Thursday October 18, Pouligny Saint Pierre

This morning we only had a drive of 1 ½ hours, had spotted a Voie Verte cycle way and found an Aire nearby. The drive took us through rural heartland France with fields of Limousin cattle and surprisingly quite a few sheep. Farmer Ian really enjoyed checking it all out!

A very pleasant Aire overlooking the Creuse River and a boulangerie right beside it! Popped in and got some bread (really good), and managed in my limited French to find out where the cycle route was….about 1 ½ kms away! I thought that we were right on it!!!  Checked out google maps and found some lesser roads that would take us to it, rather than riding on the main road. Never trust google maps, the road started well but ended up as a two-wheel farm track that ended up at a gate that hadn’t been opened for years. Retracked a little and found another track and we bumped our way through until we finally came to a road, really needed a mountain bike! After a lot of mucking around found the cycle track but what a disappointment especially after our last ride in the Dordogne. The track was gravel, lots of pot holes and rather rough. It got quite grim with lots of rubbish lying on the side and soon realised why – there were a number of gypsy camps dotted along in the bush and rubbish was everywhere. Not a good scene.

We continued on as we had seen a very big viaduct on it, part of the old train track. It was really impressive, about 500 metres long and very high up – and it was sealed! Discovered a better route back to camp as didn’t want to return over the same track, had to put my big boy pants on and ride on the main road, but made it. Clocked up 20 kms after all our cross-country riding. Had planned to do some more riding on the track tomorrow but flagged that and put our bikes away when we returned. So only a few photos today.