To Digoin: The weather should be better by Saturday

September 17, 2015

We had a meal in the room last night as it pelted down. The weather forcast for to dayy although nothing flash seemed as if there would be no heavy rain after about 8am. We left around 8.30, there is really not enough light to leave much before that. Our red flashers were on and we got on to the D116. This is a dead straight road sealed with chip metal. It is completely flat but of course as usual we had a head wind. I must say it was getting extremely tedious after about 40km. We got off ln a fruitless hunt for coffee a couple of times the at last near Garnat we struck it lucky and found a PMU..

What we did see there were some bike signs so decided to follow those. The wind was now more or less replaced by hills though it was still a factor and climbing hills is not as boring as the D116 was. Eventually we reached Dampier where with some difficulty we found the cycle track along the canal and now only 27km to Digoin. The canal is now the canal layeral to the Loire . This really was moderately busy and what is interesting about it is the canal is higher than the surrounding rivers and goes over them in a viaduct, the biggest of these is at Digoin where it goes over the Loire itself.

It looks so wierd when you are riding along and see a boat on the canal which is above you but you cant see the canal

After all this rain the canal is very full and water is spilling into the rivers below

Today's ride: 84 km (52 miles)
Total: 2,429 km (1,508 miles)

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