Notre Tour de France #20 (9 mi)

It was another grim start. There was no storm last night, but the precipitation continued after yesterday's soaking. We both slept through much later this morning than we have been doing, both to recover from yesterday's ride and to bide the time until things dried up a little.

At around 10:30 we ventured into the centre of Limoges. It's a fairly big city and our impressions of it are about on par with today's weather - dull and uninspiring. Yes, there are a couple of nice parks and some impressive architecture here and there, but on the whole the place seems a bit of a dive. We can both agree (well, I haven't actually discussed it with Jwan, but I know he'll agree) that the smaller towns and villages we have been passing through possess so much more character.

The only thing that redeems Limoges from being categorised by us as a total waste of space that we have found is the "old town", known in French as "Quartier Historique de la Cité". Here there is a pretty impressive church, but even better than this, it is partly surrounded by some botanical gardens, Jardin Botanique, with a variety of interesting plants, shrubs and trees growing that are from around the world. The old town also features some historical houses where a small number of people actually live. I hope they don't mind people having a nosey at their houses all day, every day.

The campsite we're currently staying at is a bit grim, and I put that down to it sitting on the outskirts of a big city. The views are non-existent and the site itself a bit bland. Just up the road is the biggest E.Leclerc (supermarket) that I've seen yet and it is here we stopped in on the way home from Limoges for some provisions, including a pack of playing cards. Jwan has just this second opened them and counted the deck, and there are 32... A quick check of the packaging does indeed state there are 32 cards, but who in their right mind would want such a stupid number?!

I'm certainly looking forward to moving on tomorrow. Perhaps not so much the cycling (tired legs), but going to somewhere new. A look of the map given to me by my grandparents confirms there should be two or three nice places to pass through, indicate by their places on the map circled in Biro.

I'm apparently one of those people who gets a bit paranoid when something bad happens. As an example, if I get a puncture, I'll be paranoid about getting another one and check my tyres every two seconds to verify that they're still inflated. Lately it's been noises coming from my bike. The latest noise turned out to be a loose pedal which was successfully fixed, but now there's a crunching from the rear wheel hub. I'd really like to think that it's just a bit of grit that got itself in there yesterday during our cycle in the awful weather, but something tells me it's not. Anyway... We'll see how it goes tomorrow, and if it continues, I'll be writing a nice big complaint letter to my local bike shop. It's no fun always having things break on a 12 month old bike, and even less so when your companion, so far (touch wood), hasn't had a single problem with his.