Cotignac to Seillans

October 2, 2018

A long day

The day started out so well. The breakfast at the Pra de Pé was a delight. We really enjoyed talking with our host about the area and her life.

We packed up and stopped at the local patisserie to pick up some lunch and carried on down the street to find it was market day! We love wandering through the aisles checking out the huge assortment of local foods. It was a great time to add some sausage, olives, tomatoes and fruit to our picnic supplies. Definately one of the best things about cycling in France is the availablity of great high quality food.

The local street markets are always interesting and vibrant! We have to constantly remind ourselves of the space constraints we have being on bikes!

Can you have too many pictures of Paella? It's one of our favourite dishes and this one looks particularly beautiful!

View as we are leaving Cotignac looking for the route out.

Leaving Cotignac, we sailed down the hill and noticed that according to the route plan we had missed the turn. We backtracked and found a road in so-so condtion and resumed our ride. This is where the trouble began. After heading a ways along a very bumpy gravel road we came to a dead end. We travelled back and found what we thought might be the correct road and that's when Scott noticed "Garmin is gone"! The GPS had bounced right off its mount. Frantically we searched back up the road and fortunately found Garmin! A huge relief. I cannot understate how much we rely on this device even if it occasionally leads us down the wrong path. At least we have someone to blame!

Clearly this routing was not going to work and so we began to head back to the highway and select a road that would get us back on our planned route to Entrecasteaux. The road started off well enough and then became less and less until it was mountain bike track! Eventually it led us back to our route. Not the best start.

Pat leading the way through the bush. Hoping that the "road" would not deteriorate any further.

Our morning goal was Entrecasteaux. It really is a beautiful village and chateau.

17th century arch in Entrecasteaux that is still standing.

The mishaps have put us a bit behind schedule but having a fine picnic lunch with the food from the market this morning sure puts a good spin on things!! We're sitting on an old rock slab bench in this olive grove thinking it does not get much better than this.

We resumed our ride after lunch and Pat was now more than a bit sceptical that "garmin" would not put us back into difficulty again. We reached a road that had a sign indicating a dead end. We were stopped, wondering whether or not we should proceed when a group of four cyclists whom we had spoken to at Entrecasteau appoached. They assured us it would be fine. The route turned out to be a lovely, quiet nicely paved path! It was actually an old rail bed that although not fast, was a great ride.

We went through three very dark tunnels.

These great bike paths never seem to last long and soon we were back on a highway along with rush hour traffic heading downhill into a valley and quickly into Draguignan. We found our way through this busy town and began to climb back up the other side. The long up and fast decent was repeated as we completed a set of steep switch backs to reach the town of Claviers.

Oops!! We flew down the hill about a kilometre and stopped to take a picture of a town across the way. That's when Scott noticed the routing error - we had missed the turn off and had to ride back up the hill into the small town of Claviers. Great picture of Bargemon - I think.

Great old rail bridge in the middle of nowhere as we approached Seillans.

We arrived in Seillans around 6:30 pm. Still nice and warm as the sun was starting to set over the hill. We could see the town above and made our way to ourB&B for the night. Unfortunately we had difficulty finding it and had to ride into town to confirm the address and direction. We successfully located it on our second attempt. We had one last steep hill to push our bikes up before being able to call it a day - a long one for sure. We arrived to welcoming arms but a weak wifi signal. The blog must wait.

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Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 339 km (211 miles)

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