La Réole, on the Garonne

All went well this morning - we got our own breakfast, the taxi man collected the bags and we locked up and set off at about 9. Not as cold this morning, and the day has been quite moderate, up to 25° this afternoon.

A very pleasant walk, and shorter than most - only 14 kms - though I must say I felt a bit tired, but maybe because it was a bit uphill and down dale over and over till we finally descended to the river. But it was beautiful - the thousands of vineyards have finished - leaving Coutures this morning we didn’t see a single one for quite a while, then we saw the odd one, plus corn, sorghum, sunflower stalks - back to the mixed farming. When we did finally reach the top before descending down to here, we had a breathtaking views looking back to where we’d been.

Good to arrive at La Réole and find our chambres d’hôtes. The city is on the steep river bank and we went right down looking out for our place which we knew was in the old centre, but got to river level without sighting it, so stopped at a bar for a drink before heading back up with Amr’s Google maps guiding us. We have a lovely room, with our own terrasse (where our washing is offending no one) and a very helpful and friendly couple. It is Saturday night and we don’t have dinner provided here and asked for recommendations. They said a little place we had passed and also recommended booking, so Amr went out to do that, and popped into the tourist office for a map and the person there said yes, you must be the Australians walking that I heard about!! Not many escapees on the loose here!

So we are all set, must gird our loins and have an explore as this is a small city, and has a bridge over the Garonne built by Eiffel…before the tower. He is good at bridges - we’ve seen his in Porto and Bilbao also. I have never heard of most of these small places where we stop, and sometimes they are barely a village (like Coutures, though I think it did have a Mairie) and sometimes quite a large town like today.Read more