Dave and his Bike

July 19th 2022

I was awake and up by 0650am. Breakfast by ten past, back in my room before half-past and a quick chat with Jane on FaceTime before my final pack and out on the road. 

I left with a certain degree of ambivalence, in that I wasn’t initially bothered about the ride itself, and have clearly got used to company on the bike, so it felt a bit like I was just going through a routine. That soon changed. It was noticeably cooler – weird that 22 degrees feels chilly – and the roads were flat and good quality. With yesterday’s change of plan (to stick to decent and direct tarmac) there was quite a bit more traffic about initially, up to the point where the road split and the HGVs veered off towards Sarlat. Thankfully. 

What I initially thought was mist in the trees ahead – a reasonable assumption due to the cooler air – turned out to be smoke. The raging forest fires in the south-west of France are causing havoc and danger to many people. The density of the smoke between Perigueux and Siorac-en-Dordogne paid testament to that and from a selfish perspective was cause for concern. Not only did the smoke aggravate my asthma (but not badly), I was also worried that I would get to a point where I would be turned back or it would be dangerous to continue. Thankfully, even though the sun was partially obscured, it didn’t get too bad, and I rode out of it a couple of hours later.

La Douze, yesterday’s declined destination, came quickly. So did the climbs that followed, up into the smokey hills. I was however, then treated to a 10km descent into Le Bugue which was excellent, and the longest I have spent in a ‘medium gear’ (time-trial parlance!) For most of this trip. The market was on in Le Bugue, which meant lots of people milling around and traffic jams. Which didn’t stop one old dear from pulling out in front of me onto a roundabout without looking. I swore a bit. In French. I stopped for the smallest large coffee possible. There must be a compromise between Starbucks ‘small’ and French ‘small’, which are at opposite ends of anything that can be considered less than ‘medium’, ‘average’, or ‘normal’. The air was still heavy with smoke in town, and it made for a strange atmosphere as the tourists went about their holiday-french-market routine.

I crossed the Vézère river and soon found a boulangerie where I took a break from the norm for my second breakfast and bought myself a slice of pizza. There are only so many croissants you can eat…

I continued south, then tracked east to to Siorac, at which point I no longer needed to check the map as I knew my way home. I stopped briefly alongside the golf course to eat the aforementioned pizza, but was too impatient to be off the bike for long as there were only about 23km left to ride. I had been nervous about the drag up to St-Laurent-la-Vallee, but my memory had played tricks as it was a long but reasonably gentle drag up there. The 4km down to St Pompont flew by and the turn off to Campagnac-lès-Quercy was worthy of a photo stop.

5km to go. Gentle climb to Campagnac, then Jane’s nemesis – the hill over to Le Vignal and La Roque. We had talked about this climb for some time. Quite a long time in fact. It was a bit of a shame to be riding it on my own, but in the heat (which was now appreciable) Jane would still have struggled. It nearly beat me too. 

Rather superbly everyone was out in the road to greet me – a welcome sight to say the least. 

Photos and a short drop down the hill. Home. And beer.