10th of August we started early in Barbezieux to be ahead of the heat. The Garmin was completely dead and must have not supported the heat from yesterday. At least we could still use the cellphone with komoot, because today we were depending on finding the shortest and most direct route as there were no more official bike ways leading us to where we wanted.
Still alone in town it was the perfect picture time for a selfie at the castle. As it was a Sunday morning we still had a little detour planned to find a church being not directly on the way of Saint James but part of the pilgrimage heritage. It was the church of Saint-Jacques de Conzac which was partly destroyed on the southern side during the hundred-year war, but still shows beautiful carved rock details. We had the place for us alone.
From there we followed the hills further south through Brossac where some people of the village were cleaning up the left overs of last night’s village party. They offered us some water as we were already quite thirsty. After Brossac we crossed the TGV-railways in a dense Pine forest which smelt like being at the Mediterranean coast with the hot temperatures but we still found us in the vast French backland. Even the sound of Cicades was now part of the scene.
Luckily there was a lot of downhill and forests giving us some refreshing headwind and cooler temperatures especially when we were close to some creeks. If there was a village like Yviers nobody was found on a Sunday. Even the churches had no service or a public toilet would be open to find some water. We followed the little creek of Argentonne to join the river of la Dronne, where we finally crossed the border to the next department from Charente to la Dordogne. I said to Robert the good news is we reached the next department but the bad news by crossing the bridge from now on it’s uphill again.
Reading the map I knew there will be nothing but hills and forests ahead of us and with 50km we just had reached half of our day tour. My hope to find something to drink and eat in Parcoul-Chenoud was melting in the noon sun as everything was closed. We found a little hand written sign “moules et frites” and hoped to find a stand with mussles and French fires, but we met only two guys who had finished cleaning up last night’s party. But they were so nice and recommended us to go to the next campground, where they had a bar. It was the only address in far distance, where we still could find something to eat and drink.
Just sitting down we suddenly realized how exhausting it was outside in the heat. The dry air immediately took aways any transpiration and made you feel dry. Once at a table in the shade without any headwind the sweat was just running down your arms and you could taste the salt on your lips. By cooling our wrists under some water we already helped a lot our bodies to get refreshed. The waitress filled our drinking bottles with water and ice and we added the isotonics to it and kept on going.
Climbing up hills into dry heat, seeing the left overs of burned forests and realizing these temperatures are getting hostile. For thirty kilometres we were in pure no-mans-land. We had our two bottles each one of us and that was supposed to be enough. At least we were getting in between into some more shaded valleys with creeks having names which sounded like the French misspelled it like “le Chalaure” instead of “ La Chaleure” (=the heat).
Robert told me in Ménestérol that he was getting a headache. I tried to find a place to get something to drink, but everything was closed. We looked through a window of “La Ginguette de l’Isle” and inside were people. They were so nice and opened for us the door and gave us some fresh water.
We had to ask for a second one, because we finished one in a single zip. I thought the place named to an island in the river, but the river itself was called Isle (Island) Not an island for us to stay at as we still had 25km to go and we were really getting to our limits. But at the end we made it to Velinez, where we could roll downhill into the valley of the Dordogne.
Robert had found a nice bed and breakfast run by Mr Olivier Philippe who was a retired helicopter pilot who had his own company. There was even a swimming pool which Robert dove in but I even didn’t get so far as I just immediately fell asleep after the shower on the bed. Robert had to wake me for dinner as we were so lucky that Olivier’s daughter had cancelled to come over for dinner due to the heat and he could offer us their part. We heard all the existing helicopter pilot stories of Olivier’s life with his VIP clients like Mick Jagger, etc. before we said good night.
