Day 29 — Saturday 28 May 2011

Castel Jaloux – Eymet

The previous day I had relied on the Bryton GPS device for distances and I had successfully charged it from my solar panel in the evening. I strapped the solar panel onto a rear pannier so the sun shone on it fully during the day, and by evening it had soaked up sufficient to recharge the Bryton GPS again. Casteljaloux is on the north eastern edge of Les Landes and I left the flat terrain to drop down into the Garonne valley. I crossed the Canal Latéral à la Garonne and the Garonne itself at Le Mas-d’Agenais on a suspension bridge and climbed back out of the valley on small lanes that needed careful navigation. My object was to stay away from busy roads and I wormed my way from one small village to the next across small rivers and up and over short steep hills.

I’ve no notes of where I stopped for lunch, possibly at St Barthélemy d’Agenais. I rode up quiet lanes to Miramont-de-Guyenne and intended to go up to Bourgougnague on the D1 and then turn north on lanes up to Eymet for the night at a municipal site. However, just after St Laurent and before I got to Bourgougnague I spotted a sign to a campsite so I followed it on the basis of ‘a bird in the hand…’ Riding due north, a couple of kilometres after the left turn to Iffour, another camping sign pointed up a lane to the left and one hundred metres later I came to the entrance to a superb little private campsite basking in the afternoon sun.

I wheeled my bicycle up the white gravel path and a bronzed Englishman in shorts and no shirt came out of a mobile home and told me to camp anywhere on the small meadow and the owner would be down to see me later. It appears that he had been here for months and simply didn’t want to leave. The owner’s wife came over a little later and showed me where the facilities block was, a spotless little single storey building with one of everything: toilet, shower, basin, washing machine, all beautifully tiled and attractively decorated. I showered and washed my clothing, hanging it on an apple tree to dry in the sun. They had a small swimming pool and I had a dip and was sitting by the pool about to write up my diary when the owner came over with a couple of beers and a bowl of nibbles, so instead I chatted with him for over an hour. He had worked for the British Civil Aviation Authority and for Virgin Airways before taking early retirement and buying the property with maybe two acres of land that he’d turned into this delightful off the beaten track campsite.