Day 85 – Saignes to Ussel

Wednesday July 27, 2011, 59 km (37 miles) – Total so far: 3,008 km (1,869 miles)

We awoke to sunshine – YAY!. I was out of bed at 7am determined not to get rained in again. By some crazy miracle we were on the road by 9am (normally we are lucky to get away before 11am).

Funnily enough it started to cloud over at 11am so it was a good call leaving early.

We followed the cycle path along the old railway for a bit until it ran out. It was then a pretty hilly ride into Bort-Les-Orgues. This seemed like a touristy town so we didn’t stay long. We tried to extract some information out of the tourist office but they were useless.

It was another steep ride out of Bort-Les-Orgues in the direction of Ussel. We both felt like we had heaps of energy after 4 days rest so it wasn’t too bad. It was threatening rain again so we tried to find a hotel in Ussel but they all seemed to be closed.

After mucking around in the town for ages we had to use the tom tom to find the tourist office. Turns out there was camping in the town and the sun was coming out so we decided to camp.

It was about 3 kms up yet another steep hill to the camping. It was a nice municipal campsite overlooking a lake. It was only 9 euros to camp and they supplied toilet paper (a definite bonus in France).

We set up our tent with a view overlooking the lake, then cycled back 2 kms to the supermarket for dinner supplies. We cooked a wicked chicken curry, accompanied by 1.5 litres of red wine. We ended up a little bit pissed but slept well.