We left Bordeaux after breakfast which involved throwing bread to some pigeons which created a storm of them.
A quick spurt on the motorway got us clear of the city and we were soon on more interesting roads. Unfortunately they were also the bumpiest and Tims bag kept falling off resulting in several tantrums.
We stopped for a bite to eat and said in broken English to the waitress 'we are English' and she replied 'so am I', so that made ordering easy for once. Mark had a bacon sandwich which a dog tried to eat while Tim and Steve had salads although with all the Mayo, cheese and dressing thrown on, the bacon sandwich was probably the healthiest.
After a few more hours on the road we arrived at Ile de Re, a small island just off the west coast with a bridge connecting it to the mainland. It's a little bit like going back in time, or going to Devon really with old cars, lack of corporations and chilled out people. The address we were given was akin to saying 'it's the house in Birmingham', why they couldn't give us a road name or postcode we don't know, maybe they haven't been invented over here yet.
One old guy flagged us down as we were lost, he introduced himself as Roger and shook our hands, we assumed he was our contact and started unpacking the bikes only to find that he was the village looney and just wanted to say hello.
After lots of one way streets and phone calls, we found our AirBNB house for the next two nights. It has 3 bedrooms, none if which have beds or curtains, and the man showing us around only seemed interested in showing Tim how all of the windows opened and closed. Of course after 2 mins all if our stuff was everywhere and it looked like a bombsite.
We thought we'd orient ourselves and walk into town, we followed the road signs only to realised we'd walked around the one way system and could have cut out about a mile if we'd just carried on straight.
We found an amazing shop that just sold cooked whole chickens and cans of beer so we grabbed a beer and walked back to get our hoodies before going out for the evening.
Back at the house we decided that it was too warm for hoodies so we'd just walked home for nothing. We pushed on to St. Martin de Re, a larger seaside town. It was a 40min walk which turned into a donkey track, it turns out that a 'b road' is really a path that half a dozen people have walked down once.
The town was very pretty and full of seafood restaurants and we settled on one that sold pizza so that Mark could eat something different once but they only sold seafood pizza so it was another burger. Tim and Steve had mussels and debated whether eating the closed ones would kill them or not. They ate them anyway to see what would happen.
It started to get quite cold, it's a shame none of us had thought to have brought out a hoodie. Also at the restaurant was a bridal party which consisted of the bride wearing a leather jacket over her dress, the groom, one mate and a photographer.
After dinner we went to another bar and ordered wine and beer, this all came in the worlds smallest glasses. We decided to call it a night after that as we had to walk back in the dark down the donkey track in sub zero conditions. With beer legs this only seemed to take about 3 mins and we miraculously found our house first time.
Good news, Tim and Steve are still alive so far.
Stats so far: 619 miles covered, 13 hours 53mins in the seat, 44mph average speed
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