Day 14: Sunflowers

Hello all. I think I can remember what happened that day, um...ah yes:

Back to the bridge I had passed on the way to the camp and over, being diverted into insolated woodland. The track was newly laid and the only thing but trees for miles. The signs were well placed until I got to a crossroads where the sign to the next town, Avoine, on the route was pointing in the wrong direction. I didn't trust this and checked on the map. Damn thing was right and I wound into a little town centre and through vineyards.





I decided to take a detour to a larger place called Chinon in search of supplies. Another town on the river, a confluence of the Loire, overshadowed by a fortress on the hillside.
A hillside that I then had to climb. It was my turn to carry Wheelfred forcing up a kilometre of cobbled road and single track car avoiding.




I went to the GPS coordinates where the supermarket was marked and all I saw was an empty spot between houses on an estate. Google had lied. I asked a local in one upwardly inflected word and they said something, but more importantly pointed.

10 minutes later the biggest shipping complex artist over the horizon. There was a shop called BUT cosy, which I assume sells knitted underwear. Anyway I bought a spinach tart as I must gave been pastry deficient by now. Also these stereotypically advertised biscuits.



The next couple if hours saw me through fields and over train tracks and streams, winding blissfully around sun drenched farmland counteracted by cool breezes.



Thus little tower was a brief interlude between thousands of sunflowers.



Although they weren't all facing the sun. This bunch were facing a tree like a congregation of worshippers before their idol. Actually like the little aliens in Toy Story when they see the Claw.



Maybe they're jealous of its size. After this I stopped to see a donkey and a lady came out to warn me if the electric fence but that the donkey likes his ears scratched. Sorry, her ears, Ava the one year old donkey (the lady gave me some back story). She trotted right up to me and snuffed in playful joy. We should get a donkey.

Then bad times. The path became shoddy, then gravel, then impacted earth covered in large stones. A hard and bumpy route made for slow traveling. I had to stop and eat a tart which I shared with the ants whose life I had disturbed by sitting on it. It's only fair.

The next camp wasn't terribly far away and the guy greeted me with enthusiastic non-English. He offered me a drink, I declined. Then he offered me a beer.  Pringles and reading saw me to bed time.

Before I slept I could see so many stars through the roof vent in my tent. There was still no chance of rain so the cover was off. Just outside if my focus I could make it a satellite streaking across the sky. A magic spoiled by a giant fart from another tent. Ok Iied. It was my tent.