Sunday July 17, 2011
It rained in the night and it rained all morning. Our bladders forced us out of the tent about 11am. Luckily we had ordered our baguette and pain au choclat the night before and we didn’t have to venture far in the rain in search of food.
We decided to stay put for the day. It was too wet to pack up and too wet to cycle with my not so waterproof cycle jacket (which, btw, I paid a lot of money for and is a good brand).
We went to the local pub for a coffee. When we walked in they all stopped and stared. It was a local pub for local people. We said “Bonjour” which is the polite thing to do in France. They said “Bonjour” back. Mike said “Deux cafe sil voux plait”. They bought us two short blacks.
The moto grand prix was on the telly, so we sat and watched it in silence, sipping the surprisingly nice coffee.
One of the men at the bar (who was wearing an All Blacks t-shirt – go figure) saw we were engrossed in the bike race (it was close), picked up the remote control as if to change the channel.
Mike nervously laughed. I said “You just wait until the world cup – the All Blacks will thrash your arse!”. Luckily they couldn’t understand a word of English and just turned up the telly for us. A nice gesture, but seeing we couldn’t understand a word of French it was a bit wasted on us.