There were two reasons my mother particularly wanted to head to Marciac. The first was because she used to go there with my late father for the jazz festival and the second because friends of hers had moved near by to Gazax-et-Baccarisse. Of course due to the jazz festival every where within about 30 miles of Marciac was booked up, so we found ourselves in Auch.

The original trip did not take in to account bouncing around between near Périgueux and Oradour-sur-Glane the day before, so there was a need for an additional battery top up, however this was no problem as there is an Ionity charger just after Périgueux on the actual route we were due to take.

For some reason decent high speed chargers are either on motorways/auto-routes or in commercial areas, rarely where there is anything to do while waiting for your charge to complete, however this one was different with a super market, two restaurants, plus a McDs and some other shops on the same parking area. We only needed 20 minutes though due to the car reaching 235kW charging rate. For those of you who have not tried an EV, that is charging at a rate double the maximum capability of many other cars.

Proceeding on we had about a two hour drive before our next charge stop. Now I probably could have skipped this one, but by taking the car back up to 90% it meant I had additional range without hopefully having to worry about side trips. Additionally it was only about 100km back to the charger from the hotel in Auch, and this was the one we have already scheduled for our return leg north.

So we arrived at our hotel, the Le Relais de Gascogne. It is not far outside the town centre, just across the river from the cathedral, but in a slightly grubby area. The hotel is cheap and looks it, but at the same time it is functional and I have stayed in worse.

Having dumped our bags we were back out again. While my mother’s actual friend (the wife of the couple) in Gazax-et-Baccarisse was back in the UK looking after her mother, her husband was still around, so over we went, passing through some interesting villages including the medieval town of Barran, with its gate house, and Bassoues with it’s amazing châteaux tower.

The farm house my mother’s friends have bought is a work in progress, however Mark is an experienced builder and we’ve seen the before photos. What they presently have is really impressive what will come should be amazing. After some banter we headed to the nearest town for a meal, this being Bassoues, with its one restaurant/bar being the appropriately named Restaurant du Centre. It is next to (in some respects part of) the market square and both are of medieval construction. It is everything you would expect from the only eatery in a small village. Good food, friendly staff, good atmosphere, and great prices. Well worth a side trip if you are near by and not a vegetarian/vegan. I say this as it is a set menu and for starters it is either soup (you are not told what, so presumably the chef’s choice for the day) or a salad. Both may come with meat and today the former was a minestrone type affair with obvious pieces of beef in it, and the latter ham with melon. At just €15 per person, not only was there the three courses, plus bread and water, but also wine as well. Later the owner wandered round giving out free glasses of armagnac. Just a shame I was driving.

Now back at the hotel and day 4 is over.