Great, we’ve finally hit the big time! A little blue sign has appeared opposite our house announcing that we are on the route of the ‘Circuit Bastide royal’. It seems that this is a 74 kilometre road route (I think perhaps it’s a designated bike route, but I’m sure it will be equally pleasant for cars as well) that passes through some of the finest scenery and most interesting bastide towns of the region, avoiding the larger roads that go straight from one town to the next.
It’s the first time I’ve been part of such a route so I’m pretty excited. Perhaps we should open a cafe / bar for the throngs of people that doubtless follow such routes, and sell tea and coffee at exorbitant prices.
Speaking of which our local town has now got a ‘sandwich cafe’, so perhaps they are also preparing for the rush. Yesterday they were offering the chance to take a nice salad on the terrace in front of the cafe – a nice idea, except for the wind, rain and snow flurries. I exaggerate slightly but this week has been one of the worst of the whole winter for cold wet weather.
In truth I don’t suppose many people follow these tourist routes, do they? Probably a good thing, because we don’t want our quiet road to become a busy road. How long until the first coach passes by I wonder. Perhaps they’ll even stop so that the tourists can get off the coach and clamber up to our fruit trees and pinch our apples, like most tourists seem to enjoy doing.
The funny thing about the waymarked route is, they seem to have gone overboard on the signs – there are perhaps four bright blue signs in the two kilometres between us and the local town. Which would be fine, they put them on every little junction to make sure no-one gets lost, that make sense. But I followed them a few kilometres in the other direction, and they do the same – a sign on every junction.
Unfortunately, the way they have been placed means that at every single junction it is unclear whether they are suggesting ‘turn at this junction’ or telling you to go straight on. So there are at least five points of uncertainty in the 5 kilometres I have seen, so perhaps 70 in the whole circuit. Could make for a long day out and quite a few disputes, I think.
What the signs seem to mean is ‘don’t turn at this junction, but carry straight on’ but I can’t promise that applies for the whole route. I highly recommend that if you plan to follow the Circuit des Bastides you also get a leaflet from one of the towns included so that you have extra clues to help keep you on track. Especially if you are cycling, where an additional 50 kilometres can be quite tiring.
The full title is ‘Circuit Bastide Royal, Pays du Dropt’ if you are ever in the northern Lot-et-Garonne and trying to find it. Remember to wave when you go past our house, even better book our gite, take a bike ride, then give us a hand serving teas and coffees!
We’re on the Route des Vins which, in true French style, makes an as the crow flies route of perhaps 15km something more like 50km by wending its way round just about every winery in the area. Net effect appears to be that people just ignore it as a “route”.
Funnily enough, whilst Wendy tells me that it’s seriously cold in Maury, it was t-shirt weather today in NI. Definitely an odd state of affairs to have to don the big coat on the way back to France for sure!