The night was filled with the howls of abandoned youth as we attempt rest in the Hotel de Faison a long john silver of a parrot woodenly represented behind the very helpful receptionist.
The bikes are retrieved after an excellent breakfast with the strangest system for eggs seen yet. A large toaster like receptacle with roundels for eggs is available and ignored by us aussies who expect our eggs to be boiled for us at 800000 euros a pop. However the Bordelais are onto us cyclists who all emerge with extra testicles (usually unbearably hot) bow legged and grunting to their well hidden mirth. Not today, the eggs were found (luckily by droppage and not in the usual way) to require the egg broiler machine to enable their successful purloinment.
The train station was surrounded by armed police checking identity papers and still en greve (strike) An overly friendly SNCF lady ruins our reputations and takes us to the head of the line by stealing my credit card and waving it in the air telling the massive and now scowling queue that we had velos and so were to be afforded the luxury of not waiting an hour in line. By the end of it I was not sure if we should be grateful or sad as the eye daggers were numerous and accompanied by dark mutterings. I could only hope that we were not accompanied on our uncertain sojourn by any of the hunderd odd souls we’d so complicity stood up.
Was it to be a bus or a train? Perigueux or Le Boussinm? no one could tell us and the billet was equally blank in critical areas despite it’s 40euro price tag. We pop back to the Pirate birds and retape in a short lived but glorious white, Pony’s handlebars. We have fun together in the sun playing handle bar twister.
Then back to the autocar stop at the derrierre of the station only to be told at the last 6 minutes that it was really to be a train and vite vite. As we race down the undertrain 70’s brown tiled corridors expecting stairs we discover a ramp and then a train set up for bikes 300 miles down the binario.
Perigueux proves to have a grand tower, a helluva busy road through its guts, an overly short river side bike path and a friendly waiter at the railway café. Will the next legs bus chauffeur allow bikes?. All the authorities shake their heads with simultaneous ahhh non’s and pas possible‘s. We resolve to try to charm the bus driver and then stay overnight to ride to the Lazy Grotte if unsuccessful. The driver of the 17th bus turns out to be a grand fellow and agrees from the start to accept our bebagged bikes, helping Pony in with her new white handlebars, even removing her front wheel with a skill born of many such occasions. We thank him profusely and jump aboard to be dumped unceremoniously in the most quiet and hugely limestone be cliffed country lane ever an hour later. Whew we’ve made it to the start of a couple a weeks ride through southern France, our last expedition before Afrique and the wonders of Senegal and Mali.
Ps We saw on our way up the station’s derrierre the following crazy scene. Two men working to put a missing L (2ft high lit up) into Hote on the wall of a building at about three stories high. Nothing remarkable you may say except of course for the fact that they were supported on a ladder ontop of a tall topped van parked in the street without any PPE or barriers. I’d have instantly lost my job back home had I engaged in a tenth such bravado.
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