinking and quietly taking in the varied landscape, wildlife and buildings. Former railway tracks are particularly good for this, pine forests much more boring. There is something particularly satisfying about mixed, deciduous woodland and mature trees were a big feature of this trip. We both found that we relaxed fairly quickly and because I brought up the rear at Cath's pace, I mostly had a fairly steady time of it. It took longer than she expected to develop the muscles in her legs, arms and shoulders. Controlling a bike with two reasonably heavy rear panniers takes a fair amount of strength, especially during low speed or walking manoeuvres as the bike tends to pivot about the front wheel and tip over. By the final third of the journey she had picked up the pace and was confidently able to achieve 80 kilometres (50 miles) a day and still have capacity. We were struck anew, over and again, by how efficient and robust a machine a decent bicycle is.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the daily routine of travel, eating, washing and sleeping left time for little else. This simplification is relaxing in itself, particularly since it promotes long and restful sleep. It also puts all else into perspective. Our physical and mental health have been much improved, despite taking only two days off, in my case, and three for Cath. Moreover, although there were occasional minor irritations, we did not grow to loath each other's weather-beaten faces, despite a continuous month in each other's company. Cath has had 39 years' exposure to my random witterings and outbursts of noise and we can still make each other laugh every day. She is also prepared to put up with my need to stop regularly to take photographs of brickwork, door handles, signs and rainwater goods.

So, overall I think that this was a wonderful experience, during which we both reflected on nearly 50 years of visits to France and I will write about this separately. We had very little rain but the winds were a major nuisance and, unfortunately, it turned out to be a very cold April across Europe. On many days the conditions were ideal and we had some beautiful morning starts to our day's adventure. It was blissful to be out in the fresh air, whizzing along and threading our way through towns and villages in a country that we love. We did not have youth on our side and the only revolutions were those of our wheels (apologies to Tim Moore) but Wordsworth's lines on the French Revolution do come to mind:

 OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
 For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
 Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
 But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
 The attraction of a country in romance!

Andrew Hodges - Alan Turing: The Enigma (1983)

Although there was very little time for much other than our daily routine of travel, eating, bodily maintenance, booking the next accommodation and mapping/blogging,  we did have the Guardian, ebooks and audio books on our iPads. We watched a little French TV on 2 nights only. It is good for our French but mostly this was more than we wanted to do. 

I did finish off Andrew Hodges' lengthy and impressive biography of Alan Turing, prompted by having seen the film, The Imitation Game, earlier in the year and wondering how close to the true story it came. Not very. Benedict Cumberbatch had a good stab at it but opted for a much more autistic interpretation and Keira Knightley was a ludicrously glamorous version of Joan Clarke. Alan was a very eccentric chap, frustrating his mother by collecting the numbers from the little metal tags on telegraph posts but I found these fascinating. He also favoured ties in lieu of belts and was a scruffy article. 

This is a powerful and committed book. As a campaigning gay man and a maths/physics academic, AH was strongly drawn to AT's story, as he gradually found out more. AT was a shy and socially awkward man, who reached the conclusion that being gay was as normal as anything else in human nature and should not be prohibited in a free society. He was out to his closest friends and colleagues and this and his various oddities were tolerated in the exclusive and privileged academic circles in which he moved. Kings College Cambridge suited him particularly well: there was a strong homosexual culture, including JM Keynes and, later, EM Forster. Alan was wide-ranging in his thoughts and interests and keen to cross the strong boundaries which existed at the the time between maths, science and engineering, the latter being distinctly below the salt. He had his own small laboratory at home and carried out various experiments, including the use of poisons. 

I was also interested because of the connections with Manchester and Oxford Road/Street, where I worked for close on 25 years. An early coffee bar, cinemas and various pubs and public toilets were the centre of Manchester's gay sub-culture in the 1950s until a move to Canal Street during the 1980s. It was on Oxford Road that Alan invited a young man, Arnold Murray, to visit him at his house in Wilmslow, leading to a subsequent burglary by an acquaintance of Arnold. Very little was taken and Alan foolishly reported the burglary to the police. In the subsequent interview he was caught out in a lie, leading to his naive and frank admission of his relationship, still illegal under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same cruel legislation under which Oscar Wilde was prosecuted. 

The Government was experimenting with oestrogen injections and Alan opted for this instead of prison. The treatment does not seem to have successfully inhibited his urges or his outness; he visited Norway and Club Med in Corfu, where attitudes were more liberal. A young Norwegian came to seek him out and was deported, indicating the level of surveillance that he was under, reinforced by American Cold War paranoia about the likelihood of the Russians' blackmailing homosexuals with sensitive knowledge. Guy Burgess, another Cambridge homosexual and Donald Maclean (both Trinity, Cambridge and British Embassy, Washington) had disappeared in 1951. Alan's work on Enigma and the encryption of secret correspondence between the US and British governments came back to haunt him. Hodges' conclusion is that his death was suicide, probably as a rational decision, after it became clear that the security services would restrict his life and his work, keeping him under intensive surveillance. He was found lying neatly in his bed with a part-eaten apple on the bedside table. Death was by cyanide poisoning and, although the apple was never tested, Hodges believes that Alan's love of games and riddles would have led him to take satisfaction from a Snow White finale. 

Days 29-31 Castelnaudary-Prades 251km Part 2 of 2

Here are pictures of the canal by the Etang.

After quite an adventure in the dunes below P-l-N, we heaved the bikes up onto the stub of  a road that showed up on the GPS and this took us to Leucate village and on down the coast to Le Barcares. 97km is our longest day yet and this means that Cath has managed a 60-mile day before her 60th birthday.  The old village is a down to earth Catalan seaside place but is overwhelmed by the new marina and flat developments. Such highly seasonal places are invariably soulless, whereas Port-la-Nouvelle seems to have a strong retired/permanent population. The Hotel De La Mer, in Le Barcares, where we ended the day, was fine - black curtains but not a black toilet pan, as in Hourtin in the Gironde. Sadly the cursed Tuesday night closing meant that eating options were severely restricted but we had a decent meal.

And so we have gone from sea to shining sea, the English Channel (la Manche) to the Atlantic and then to the Mediterranean, as the photos show. That beard needs a damn good hacking.

Wednesday morning brought a cloudless sky and, finally, the wind had dropped but it was already pretty hot at 9:00 am. The excellent Tarmac cycle route along the River Agly took us swiftly to Rivesaltes but this wheeze to avoid the traffic of Perpignan proved not such a good idea. We struggled to find a way round the airport and lost some time but ploughed on through the wine villages on the north bank of the Têt - Saint-Estève, Pézilla-la-Rivière - and on through Millas and Ille-sur-Têt, all familiar but never previously cycled through. So far pretty level but there followed a steady and punishing climb up to Prades (average height 357m) along the busy main road in the very strong sun. We cycled up to our front door and the interior cool that was very welcome. The walls are substantial and shutters work well to keep out unwanted heat. Home at last! as Kenneth Grahame's mole would have thought. Adventures are all very well but it is nice when they come to an end.

Days 29-31 Castelnaudary-Prades 251km Part 1 of 2

The unwonted absence of blog posts (an inelegant term, I think) and map updates over the last 3 days may have led those following this not-very-incredible journey to fear a hideous post-cassoulet incident or a bike-in-canal episode. Nothing so dramatic, dear reader, merely a lack of any or adequate wifi.

We arrived fit and well at our house in Prades about 4.30 yesterday afternoon, 31 days and 1,945 cycling kilometres (1,208 miles) since we started in Worcester (Cath estimated 1,894) and 2,233 kilometres (1,387 miles) from Mellor to Prades. I had 2 days of not cycling, so that is an average of 42 miles a day, not too bad for senior citizens toting panniers. The final 3 days were demanding but we had concluded that we would push on à toute vitesse to avoid another overnight stop. This is not because we were sick of hotels; rather surprisingly, spending most of the last 31 nights in different places has been fine and we have been bucked by the generally pretty high standard of comfort and cleanliness. A significant number of the breakfasts have been pretty feeble and most provided many opportunities to take in fearful amounts of sugar. Choices included hot chocolate, cakes, muffins, Nutella, honey, jams, chocolate confectionery, Viennoiserie, dried fruits, sweetened yoghurts and bizarre sugar-laden breakfast cereals. My top prize for sickliness goes to the Hotel de France in Rochefort.
As we feared, the coffee has generally been execrable. An Italian would have wept. However, being English and stoical, we held back the tears and contented ourselves with occasional mutterings of disappointment. We did have the odd 11:00 am espresso that was pretty decent but this morning we bought supplies of Malongo, our preferred French brand. This, together with fresh full cream milk, provides a rich and sturdy relief from the maiden's water to which we have been accustomed, albeit a dehydrated maiden with kidney disease.

We did have some very good bread, however, sometimes at breakfast and frequently from the many decent bakers that remain, and from whom we bought bread for our daily picnics. Most claim to be 'artisans' but only some are the real deal and we have become adept at sniffing them out. Nevertheless none matched the extraordinary quality of the bakery at Ille-sur Têt, down the road from here: Henri Poch and son at Boulanger et Chocolatier Le Couvent bake properly fermented bread of rare quality.

Our final 3 days en route were just as interesting as the other 28 but the lamentable quality of the Canal du Midi towpath and the strong Tramontane twind on the first two of these made the journey difficult. The French department of navigable waterways is responsible for upkeep of the canal but it is only if individual Départements wish to invest in improving the path that any decent or consistent standard is maintained. Haute Garonne, brilliant, good signage, lots of Tarmac but Aude, pitiful, with little signage, rutted dried mud, rocks, tree roots/stumps and coarse gravel, wholly unsuitable for cycling. Monday was a bank holiday in lieu of May Day, which fell on a Sunday, so we had opted for a self-catering room near Homps, just off the canal. This turned out to be a development of 100 units in an aparthotel by the very old vineyard, Château de  Jouarres. The estate buildings were very fine and perhaps early 18C. The room itself was not the cleanest that we have had and the promised 700m walk to the shop proved to be 1.89km not something devoutly to be wished after a 79km cycle journey in sub-optimal conditions. The beer was, as always, just what the body craves after a long walk or cycle trip.

Tuesday was sunny with few clouds but the Tramontane was often rather a battle.  Nevertheless it was behind us most of the way and we booled along at top speed through the charming Minervois wine villages on our way to Narbonne. Some of this was along the Canal de la Robine which connects Narbonne to the Canal du Midi and goes on to Port-la-Nouvelle much further down the coast. To do this it passes between the sea and the Étang de Leucate on a narrow embankment. The railway line is alongside it much of the way, a very unusual landscape with a nature reserve at Cap Sainte Lucie. The wind across the étang is a regular feature here and the stunted Mediterranean pines are permanently bent towards the sea. We have been to Port-la-Nouvelle before and like it very much. Although it has great beaches and solid neighbourhood type restaurants, it is predominantly a port town with silos, oil tanks, a cement works and large merchant vessels, as in the photograph.

Days 27&28 Castelsarrasin-Castelnaudary 127km

The weather has been a little challenging: extremely strong winds, gusting up to 50kph and threatening to blow us into the canal yesterday and the air was full of dust, pollen and leaf casings from the 200+ year old plane trees that flank the canals, providing shade (which we could do without, in these temperatures) and stabilising the canal banks. They are clearly subject to statutory protection and each has a little blue label nailed in place showing its serial number. The country continues to have large wheat fields and their grain silos but there have been a lot of fruit trees, apples certainly but previously there were presumably plum trees to supply the bloated prune magnates of Agen. Cath's book on the canals says that Agen has been voted the best place to live in France. The various indigents that we saw did not seem entirely convinced, particularly one who had broken open a street bin to sift through its contents. Perhaps they come from all over France because of the quality.

I digress, since that was Day 25. Toulouse brought the junction of the Canal de Garonne and the Canal du Midi, which came first, historically. Catherine tells me that it was the Grand Projet of Pierre Paul Riquet, Baron de Bon Repos (crazy name!, crazy guy!), 1609-1680,  who was an entrepreneurial tax farmer (the Gabelle, or salt tax, what an operation) and he managed to fund and procure this extraordinary feat of hydraulic engineering. My spouse and helpmeet also tells me that the canal was an early feminist triumph, as Pyrenean peasant women were found to have ancient skills in water engineering and the construction of thermal baths, passed down from the Romans and were recruited to provide technical and project skills. At the peak there was a labour force of 12,000.

Unfortunately the effectiveness of the route has attracted parallel competitors, first the railway and then the increasingly muscular road networks. At this point I would like to state how bloody angry I am that we have been sold a pup by the EU and the shameless bunch of shits in the motor industry. Diesel particulates are a shameful scandal.

To return to more mundane matters, but close to my soul néanmoins, we had a wonderful tapas and wine evening at Les Passionnés in Toulouse, close by our Ibis, which was also first rate: great staff, comfortable room, one of the best breakfasts that we have had. The bikes had a hotel room of their own.  This evening a dispiriting trek round a windy Castelnaudary brought us to the distinctly tarnished Hotel Les Clos Fleuris but...great shower, secure garage for bikes and the restaurant was open Sunday night for residents!  Moreover, this is about a restaurant with the hotel on the side, celebrating le vrai cassoulet de Castelnaudary, where it all began in 1377, reputedly. Anyway. It was extremely good and just what I could handle after 69km in the wind. To be fair, for the first time we had a rear wind but one is still buffeted and the poor path surfaces in the Aude have proved tiring. The quality of the canal route is down to the local département, and they vary hugely.

Day 26 Agen-Castelsarrasin 60km

Further and further south we go and it was generally warmer today with cloudless blue skies but, as all agree, very cold for the time of year. However, we understand from Judith White that it has been snowing in Mellor, so mustn't grumble. Today we passed into the Département of Tarn Garonne and, indeed, passed over the Tarn on a long viaduct. We saw the oldest cloister in the world at Moissac and a fantastic south door with Day of Judgement tympanum but chose to put on a few more kilometres to shorten tomorrow's étage to Toulouse. Hank McCloughan would have loved it, and probably knows it well. The great scandal of the monastery at Moissac, now a World Heritage Site, is that SNCF demolished the monastery's refectory to build the Bordeaux to Sète railway and you can hear the trains thunder past behind the wall. Incroyable!

We had a fine Vietnamese meal tonight and tomorrow we will have curry, so as to provide some counterpoint to the French, provincial, meat-heavy diet. Having said all that, the pain de campagne and terrine from a nearby boucher/charcutier was very heaven for our lunchtime picnic. We have been reassured by being able to find bakers of really fine bread most days and we have not had a poor restaurant yet, despite having had to resort to a reasonably ok pizza in Marsan because the two preferred restaurants were closed on a Thursday. 

Tonight we are in a newly fitted out hotel, in a large room, which is great, although the slightly louche decor includes Helmut Newton and other slightly outré fashion/fetish photography on the stairs. The bathroom arrangements are of the 2/3 height screen type with the non-partitioned toilet artfully designed to be visible by mirror views. Whatever turns you on.  We have been encouraged to leave our bikes in the corner of the breakfast room. Cyclists have generally high status in France and we had a discount from €6.50 to €4.00 on our visit to the cloister because we are cyclistes. 

Church at Mas d'Agenais - photos

Days 24&25 Bordeaux-Agen 165km

An interesting couple of days: beautiful and enjoyable ascent into the hills to the south east of Bordeaux on a redundant former rail line., followed by our first day on the Canal Latéral de Garonne. How naïve I was to think that the French must have retained all their branch lines and, from a cycling perspective, thanks to Le Bon Dieu that they did not.  We rose up into the hills and saw our first vineyards since entering Garonne, including the unfortunately named Château Manson. At Créon the ancient market had live chickens and very fine produce. This land is a productive paradise, like Sicily, only cooler. Sauveterre-en-Guyenne is a small, solid fortified hilltop wine town with wide and low colonnades to keep off the summer sun.

Then followed a more difficult descent to La Réole, a similar sized town but crippled and dying as a result of heavy traffic. The 12C Romanesque town hall is extraordinary, our carefully restored B&B run by the lovely Anne was charming and we had a great meal at the No.2 restaurant in town with fantastic value wine but like, so many, the town has real problems.

Then across the Garonne on the early 20C suspension bridge and on to Mas d'Agenais to see the Rembrandt in the local church, a few hundred metres steeply uphill from the canal. The painting was very fine but the big surprise was the church, a fantastic Romanesque gem in the creamy local stone. The market was in progress and the familiar accents of the Pays d'Oc grow stronger and stronger. Another good dinner tonight at l'Imprévu in Agen: tournedos Rossini and a fine bottle of Buzet. Our B&B host has been great and we have a little cabin next to his pool. Tomorrow we continue along the canal and will look at Moissac, which is highly recommended. Canal scenes below, showing how near the Gironde is at several points.