Parthenay to Thouars 42 miles. Running total 689 miles.

Here is todays route. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/42318159

Our day starts with us feeling slightly worried after the number of hills we had to conquer yesterday. Garmin says today is going to be a tough long day with 1200 feet of climbing, but as a positive, it predicts 1500 feet of descent. We will see! The day is forecast to be overcast with occasional sunshine, which is good for this sort of cycling. The wind, however, is still against us.

I forgot to talk about the bottle of Rickard gifted to us with no thought of how we would carry it. At the first bottle recycling bank we came across, I stopped and poured it into my empty water bottle. The one that had previously carried red wine and I dumped the bottle as excess baggage. When we sampled it last night, it had travelled better than the wine.

We ate breakfast with two American cyclists who were doing a similar tour to us and visited Europe every year to explore somewhere different. After which it took us 30 minutes to find our way out of the fortified town of Parthenay. But at least we saw parts we had missed yesterday, including some very tame deer.

The first few hills were steep, but yesterday’s training must have helped us as we got up them all. The route then became undulating and nowhere near as challenging as yesterday. My compatriot was happy.

The route took us through a number of historic villages. France seems to be better at conservation than us. We stopped for coffee at the Marmite Cafe in the village of Gourge. It looked just like the cafe in Allo, Allo, and Madam, and Messur could have been part of the cast.

My compatriot thought her luck had changed when, while taking a photo of a distant chataux, a whole group (Pelton) of young cyclists stopped beside her and turned out to be English. They were all about 30 years younger than us, and it was a case of hare & tortoise during the day.  We caught them up three times as they were getting around various obstacles and deviations. They came from north Essex, and there were some Essex girls in the Pelton, but I restrained myself from trying to join them.

Our accommodation is called Moulin De L’ Abbess.  As we approached Thouars, we could see it was another hill town. So a mill could either be at the top of the hill or by the river.

While we stopped to take photos of the town, my compatriot engaged a local couple in Babel app French. She explained where we had come from, while I asked Google to direct us to our accommodation.  They were so impressed with what she had told them that they started telling everyone they passed about our exploits, or that’s what we’d like to think they were saying. One way or another, we are now famous in Thouars.

We were delighted to find our accommodation was a beautiful water mill adjacent to the bridge over the river on our route. Madam, who did not speak English, did the next best thing by welcoming us with a beer on the mill veranda. While we sat drinking it, another French cycling couple who we had passed along the route arrived. However, they were kept in a separate area of the veranda, probably so they were not exposed to Babel French.

Madam gave us an English tourist map of the town so we set off to explore. We had been recommended a restaurant, but because it turned out to be Ascension Day, it did not open. So it was across the road to a pizza restaurant, which was on the edge of The Place St Medard, named because of the Church opposite.

We finished the tour of this medieval town in the evening sunshine after we finished a bottle of local wine. Another very interesting place and again worth a visit, even without beer goggles, but not as extensive as yesterday’s Parthenay.

Who thought our trip would have visited and stayed in such interesting places. I can recommend the organiser even though I say it myself!