garden action and an encounter with some french people

Just about catching up now if I can get a post done about my fun times on Tuesday.

I hung around at the hostel for ages as it was raining loads that morning. The sweet receptionist said it was fine for me to stay as long as I wanted and have as much tea as I wanted. She did warn me that the rain was due to continue all day.

It was working pretty well actually because I was not due to check into La Bouexerie until 1800 anyway so a later start was good.

Finally circa 1130 it stopped so I got going sharpish. Actually that turned out to be the last of the rain so I was very pleased. Enough talk about weather - although as this is about cycling and the weather really does matter when riding, I think I'm allowed to talk about it a bit...

The cycling was great - tough uphills followed by bombing it downhill. It was so much fun that I would routinely find myself doing a massive "wooooooooooo!" out loud on a downhill. This was the view from early in the day, remained pretty much the same throughout - rural France:

I also managed to not use the phone but just the map - trying very hard to not rely on the phone map and just use the paper map.

I got to the forest I wanted to visit around lunchtime - the zip line tree fun play things were closed but the sign on their hut said they were open again at 1300 so I stopped by a beautiful lake for lunch:








Alas, soooooo gutted that the hut just didn't open and there would be no chance for me to enjoy the swings in the trees - I think I would make a special effort to come back just to go there - it just looked epic:

However, it was possibly for the best as I had a lot of ground to cover and would probably have been on the things for hours if they were open.

The route took me actually through the forest for ages - and part way through I saw a deer in the middle of the road just hanging out. Tried to capture this magic bambi moment but the deer seemed to get frightened and ran off - strange, I am so good with animals, normally they flock to me as if I were doctor Doolittle.....

Then I got a tiny bit lost but bumped, almost literally into another brown sign telling me to go to a chateau.

I followed it and ended up here:
You couldn't go in the building but the gardens were open and the woman doing the door said the magic words - hedge maze. I love, love, love a good hedge maze so in I went.

She was telling me it had been remodelled to represent what an old style chateau garden might be like - I was expecting lots of toipery but it was so much more - this is probably one of the best places I have been so far.

She told me it had been designed with "13 surprises" to entertain the walker - I really enjoyed the idea of a "surprise" in a garden to keep you from getting bored.

There were indeed several amazing surprises - here's where I got really snap happy but I will only bore you with a couple of my favorites:

A window through the hedges into the adjacent garden.....










toipary (spelling, no idea!!!!):

A THEATRE - made of hedges - they actually stage shows and concerts here!!!! There were four wings and also several boxes - you can't really see from the snaps but the stage is raised slightly as well.

 And of course the maze- this is the signpost and also the outside of the maze - it was pretty big and quite dark and menacing inside.


Felt a bit like being some sort of fairytale heroine whilst wandering around the whole thing - minus the swishing hair and dress (I did not get changed to visit this garden.....).

Finished off the visit with a cup of coffee sitting staring at the other bit of the garden (the bit where there were no surprises, it was just massively chopped to perfection) and feeling pretty lucky that i'd followed a brown sign - who knew I was so into gardens??!?!??!

Anyway, enough happy snapping - on with the trip.

Again more hills and countryside - I was proper pacing it now so I could get to my digs on time. At one point, I had to stop and stuff a load of blueberries into my mouth as I was knackered and felt as if I had not eaten for days. Bumped into an old french man on a bike - we had a chat of sorts, although he spoke zero english.

I think we were talking about age and I think he said he was 76 - I also think he was telling me there was an english man who was 89 who lived on a farm to the right and that I should visit - he just kept pointing at the map, waving his arms and yelling "tournez a droit!!!!!". He then told me I had very good french!!! hahahhahaha.

I finally arrived at my lovely, lovely house for the night - a huge french farmhouse - and met my host. There was another english family staying at one of the gites next door and we chatted in the pool - very sweet kids, just doing gcse's - massively puzzled by the fact I was cycling on my own.

The room was just what the doctor ordered - homely, spacious and a bath - my back was very happy with the bath.

Then I had my first french dinner party experience - me, some old dude who lives in house (but is not a relative) and the husband and wife - food was amazing, vegetables!!!! I've missed having veg!!!! the conversation was tricky to follow to say the least but I managed to get across where I'd been and where I was going, I think I might have told them I was an engineer by accident..... hmmmmm. I was mildly drunk by this point in time as they kept giving me wines and ports......

slept so well and had delicious breakfast - loving the way the french eat, a meal is always a real occasion for them.