Brantome to Carcans

 A comedy of errors on the navigation front today. Well you’ve gotta laugh sometimes. First up I needed gas. No problem there’s a gas station just a minute away. Unfortunately the pump was out of order. It didn’t occur to me there would be more than one petrol station in a town this size. My fuel gauge said we have enough range to get the 30km to the next one, just, so off we went. After about 10km the old doubt kicked in, I’ll just check on google and sure enough there was a pump about 9km away up the next side road. Brilliant, we ended up doing a big loop only to end up 1.5 km from the original station with the broken pump. OK let’s start again. 

The road wound round the back roads, fairly unremarkable but nice enough and a pleasant day for travelling. We stopped for coffee and before we knew it we were in wine country. Mile upon mile of vineyards and some impressive Chateau’s to go with them. 

We arrived in a little medieval town called St Emillion. Stunning little place with an old bell tower and underground abbey  and lots of cobbled streets. Wine shops everywhere as well as restaurants and tourist central. We had a wander about then a spot of lunch including a lovely glass of wine (petit for the rider).


It was now only 100km to our destination so we set off in no particular hurry just enjoying the ride through the countryside. 

I’m not sure if it was the wine but I just followed along the directions on the Tomtom turn by turn without paying any attention to anything beyond. It seemed to be taking a hell of a long time to get through these km’s but on we went. We came to a little town called Blaye. There was a large old fortification here and it has been the scene of many fierce battles over the centuries and this fort overlooks an estuary. 


Hang on a minute, how can this be, we are way further north than we should be.

Someone forgot to ‘exclude ferries’ when setting up the Tom Tom for our the route so we have been directed to the most direct but certainly not the quickest route. We saw a ferry at the dock so headed there.  We arrived at the ferry terminal just in time to see the ferry leave the port. One hour till the next sailing. So rather than backtrack and battle Bordeaux traffic we waited. 

Finally made it to Carcans after what was supposed to be a shorter days riding. Chris and Karen have hired a house here . Only minutes walk to a lovely beach. 

We had a nice meal out in this holiday hotspot, listened to a live band for a while then called it a night.  

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