Day 17 - Bordeaux and exploring Saint Emilion

This morning we took the Air Bnb supplied bicycles on the train out into wine country.

We got off in Cantillon, a very small town on the Dordogne River and the site of the last battle of the 100 year war. It also has a boulangerie for a petit dejeuner before we set off on the bikes. It's another beautiful day, we've been blessed with the weather, but we're supposed to run into rain this weekend!

We are riding to Saint Emolion and the first part of the bike ride follows the river, it's s treat if a ride - very still and peaceful, along country lanes.

This is prime French wine country and it's not long before we come across vines. A few people are currently picking, but it looks as if everyone is getting organised for the harvest. Their grapes have been pruned and trained for the fruit to hang below the vines. They are also all very neat, they look to have had a haircut prior to harvest. I had to test the fruit's sugar content, just to make sure they were ready to be picked.

We headed north from the river to Saint Emilion, through more vines and chateaux.

Saint Emolion is another quaint old town on a hill.

Ade had read about some traditional macarons that we had to sample. Apparently the macaron has been made since 1620 by a religious community, the Ursulines. Their secret recipe, jealously guarded, is then passed down to rare families of Saint-Émilion, from generation to generation. Today, it is Nadia Fermigier, the macaron pastry chef in Saint-Million, who is the sole custodian of the real recipe dating from 1620! They were okay - they tasted like a macaron 😂

We then went for lunch, the main meal of the day. I had the set menu. The duck was very tasty. We couldn't decipher what the dessert was going to be - so it was a lucky dip - the waffle was average.

We then rolled (down the hill) to the train station and headed back home for a bit of a rest, and a kip for Ade. It's 27 degrees today, so we got out of the heat for a while. We then walked into the city to get some light dinner supplies. We managed to find another protest too.

Tea was in house tonight with a bottle of wine.