Sarlat to Guillac (Wednesday 4th October 2017)

Nothing much to report today, my dear readers. We pretty much drove all day. Having packed the night before we didn’t take long to get organised this morning. First up was coffee then up to the car-park to get the car closer to the apartment as I didn’t fancy dragging our stuff one millimetre further than I had too. Carrying the suit-cases down the two flights of stairs was enough work for one morning.

I found a park 30m from the apartment and we had the car packed by 9:15am. Our appointment with the landlord was at 9:30am so we sat at a table at the cafe next door and enjoyed a croissant and coffee while we waited. Right on time Denis appeared at the door to the apartment building. After introductions he disappeared to inspect the apartment, returning five minutes later happy that everything was ship shape.

We spent five minutes chatting with Denis about how we’d spent our time and received his “approval” for everything except that we hadn’t visit ed a château. We said our good-byes in French (he thought my French was good, haha!) and off into our respective days. Denis is a lovely chap, who is lucky enough to be retired but has a wife who still works! What a perfect life!

From here on nothing exciting happened at all. We shared the driving, each taking two stints, stopping for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. Today’s journey was  over 670kms which, including stops took eight hours. That’s 45kms further than Bendigo to Adelaide! GPS-girl lengthened our trip by taking us on an unnecessary detour. On her instructions we left the autoroute at Montiagu and proceeded along a secondary road through villages and a dozen roundabouts only to have the road rejoin the autoroute just before Nantes. The detour was longer in distance and longer in time so I really can’t figure out the logic she uses for choosing one route over another.

We drove over the Loire river at Nantes on a bridge that looks like a small version of the West Gate. Nantes is a big city with a population of about 300,000. It has a big port and associated industries under and around the river crossing. Kerry was driving at the time and traffic was heavy.

We scooted around the périphérique and were soon back in the country after another change of driver. Fifteen minutes before the prescribed meeting time we arrived at our destination and were greeted by Brian and Julie, a recently retired British couple from the north of England. They were very cheerful and pleased to see us as we were them after a long day in the saddle. We’re in a little restored cottage more or less in their backyard set amongst the fields on the outskirts of Guillac. It’s very pretty and very quiet. We’ll spend tomorrow roaming the district and then head for Paris and our rendezvous with Emily on Friday.