Flavignac – Châlus – La Coquille – Thiviers – Sorges – Puycousin – Périgueux – Saint Astier
Sebastian left very early, what led to: me rising before six o’clock. Fine! Benjamin and I drank some coffee while preparing our stuff. He left second place and I rode Rosinante out of town thirty minutes later. Half of the track to Châlus I went on the official chemin de Saint Jacques but the other half I was stuck to the roads. Somehow I took the road each time the others walked through the woods. We didn’t meet again and I wasn’t willing to wait in Châlus just for a maybe.
I took the national road to La Coquille, where I wanted to drink another coffee and upload some pages at the café on the market place. I’m pretty sure today’s Dimanche, but the city was full of people, shopping, drinking and walking in the city. So I decided to go on and search for a more quiet place to write. To my surprise the supermarket was also open. I got myself a cold Yaourt à boire and followed the national road to Thiviers.
In Thiviers it was definitely Sunday, because I couldn’t get anything else but water from toilet.
I continued on the road until I reached Sorges, where I left it to find the house of my hosts three years ago. With my off line-map it was quite easy and I arrived just after supper. We talked about my last path of Saint James and drank some Scotch and coffee. Because they expected some more visitors I left after an hour to get to Périgueux.
I took a less frequented road with neither the less hills and valleys to reach the Isle at Périgueux. Happy to have at least ten kilometers of plain bicycle-track along the river, I rode westward onto Saint Astier.
There was only one uncomfortable part of the way, where I had to get back on the national road and endure a steep passage with no space for me and the bike. When I arrived at Annesse et Beaulieu I was sure that there were only a few kilometers of pleasant, quiet cycling track ahead until I find a nice place by the river.
The first two “campsites” were nice but not nice enough. So I went further to find a pick nick-area at a lock close to Saint Astier. While lots of people walked their dogs, I waited for my time to take a bath in the Isle and put up my tent and when finally I was able to swim naked in the river a young couple arrived to have a late dinner in my “bedroom”. By then I gave a shit. I slipped into the river in the cover of some bushes and when I was all clean again I just asked them if it would be okay with their plans for tonight if I put up my tent. “No problem, we’re about to leave anyway” and lots of other French words I couldn’t understand.
The ground on the other hand caused me a lot more problems, because under the few centimeters of soil there were only rocks or well compressed gravel. Therefore it was impossible to up the tent I slept just under the ceiling of the star spangled sky.