N roads North - Bordeaux to Richelieu.

We are trying to avoid toll motorways. Since 55 mph is all Maisy can manage without guzzling diesel, we can do  that on main roads, so paying the motorway tolls would not get us to our destination any quicker and it would cost quite a bit as the class 2 vehicle charge seems to be almost twice the price of a car. From Bordeaux the N10 runs directly north, it is dual carriageway most of the time. We stopped to stock up on some wine to take home at a big Auchun on the outskirts of Angouleme. At Poitier we branched off towards Richelieu, where we had spotted quite a good free aire.

 The facilities are basic, A tap and a hinged WC emptying point, but the location is pretty, next to the walls of Richelieu's great park where the eponymous Duc once lived. Though the actual chateau is long gone, the Ideal town he built next to it remains much as it was in the mid  17th Century.

Although the aire was a little bit off the main route, it does make for an interesting one night stop. 

Next morning was Easter Sunday. Sunday mornings are a bit of a ritual here, and this was no different, but perhaps enacted with a touch more Gallic élan than usual. The gaggles of brightly Lycra garbed male cyclists, out for their weekly early morning run swept by a little more swiftly and the chat amongst them sounded even more like a gaggle of geese than usual. The queue at the boulangerie as you would expect spread onto the pavement, but the chat seemed more animated, and even strangers were greeted like long lost amis. The fleuriste was doing good business, and I was surprised to see how many people at the church across the square were for headed to mass. France seems like a largely secular country, but in its rural heartland perhaps the old conservative catholic influences remains stronger. So far as a heartland of La Gloire, then you would be stretched to find a more archetypal spot than Cardinal Richelieu's home town.