Day 11 - Teyssieres - Le Poët-Laval

Anne: The evening of day 10 we got in just before the rain started but decided to put the horses out in the paddock anyway, so they could relax, roll, and do the things horses love to do. Also the stables weren't the best, dark and damp. But as we were waiting for dinner the weather got worse, and we both looked out and said we should bring the horses in, but we were tired and decided to wait. Dinner was delicious, a huge mixed salad to start with followed by a local speciality of ravioles , no not ravioli, but similar, tiny pastas stuffed with cheese, served up in a white sauce with grated courgette, after having been in the oven to go all lovely and crispy around the edges. A big bottle of the local red, and apple tart to finish. Ah delicious, but oops the horses, it was still pouring down so George and I said off to catch them and bring them in, no easy task in the dark, in a steeply sloping field, on a very gloopy clay soil. We were slipping and sliding all over the place, I don't know how I kept my feet under me, especially as Gigi was being a bit difficult. But we caught them and headed off to the stables, gave them hay and water, put sweat rugs on them and left the two slightly unsettled horses to dry off.

It rained all night, drumming on the roof of my bedroom, so I was happy enough to get up at 7:30 and feed them, it's always easier when they're in a stable as Flurry can't eat Gigi's food.  Looking around I could see that the rain had fallen as snow on the mountains, thank goodness we weren't up there in the rain. Off I went to the yard with 2 buckets of feed, round the corner to the stables to be confronted by 2 open stable doors. Maybe the owner, Frank, put them back in the paddock was my first thought, but no the paddock was empty, panic started to set in and I ran down to the house to see if Frank had moved them somewhere else, but no. Back up to the gite to wake George and Martine, they would set off in the jeep, I would go back along the track we had ridden in on, and Frank went looking for horse tracks. Frank found them first while a few minutes later G&M saw them from the road, happily grazing in a field of lucerne. All's well that ends well, but we were all thoroughly shaken up by the episode, I couldn't face breakfast, and G&M were very quiet.

 After all the excitement we set off not too late as we had decided to give ourselves a really easy day today, keep out of the mountains and ride on roads if we had to, as a quick look around showed low cloud on all the hills. We were already tired after day 10, and the start of day 11 had sapped us both of our usual enthusiasm.

 The views, even from the road were good, with the inevitable lavender and craggy mountains in the distance.

At last we both felt secure enough to get off the road and onto the tracks again, hoping to skirt Dieulefit, but while this added to our daily kilometers, it did not keep us out of the centre of town.

But it did bring us past yet another great ochre display. We dismounted to walk through the town centre.

And we were very amused by this sign telling you your speed, and although you can't see it on the picture, as Gigi and I walked through it registered 11kph with a lovely smiley face to tell us we were within the speed limit.

George had phoned us during the day to say he had arrived at the gite, which wasn't a gite at all but an old nunnery that had once been an orphanage, it is now used as a recovery centre for people suffering from substance abuse, I remembered when I had booked the place they asked me if I knew what they did there, but I didn't understand the explanation at the time. The accommodation for the horses was excellent, really secure, a blessing after last night, but what would you expect from an ex nunnery ! Somehow, on what we had declared an easy day, we covered 22kms bringing us up over 200kms , a reason to celebrate and lift our spirits, Sláinte