by Liz

Miles : 43. Ascent : 551’.

Everything hurt this morning, including my head where I clonked it last night walking straight into a low beam in the bedroom. Philip’s tennis elbow was playing up and my left shoulder came out in sympathy with my right shoulder which has been fussing for a week now. 

After last night’s rain we set out in full sunshine. We dodged the snails crossing the bike path through L’Aiguillon-sur-Mer, a small rural community that makes its living from fishing and oyster farming. We came across an unexpected old UK phone box which turned out to be a ‘Boite à livres’ – a charming community book share scheme.

Eagle-eyed Philip spied a mobile phone on the gravelly track as we rode into a headwind between large ploughed fields. We could see on the emergency screen it belonged to an American in their early 70s but the owner’s number wasn’t included. The best we could do was create a little shrine for it beside the track with stones and a big arrow pointing to it and hope they’d find it.  Shortly after we stopped in St Michel en l’Herm for elevenses, where I snapped the beautiful house in the main picture at the top of this post.

The hedgerows today are letterbox red with unfamiliar berries and blue with ripe, powdery sloes. The fields of sunflowers are turning to seed and vines and creepers are tinged red. The landscape opened up to enormous ploughed fields, completely flat and void of trees or hedges, so that there was no discreet corner to be found for miles. When we finally came to a hedgerow I was giddy with relief. Just before lunch we crossed out of Pays de La Loire and into la Charente Maritime and followed a beautiful river on a path so bumpy I thought it might shake the teeth out of our heads. 

We were back on canals for the afternoon’s miles, in particular the Maran to La Rochelle canal. Philip spotted several kingfishers AND a red squirrel, his first ever. Other wildlife of the day included three coypu, two herons, an egret with a scratchy squawk, several kestrels, a blackcap and numerous little birds that flit alongside the tracks as we pass. 

We’re staying two miles east of La Rochelle this evening in an airy ‘loft’ style house where the sitting room ceiling is around 20 feet high. No low beams to catch us out tonight. Beyond the plane trees outside the front is the canal and the start of our route for tomorrow. Philip is cooking two fat, juicy steaks for dinner, as suggested by my brother Steve. And the morning’s aches and pains? They sorted themselves out in the first 15 miles and we are both feeling chipper and fit again. Normal service resumed.