Off at 8 as usual. The hotel was fully booked so just as well we'd prepaid. Breakfast in Melle in a PMU bar devoted to gambling but with caveats and dire warnings about addiction and debt flashing up on the screen before every draw! Good coffee.
Then down through Charente and into Dordogne first on the arrow straight N10 and then via twisty lanes and pretty landscape. Fields of standing dry maize, dessicated sunflowers all waiting for the oil mill no doubt. And some rebel erratic sunflowers blooming late in fallow fields. A far cry from the glistening leathery cauliflowers and feathered artichokes of Roscoff. Stone houses and bastide villages - all very picturesque.
And before we knew it we were on the banks of the Dordogne and it was lunchtime!
We were once again too close to the destination so we made for Villefranche du Périgord, a delicious little bastide (the oldest in Périgord) where we had a misty breakfast last November. Today it was all sun drenched and bedecked with floral bunting.
It seems to have been a Chestnut Festival.
I bet you never knew you needed one of these - chance would be a fine thing!
And a lovely coffee in the market square looking at the buildings.
