Day Seven 11/8/2006 - Jonzac to Bordeaux - 70 miles

We arrived in Bordeaux this evening, having travelled through glorious wine country all day. We saw some incredible vineyards, as this is one of the better wine regions in France, and even took some time to sample some. We had resisted sampling cognac all day yesterday, with signs every mile or so offering degustation (tasting).

Today Team Buzz's resolve was sadly not so strong, and so we called into a Maison du vin in a town called Bourg, where they have a collection of wines from the region, and on a daily basis allow tasting of a different Cotes de Bourg vineyard's produce.

Today was the turn of the unaptly Chateau du Taste, and we had the owner trying to sell us a magnum worth. We allowed him to explain the qualities of his produce as he poured out sample after sample of his plonk into tasting glasses. Now neither one of us could claim to be an expert, in fact I can just about tell red wine from white, and so all of it more or less tasted the same. It was however fascinating to listen for half an hour what he had to say about his wines, even though it was all in French and made no sense at all.

A few samples later we rolled on down the Northern bank of the Dordogne river, and then crossed over into the city of Bordeaux. It's a very pretty city once you get inside, some great old architecture and a fantastic cathedral in the centre.

We also got a response from some of the cards we handed out in La Rochelle, and it appears there are now in fact French readers of the Team Buzz Tour De France Blog (Bonjour! Ca va?). Tomorrow we are heading into Bordeaux city centre, to give out more cards and to hopefully raise some money through Team Buzz having their legs waxed. Which is apparently not very painfull, but will raise a fair bit of cash by charging people a euro each to tear a strip. Hopefully the french ladies & gents will take delight in inflicting pain on young Englishmen, and pay handsomely.

Prior to the trip it was muted that we would, if things all went according to plan, we would upon finishing our Tour in Montpellier, consider attempting to cycle Mont Ventoux, the second most challenging of all the cyclable Montains in France after the Alpe d'Huez. So far things have gone very well, and so touch wood on Thursday of next week we will be trying to cycle it. The climb is 26 Km uphill, and once on top, obviously the ride down should be great fun. For details you can go to www.grenoblecycling.com/MontVentoux.htm.

Lovely Buzz