Day 15 - Motor Cycles to Mandolins

Back to the Real World . . .   

Today was always going to be a pretty slow day as we were all still coming down from our biking trip – so we mostly sat around told bigger and bigger stories about the bike trip!  Apart from that we did some humanoid things like going shopping and taking a walk across the river.

Power Ranger #1 demoted!

Power Ranger Picnic . . .  

At around 1:30pm we all headed across to Parc de La Belle for a picnic - it was a lovely place with beautiful gardens and forest - and about 15 tree houses that are available for rent.  And of course Lorraine had to speak with the animals - a very black sheep, a goat and a very dodgy looking mule!

Don't even go there!!

From Motor Cycles to Mandolins . . .  

Once back we got ourselves organised to go across to 'Professor' Matt's place . . . a really interesting bloke with loads of really interesting guitars and mandolins.  Goodness knows what I was looking at, but they all seemed very impressive.  And there was a group of young motor cyclists staying there and we of course got chatting to them.  Young Dieter was such a nice young man - he was on a 1200GS.  His companions included Isobel - a 20 year old physics student who wants to be an astronomer who was riding her own 'Harley style' Kawasaki.

But the real treat was that Matt had set up a marquee, stage, lights, PA, mixing desk and sound foldback!  After the barbecue various combinations of people played for the entire night - I joined in on guitar and mandolin.  We were all pretty knackered when we got home just after midnight.

Just a quiet little jam!

Those GSs keep popping up everywhere!

The band played on . . .

. . . and on

Millpond in the town

The French like their flowers

The viaduct

The Next Few Days . . .   

We spent a couple of days 'hanging' around L'Isle Jourdain doing this and that.  Lorraine and I went for a 400km ride to the east of Limoge where we found some lovely long sweepers through the forest and we also had a lovely trip to visit John and Liz's friend Joan in Verteuil-sur-Charente.  

And then it really started coming to and end . . . we departed for a few days in Paris before undertaking the 'long haul' home via Ho Chi Minh City.