Day 34 — Friday 3 June 2011

Montmorillon – Le Blanc

This was a short day as I didn’t want to do the planned day’s ride as well as the extra leg from Montmorillon. I packed up carefully making sure I had not left anything lying around and set off up the D118 through Bethines and then onto the D17, the road changing its number as it left the department of Vienne and entered Indre.

The road climbed gently out of the Gartempe valley and dipped into the Salleron valley before climbing and dipping again into the Anglin valley at Concremiers where I pulled up for an early lunch. The restaurant was run by an English couple and I sat outside under an umbrella in the sun. Delightful!

On to Le Blanc where I crossed the river and turned right alongside it on the D951 for a kilometre or so to the municipal campsite. No-one was there but it was all functioning so I nipped under the barrier and pitched in a quiet corner in a shady wooded glade. By the time I had showered and hung my washing out to dry in the sun there were a couple of German campervans waiting at the barrier for the site manager to arrive to let them through. There was a notice on the office window saying it would open later in the afternoon. She came along in due course and after signing in and paying for the night I rode back into town and found the central square laid out for a town fête.

I sat in the sun writing up my diary and enjoying a beer and the bustle of bars, food tents with local cheeses and wine, art displays etc. A jazz group were warming up in a performance tent (accordion, guitar, trumpet and singer). Just up a side street a number of people were sat on folding chairs watching a raised platform on which a dancer moved slowly in response to a double bass player while a painter with a large house-painting brush drew her slow motion shapes on a canvass as big as him. As one canvass was completed he moved on to another all the while being filmed by a man with a video camera on a tripod. We all sat mesmerised watching the paint dry.

The sky was clouding over and there were swarms of little black flies everywhere so I slipped away and rode back to the campsite before the fête really got going.