Our day started with some early morning excitement as a hare zigged and zagged its way across our path. Considering we were hurdling our way down a hill and towards him at 40km/hour we were surprised to see him first sit in the middle of the road, then rush to one side and back to the other right in front of us. The rest of the day was quiet and uneventful, broken up only by our sniffling as we fight allergies brought on from the polen hovering thick in the air. When we weren’t pedalling along the quiet, leafy canal towpath we were in grocery stores, trying to fill our unending appetites and stocking up for closed supermarkets on Sunday. It’s asparagus season and we’ve been stocking up on both the green spears and the much treasured white variety, although after extensive testing we’ve decided that green asparagus is much tastier. We will have to do another big shop on Monday, ahead of a holiday on Tuesday. There are four public holidays in France in May to keep track of; one down and three to go! This area of southwest France hasn’t been so interesting in terms of tourist sights but we have seen a lot of wildlife in the past few days aside from our hare. Geckos, herons, hawks and even a snake about a metre long. The weather hasn’t been quite so good. It’s apparently much warmer in the north of France and in London than in the south at the moment. Here the skies are cloudy and it seems like rain could come down at any time, not such a great feeling when you’re on your bike! Plenty of pilgrims are sharing our weather woes. We’re following the Santiago trail once again and the official pilgrim count today reached 24 hiking their way towards Spain. The sun did stay around long enough for us to do our laundry, so fresh underwear and socks all round for us tomorrow. We finished the day off with a bottle of wine (when in France….) and by reading out of the Adventure Cycle-Touring book, a gift from Friedel’s former colleagues. We’ve been a bit bored lately but reading the exciting tales from cycling China, Russia and other exotic countries we are reminded that there’s a lot to see on the road ahead.