Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Auch - 14th June

Today we travel from Bayonne to Auch, our next home for a short period. The photo above is the nice welcoming sign on arrival, plant care not required as it is plastic. This apartment is on the ground floor; so finally Roger doesn’t need to carry bags upstairs.

We had our first rest break at Mont-de-Marsan, did a quick geocache at the bull-fighting arena, took no photos, but we did impress ourselves by finding a multi-staged cache that required using our limited French. Legs suitably stretched we headed into the back of an industrial area to find a Spotlight-type store that had a huge amount of tapestry cottons.

Lunch stop today was Labastide-d’Armagnac - what an interesting town! First photo of the town was at 3.00pm.

Second photo is a church in town that is slowly being restored. Unfortunately we didn’t find the Chapelle Notre-Dame-des-Cyclistes mentioned yesterday but we did find a Joan of Arc.

Back to the church we didn't find, a pastor wanted a chapel dedicated to cyclists. The Pope approved it in 1959 and now the town with a population of 689 has a church and a museum dedicated to cycling and cyclists. The Tour de France has passed through here 5 times, and numerous famous riders have donated stuff for the museum.

After only seeing 6 locals, 1 dog, 6 tourists and not a lot of shops open, we gave up hope of buying a drink to go with lunch. We enjoyed our lunch in the picnic area attached to the car park, which is opposite the town’s third interesting feature, a store with many eclectic items. Peruse the photo below to see what cultured bargains can be obtained.

Cheese Experience No.54 - “Life is like a box of chocolates” The French like their cheese so much that if you leave your shopping until late in the day the chances of there being anything left at the smaller supermarkets is pretty slim.
Today’s cheese experience was what was left of the reasonably priced cheeses, a mixed bag of 5 small blocks. One is labelled goat, another sheep, however the other three are 'original', 'bit' and 'surprise'. This could be like eating Cadbury continental chocolates without the guide; I always get the yucky coffee or Turkish delight ones.