Sunday - Mirambeau-Petit Niort
Very civilised breakfast in the library - in fact, a very civilised place all round.
Spent quite some time deciding what to do. Mirambeau is, at least for the moment, the ‘end of the line’ as far as the official route is concerned: once it leaves Charente Maritime, there is no marking, in fact, no official route at all as far as Bordeaux. There is a new cyclepath between Etauliers and Blaye which is an obvious route to use; it is easy enough to follow the lanes from the departmental border to Etauliers. So I did think of continuing on to Blaye, but it was Sunday and I had to get to Bordeaux the next day for my flight back and wasn’t at all confident of there being public transport to get me there, nor of being able to get across the river to catch public transport there. There is no public transport in Mirambeau on Sunday - in fact, not much public transport on any day. So I decided to leave the GR655 at Petit Niort and follow the GR360 to Montendre, where I knew there was a train to Bordeaux.
The forecast of rain in morning, clearing up in early afternoon, turned out to be exactly right, so it was damp when set off around 10 for Petit Niort, all of 1.5km away. Here I headed off in the rain to the SE. Exactly true to the forecast, the rain stopped just as I arrived at Montendre, and I stopped in a bar to dry out before the train arrived.
The Charente Maritime route has been recently extended 5km further S to Pleine-Selve [now included in the new GR655 topoguide] though this is not shown on the IGN map. I did not however walk this, and it will have to wait for another time.