We were staying at 900’, so it was a cool night but there was a beautiful sunny morning. I knew that this was going to be a more difficult day, so I set off earlier than usual, 9 o’clock, and for the first time wore a long-sleeved shirt under my jersey.
For the first mile I had a steady downhill, so felt quite chilly but then turned a corner and started on an 8% climb for about 1 ½ miles up to the ancient village of Peyrusse le Roc, one of those particularly French places that seems to be clinging to the edge of a hillside with steep valleys dropping away beneath. After that the landscape levelled, and I cycled for 6 or 7 miles along flat roads running through ploughed fields: the harvest was in up here.
By 10 o’clock I reached Montbazen, where I cycled around until I found a boulangerie and then settled in at the Adoise Occitaine for my morning fix of coffee and croissants. I then realised that the dual languages for all of the village name signs around here were in both French and Occitan, and the symbol of Occitan seemed to be all around.
Onwards to La Remise, then I found myself on a brand-new bypass, swinging around the town first downhill then climbing uphill until I found a roundabout where I turned to the right and then started a fast straight descent of about 400 feet down to cross a river, and then to climb up the other side. Not such a steep climb, but it was about 4 miles and I was now warm enough to take off my long-sleeved top. I was now up in beautiful wooded countryside, and I stopped in the village of Colombies for a sandwich and to lie on a bench and look at the sky through a pattern of sycamore leaves.
I felt that I was progressing quite slowly, but shortly after my lunch stop the D997 started to turn downhill, and I then found myself on a 10 mile steady, not too fast, descent, fast enough to feel the exhilaration but not the anxiety. That brought me to the old bastide town of Sauveterre de Rouergue. This had a beautiful central square lined by cool, dark arches, and I found a shady spot to sit and enjoy the silence, being completely alone in the heart of the village.
This was still a landscape of causses, or plateaus, and after leaving Sauveterre I suddenly found myself on a steep descent for what seemed like miles, dropping into a gorge, until I came to the familiar small bridge, the right-hand turn and the start of a climb up the other side. On descents like this as a cyclist you become fully alive and in the moment, alert for any holes or obstacles that could be disastrous, your heart jumps when a vehicle comes in the other direction as you have to focus on finding the space between the vehicle and the edge of the road, the wind rushes past your ears, your eyes water, insects slap into your face. And then, in moments, it is over. You drop into bottom gear and everything goes very quiet, just the sound of the trees, of tyres crunching through gravel or hissing on the tarmac, of the creaking of my shoes in the cleats, and all that occupies your mind is the need to keep the pedals turning, looking up occasionally at the road ahead and hoping that the next 200 yard stretch of uphill leads to the crest of the hill, wondering what the curves in the skyline mean, being totally in your own head but in a completely different way to the descent. In France such climbs can go on for many miles, and perhaps take a slow climber such as me an hour. Hard, exhausting, but a major, and for me, very important, experience.
At the top of this climb I pulled over in a small hamlet and found a bench in the shade to rest. An old chap came out of his house on the other side and greeted me, asked me where I was going and reassured me that the road to my next destination, Requista, was ‘plat’, but the tilt of his hand indicated that it might be a little uphill as well. However, reassured, I set off and found myself speeding along a reasonably flat road with a welcome tailwind.
When I arrived in Requista I found that the entire town centre was closed to traffic, and that the streets had been taken over by street vendors, most of who were selling second-hand goods, and that all of the café’s and restaurants were open and doing good trade in the late afternoon sunshine. I thought that it was about the most people I had seen in one place at the same time since I left Pointe St Mathieu what seemed like months ago.
A brief exchange of messages with Helen and I knew where she was, at an aire in Broquies about 8 miles away. To get there I had to drop down to the valley of the river Tarn, and I found that this was the D902, a major road but which dropped at about 8% for several miles. My descent was complicated by having to follow a car whose driver was even more anxious than me, so that I had to keep applying the brakes to avoid going at more than 35 miles an hour. Several times other vehicles descending roared past the pair of us, making it a somewhat terrifying experience and I was glad when I reached the bridge at the bottom. I turned off the main road and followed a small road along the banks of the river for some miles until I came to the turn for Broquies, which took me over a narrow bridge and then immediately into a single lane tunnel through a cliff face. As I went into the tunnel I suddenly realised that it was not illuminated except for small lights showing the tunnel walls, and I had no front light. Although there was a traffic light system controlling movement through the tunnel, I was worried that my slow speed would mean that an oncoming vehicle might not expect to find me coming towards them. It took me what seemed like an eternity to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.
After that I took a left turn and climbed slowly up to the village where Helen was parked for the night. It had been quite a day of, literally, ups and downs. I had covered 70 miles and completed 11,000 feet of ascending. My new total miles completed was 741, and slowly the end was coming into sight.
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