Day 17 – Dog day morning

We felt like we could stay at the farm campsite until the cows came home! Luckily we knew they did this at 07:00 each day and in the event we overstayed and didn’t leave until 08:30. The cows didn’t seem to mind though.

Our route sent us along a tiny overgrown footpath which we decided to avoid. Followed the alternative road route for a few miles until we came across a house full of dogs. Dogs often bark as we pass; some of them would like to eat us, others just want to say hi and ask if we happen to have any sticks we might like to throw, but they’re always fenced in. These ones wanted to eat us and weren’t fenced in. We retreated and found a new route. It added ten miles but they were ten amazingly beautiful miles with low stone walls, lots of flowers and some amazing blue butterflies. It felt so perfectly summery and we’d have missed it without the scary dogs, so all’s well that ends well.

We arrived in a place with an E in its name and stopped for lunch. There was one brasserie open but their lunch offering was confit duck and I felt I’d eaten enough duck fat recently so we explored the town. Found a small epicerie with a butcher next door and between the two we were able to buy enough for a good lunch. Found a chateau and sat in its shade to eat. A collie-ish dog came to join us, from where I do not know. I told him he couldn’t have any food and he sat about 3 feet away and waited patiently. As soon as I looked away he snuck a few inches closer. He kept doing this until eventually I had to send him further away again. He went to sit beside Jackie instead and tried the same with her. In a moment of inspiration we named him Sneaky. After a lot of attempted sneaking he realised he wasn’t going to get lunch and wandered off. We finished our picnic and headed round to the brasserie for a drink. Guess who was outside hassling customers for lunch? Yes, of course, it was Sneaky!

We filled our water bottles at the brasserie and headed onwards. A hilly afternoon with lots of old farm buildings. Arrived at Figeac and had a beer to celebrate the end of our day’s riding.

Found our campsite for the night and set up our tent. The campsite felt very boring in its layout but pitches were extremely flat and the pegging was easy. We got the tent up just in time to go for a swim in the campsite open air pool which was an enormous relief after such a hot sweaty day (we washed our sweat off before getting in the pool, we’re not entirely feral! …yet).

Back into Figeac for dinner. Once again a very old town centre full of half-timbered and wonky buildings. Jackie had a giant bowl of pasta and I had a pizza which was ok.

Back to the campsite where we washed some of our grubby clothes and strung them out to hopefully dry in the morning. Then to bed.

Miles cycled: 34

Total miles: 596

Metres climbed: 590

Good things today: