Wednesday 27 August - Chartres to Montargis
Well the rain blew through and we had a very good day. This part of France is amazingly flat and we cycled 75 miles without a single hill!  Not only that but there was a gentle tailwind and as a result we averaged 15.5 mph for that distance - that's fast with heavy bikes - arriving even after coffee and lunch stops at 1500hrs.
The landscape was rather surreal, some would say boring, with wide plains and lines of wind turbines turning lazily round. France should never go short of food with so many acres of arable land, it seems to go on for ever.
Montargis is a big town but isn't a tourist centre and we had a job to find a restaurant that we liked - in the end it was a tex mex burger bar. Not quite what we wanted but filling enough.
The hotel has added a camp bed to the existing twin bedded room.  Kev got the short straw this time!
Sorry I'm not able to add photos to the blog. It seems there isn't the link I need to access the photo album on the phone. Perhaps I can do a gallery when we're back.
I was sorry to hear today that the two Gambian Sign Language Interpreters we hoped could visit the UK have had their visa applications refused on the grounds that the authorities weren't convinced they would return to Gambia. Very disappointing for them and for the folks here who had done do much to set up the visit. Hopefully they will be able to do so in the future. The sponsor money I'm raising now will, I hope, therefore be used to pay for a second pair of teachers of the deaf from Gambia to visit Longwill School in Birmingham and see how we teach deaf children here.