Day 28 - Le Peloton 🚵‍♀️🚵‍♂️🚵

Cyclists 🙄..... The thing with turning up at a camping place late in the day, in the rain, is that you don't always notice what's around you in your hurry to get set up. We didn't know about the fancy security right in front of us till we were tucked in bed and it came on about 11pm 😳.

You live and learn. Todays plan was easy. Travel north up thru the next national park then find somewhere to stop about 4 o'clock.

The first half of the journey would be thru hilly farm land in and out of valleys with the odd decent parking spot in which to have lunch and grab a bit of scenery thru the trees.

Onward towards the park. The route was pretty straight, the odd bit of road works and the occasional minor diversion in and around small towns just added a small amount of time to the overall journey. Then we were into the park. About 1/3 of the way in it all went 'pear shaped'. Driving along the D906 we came into Sembadel Gare and a road block!

Police, barriers, police bikes - 'route barrè !' 

It was something to do with a cycle race. The old white haired police man who had just been talking to a local, opened the barrier and let him thru, didn't seem to want anything to do with us and gestured to the young lady policewoman with the big gun. In pigeon english, she simply told us we couldn't go anywhere but after a bit of pointing on my part they opened the barrier and sent us left, down the D13. "Its ok, the sat nav will recalculate, just keep going straight while I sort this out." 

   Junction after junction, more police, more roadblocks. The sat nav simply telling us to keep going on the D13. We were heading further and further south, the wrong direction. Eventually we found somewhere to pull over. The sat nav, set on 'easy' route, once you expanded the screen, was simply trying to take us to the next major town with a roundabout to then send us back the way we had just come. Setting it to 'fast' would only have made it want to go on motorways and 'shortest' was a definite 'no,no!' (we had tried the same software on the bikes on 'shortest' and on more than one occasion it had wanted to take us down 'paths' even the bikes would have struggled with so trying it in the van ..... no chance! ). "Forget the sat nav, I'll use my French OS map walking software set to roads and cut across to pick up the D906 further up".

We were on single track forestry roads, turning this way and that, trying to see what might be around the next junction. For well over 5 miles we trundled thru the forest, trying to stop the phone from shaking to take pictures as Jill 'did her thing'.

Eventuall we came to the cross roads with the D133, hoping to go left then pick up the D4 to eventually get back onto the D906. Nope, not happening. 🙄 A nice young police man, with good english,  had his little blue car parked across the road. Jill got out and went for a chat while I studied the maps. He told Jill, basically, that the entire national park was now shut for the race and would be for the next couple of hours. It was either put the kettle on or turn back and go all the way back.

It was at this point that the cycling circus started to appear. We were actually on quite a fast , straight bit of road and things went wizzing past. First the road marshels then some police, then motobikes with cameramen on the back then cars with loads of aerials on them, then more police, then cars with spare bikes on the roof racks for all the various teams, then more police bikes, a helicopter overhead and then the cycles themselves !. ...... then, more police, more cameramen, more support cars with more bikes on the roof, an ambulance and finally, a breakdown wagon  with a police bike on the back; broken down or spare? no idea.

I should really have got out and took some better pictures but it all happened Soooo Fast!

      We didnt know if what went past were  the leaders or the pack 'le peloton' or what, so it was turn around time, there was no point in trying to get any further north today. Back thru the forest, farmers yards, open roads and finally over a nice bridge we arrived in Auzon over to the west of the park to spend the night. The CamperCarPark site was empty, we had the place to ourselves, all 25 pitchs, to listen to the birds and have a beer after a lot of driving around.