Sept 13th Thouars to St Loup
Thouars is a strange mixture of semi industrial/ agricultural and medieval, quite a long way from any other big towns so it was no surprise to discover that there was a Decathlon store in town. Before I left England, I bought a gas stove from decathlon that uses their own proprietary gas cartridges on the basis that they cook really well and they have shops in a lot of towns across France and Spain. What I hadn't counted on was the energy war that's taking place in Western Europe right now and that these cartridges which are a mixture of butane and propane are currently unavailable across France. They also didn't have shock cord or waterproof dry sacks which I wanted, but was lucky enough to find in adjacent army surplus store. Nulle pointes Decathlon. There was also a Lidl store on the same road so I stocked up with vittals for the next few days. This of course meant that the bike which had been gradually getting lighter, was now heavier than ever! Leaving town on the cyc...
