A lot of noise in the night from waterfowl on the Loire, quite spectacular clucking and quacking. Apart from that the busy campsite was quiet. I'm struck by how respectful people are in campsites, despite the festive atmosphere. I guess it's mainly families or older people here, certainly no drunken oafs in evidence, they must holiday elsewhere.
It rained about 5am, but not prolonged.
A few hills to get to the stage's starting point at Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, a smart little town. The Mairie has a sign that boasts that its water supply is everlasting. True so far but will that continue, with the increasing demands of tourism, housing and agriculture?
Not wanting to disturb people as all was quiet when I got up, I waited till I found a picnic bench at Couziers before making tea.
It's not always thst obvious when to use the familiar pronoun "tu" rather than the formsl "vous". (We stopped using our equivalent "thy" a long time ago). I was a bit surprised that these instructions in a code of conduct for walkers used the familiar form. Maybe in a situation like this it's more effective to emphasise that we are all equally responsible for looking after our environment, which we hold in common, in theory. Perhaps this works better than formal directives issued from on high?
I struck up conversation with a retired cereal farmer who lived next to the ancient church. He told me that last night's campsite, the Belle Rive' was 2m under water last year in the spring. He was aghast that I wasn't spending more time in the Loire, but I explained that I'd need 3 years rather than 3 weeks to get round all the attractions. My tea was getting cold by this point. Luckily a mention of Brexit had him rolling his eyes and excusing himself: "things to do".
At Loudun I picked up another one of these buttery puff pastries with an apple filling and followed signs to the "velodrome", found up at the top of the town by the castle.
The vines gave way to wheat today. I prefer the vineyard landscape with the gnarled vines. This new landscape is less lyrical, more industrial: big fields and enormous reels of outsize hose for watering.
A hot dull slog south through to Moncontour. Enough. A sign advertising a campsite at a water park was too good to pass up, so decided to call it a day a lunchtime at the 50 km mark. Really nothing left in the tank. I think I'll take a rest day tomorrow.
Sitting by the lake watching the water skiers is very peaceful as they don't use speedboats - - instead they have a system of of overhead wire which drag the skiers along, on motorised pulleys I guess? But it's not a lame system. They have a couple of jumps and the skiers can do turns in the air etc.
