Refreshed after our evening pastry and ensuing good sleep, we started out for Royan - this is a medium-sized city just across from Le Verdon, which is at the top of the peninsula above...Bordeaux! (Yeah, we're getting close now...according to the map, there's only about 100 km to go, and then another 300 km or so to Pamplona! (Of course, that latter stretch contains a sizeable mountain range, so we'll see how that goes...))
...and that's as far as we got. As chronicled in our Picasa albums, our arrival in Royan happens to coincide with a national day of solidarity against proposed measures to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62...by 2018. Don't get me wrong; I think that our drop-until-you-work mentality back in North America is highly flawed, but this is way at the other extreme of the laziness spectrum. Anyways, we learned this upon reaching the ferry terminal, where a number of printed signs affixed to the firmly-barred gates informed us that, no, we would not be able to travel today. (As we learned later, all forms of transport were similarly closed; I pity the other poor travellers trying to get around France!) Since the coast opposite the peninsula looks both more hilly and less scenic, we've decided to wait it out in Royan...and so we're set up in the only café with wifi that we came across while cycling to the docks, catching up on our photo captioning and video uploading and blog posting...all those things necessary to ensure that you can continue to hear about our travels!
One other thing: camping in Royan is unnecessarily expensive - 21€ for two people and a tent per night, whereas the average cost so far has been closer to 12-15€. Maybe we'll find more reasonable pricing further south...