This will be quick as daughter and I are off to Heathrow to meet J back from her three week work/leave trip to India. I hope J will appreciate us arriving: she knows that it’s my idea of a nightmare for jsut two of us to get into an metal box powered by an infernal combustion engine (a diesel one to make things worse, though we can plead that when we bought it people were still saying they were the right thing to do). It’s even been a nice day here, almost perfect for cycling with high cirrhus now cooling things fast.
Not only are we getting into the (smallish) tank, but we’re doing it just on the rush hour, on a Friday, and going to be on the M4 as everyone floods out of London for the weekend. Aargghhh. Probably should have gone at midday but then the parking fees at Heathrow would have needed a second mortgage.
There is something appropriate about going off to meet J though as this day last year was the last before I would meet up with her for our “week off”, using said infernally combusting tank to explore the south of France leaving Tito-to-be locked up safely somewhere. I wanted to get to from Blois to Cahors to be well on my way south by the time we met up, but we’ll come back to that.
There was one detour near the start, just after loading up with food as I remember it. This time I realised pretty rapidly that we shouldn’t be climbing if the route, as I knew it should, was going to on the South of the Loire again. Here’s the pertinent bit of track from last year.
Hm. It’s funny looking at that a year on. The change in colour of the track confirms that I’d stopped. That must have been where I bought food. I can even picture the place and some of the road now, despite the passage of time, and that’s a bit odd really as it wasn’t very preposessing. Not horrible but not the best aspect of Blois (which has a glorious chateau in the middle, but I knew I had to let that go and that I had seen it at least three times before!)
Then it was off along the voie verte and minor roads, high cloud softening the heat rather like today at least for the morning. I piled on but was running out of time … as I am now. OK:got to go! Will continue this story, a bit out of register, tomorrow. Just to balance things up, I’ll also go back to yesterday 2017 and a conversation with Helena and some thoughts about why I’m blogging all this. But now, hey ho, we must off to Heathrow. “Onward James and don’t spare the …” hm, no!