Wednesday's text

We picked the right day for a bike ride yesterday as the forecast for Wednesday was rain and thunder storms. We awoke to the surroundings hills covered in low cloud. However by 9:30 the cloud had lifted and the sun came out. We decided on a short ride up the valley and the go to the Balnea (spa) in the afternoon. We first rode round the the lake . The road then followed the steam up the valley.  If I had plotted the ride before hand I would have realised that the 5 miles to the end of the valley included over 300 metres of climbing with some sections over 10 percent. Are efforts we rewarded with some good views across the valley to Genos where we stopped to take photos  before contributing  to the hydoelectic power station at Pont de Prat where  the road finished and some walking tracks begun. We returned to Genos stopping to watch a helicopter carring loads of building materials up the mountain.  We fancied a Gallette for lunch but we could not find a restaurant that were saving them so visited the supermarket and returned to our appartment for lunch. A few spots of rain started to fall as we reached the lake but not enough to get wet.

After a lunch and a shower to remove the sun cream we drove the short distance to the Balnea. We paid for 3 hours and could have stayed longer. We went thoght a variety of pools, saunas , steams rooms, cold plunges, ice rooms and Roman baths. We sat outside in the Japanse pools and watched the surrounding clouds  descend and could here thunder in the distance. We made it to the hottest pool before  the outside pools were closed becouse the risk of lightening. After a quick shower we made it out just inside our allotted time.  The rain was now so heavy we sat inside waiting for it to subside for 20 minutes before we left.

We investaged the local restaurants for our evenning meal but with some having a main course starting at 25 euros decided to go to the supermarket instead. We had a fine 3 couse meal. A started of salmon rillette,  followed by baked Alaskan pollac  and a desert of a caramel tartelette served with a Cahors red.