It took us seven hours by train to return to Toulouse from Paris and retrieve our bikes. We mostly passed the time sleeping and eating.
In Toulouse, we had a quick look around the town before arriving at the house of Jack and Jeff, who had very kindly stored our bikes for us in their shed while we went to London.
It might seem weird that we left our bikes in Toulouse, but when we were in Nice we tried to get them on a train to Paris and found that none of the bike positions were available before our Eurostar train departed. It worked out well in the end though, as Toulouse is the gateway city to the Pyrenees and that was our next destination.
We got in touch with Jack and Jeff using warmshowers.org, a website that allows people to offer free accommodation to other cycle tourists. To join you have to be willing to host tourists yourself. This was the first time we tried it out.
If everyone is as welcoming as Jack and Jeff were then we’ll definitely have to use it again in future. We arrived and were shown through their lovely 19th century house, which they renovated themselves. We helped them make a delicious quiche (well we chopped the vegies, they did the rest) and salad and they gave us advice on planning our route for the next few days. At the end of the evening we had probably the best sleep we’ve had during this trip on a mattress on their lounge room floor.