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.