Days 19&20 Marsan-Royan 145km

... via La Rochelle and Rochefort. Four very different places but all connected by water and trade and strategic location and defence to varying degrees. We will definitely visit La Rochelle again and Rochefort. Royan and its nearby seaside satellites are interesting, the latter particularly for their maisons de charme and for more modern examples, see photos below.  I took a whole load more.

Rochefort is faded and has its problems, not least the challenges of crossing the Charente on a major road bridge, albeit with a cycle path. The alternative pont transpondeur, very much a copy of the Middlesborough Transporter Bridge was not working. All the same it is a great inland port with a lot of old money and some great Belle Époque buildings, and earlier.

Lovely bistro meal at the O'Bistro with a Côtes de Tarn white, Tallanin 2013, Sauvignon Blanc, that was perfect for the seafood we had. The Hotel de France was, like several period hotels that we have visited this trip, charmingly run but much made over with many special features. The old ballroom, where we stored our bikes, was particularly evocative.

By contrast we are tonight in Royan in a brutalist 1960s hotel, all part of the quarter that includes a shopping centre and Palais des Congrès (conference centre), all looking rather faded and mean (in internal spaces) now. Pleasingly, after being ripped off for €11 for two 0.25 cl Grimbergen at the Port de Plaisance, not any pleasure to a Yorkshireman, I assure you, we had a very good curry at the Taj Mahal, which has found its niche in the Le Corbusier inspired demi-paradise that is Rohan. I suspect the presence of too many Parisians and other well-off bourgeois. People were much grimmer and distinctly unwilling to say hello to fellow cyclists, which has pretty universally been the case to date. Connards!  And so to bed, and the morning ferry across the Bordeaux estuary.

Note from Cath

A couple of small problems today, day 20, that Brian didn't mention. First, I fell off my bike in Marennes, attempting to mount the kerb to stop so that Brian could take a photo of the remarkable church. I lay on my back on the pavement and found I was surrounded by a host of concerned French people, all of whom seemed to want me to get up. So, get up I did, even though I'd have much rather stayed lying on the pavement for a while. I felt I had to be cheerful and pleasant in French, assuring all my well-wishers that I was absolutely fine and that nothing was broken. Fortunately, this is basically true and I went on to cycle another 45km or so. People are so kind. [Brian notes that he didn't mention it for fairly obvious reasons of discretion. A disappointing aspect of this minor, but very public accident, was that he was inhibited from comforting Cath by the presence of several kind and concerned Locals, who may have interpreted this as English coldness. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?]

Later on Brian had a puncture, the first of the trip. He managed to get the repair done in about twenty minutes - very impressive.

Tomorrow we will cross into Aquitaine, and will leave the Vélodyssée cycle path that we have been more or less following since Roscoff. This is part of a greater cycle path that runs from Northern Sweden to Santiago de Compostela, so it is a kind of European superhighway for bikes. In places it's very good, but sometimes it dithers about, going down back alleys, along rutted cart tracks and through puddles of mud and hordes of pedestrians. We have learned to ignore it in places and to take a more direct route where appropriate. Still, I have appreciated it, despite its eccentricities.

Brian tells me that we have now completed 63% of our journey, nearly 2/3. I'm beginning to think I may be able to complete it....