Not more headwind

Day: 17
Route: Chartres - Ferte-Fresnel
Distance: 59 miles
Height: 2027ft ascent
Time in saddle: 5hrs 16mins

The bonus of being out of the hills is that the ground is largely flat. The problem is you're more subject to wind, which can work in your favour, but more often than not seems to be directly on the nose. The first fifteen miles were a real slog, particularly as breakfast had been 'simple' (half a baguette and some imitation jam). To make it easier we took turns - 1 mile each in front before sheltering behind the other for the next.
The next 5 miles flew by as we played the alphabet game with songs and rather than calling out your answer, you had to sing as much of it as you could remember. Hence the French countryside was lit up by un-tuneful wails of 'Oooooour house, is a very very very fine house...' and 'Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to...wo, wo, wo, wo'. We rolled into a small town for our morning stop treating the locals to a rendition of Jerusalem.
We shared a pastry on a bench in a little town called Senonches, which turned out to be so calorific we cycled through to 50 miles passed numerous sleepy towns until we found somewhere to stop for lunch without feeling particularly hungry! The road helpfully skirted the edge of a forest and old mansion house dampening the headwind a little, but we're not quite sure where all those miles went.

With 3 hours before we could check in, we enjoyed lunch in a cafe before spending some time reading books on a patch of grass in the sun, before tackling the remaining 12 km to our bed for the night.

Turns out that Hotel Paradis (which we were a little concerned about given the write up) is a fab little place where the dinner and vin du table have been spectacular, not least as the desert came swimming in a freshly made caramel....mmmmmm......

Ps. We reckon that if it wasn't for all this food and wine, we'd probably be quite thin after all this cycling!