_Thumbnail.JPG) | 06.07.2008 Sunday.
Castillonnes to Monflanquin.
A very wet night continuous rain and thunder from 1230 onward. We got up in the rain and packed under the leaky awning of the permanent caravan next door (unoccupied) and went into Castillonnes for breakfast. We rapidly left the roads and found ourselves on what would have been great walking the day before along an escarpment of chalk marle and light grass. Unfortunately the rain had made all rock slippy and all soil a glutinous mess that clung like glue to our boots. Three steps and about 1.5 inches of mud was stuck to the bottom increasing its weight by half a kilo, it would then drop off and some would end inside the boot. There were large puddles of unknown depths straddled the path at intervals No vines now, but fields of cereals and sunflowers are the main crops. The only blessing was that the rain soon stopped but it remained cool. It was a very tiring 6-8 miles before we took to the roads to make better time.
We arrived in Monflanquin at around 1400, a great little town on top of a hill. The campsite was not obvious so we went to the now dreaded Office de Tourisme. A list of the areas campsites (about a dozen) was produced rapidly, however the closest was a naturist site 7 km away in the wrong direction, all others were equally useless to us on foot. After consideration of our problem over a beer we have ended up in a Bed and Breakfast run by a Dutch couple 3 km out of town and in the right direction. Tomorrow’s campsite is on the list supplied by Tourist Office but another 20+ km we felt that was a bit too far!
However, a point of interest for us was that we had been hearing the word “Bastides” with respect to the area, this is a term for many of the towns in south west France that were probably the first experiment in urban planning of new towns during the Plantagenet era when both the English and French crowns were trying to increase their presence and support in the area and were starting new towns often in fortifiable positions in a sort of early Hearts and Minds Program. Also in this area the bell tower becomes a feature of most churches instead of the more usual northern steeple.
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