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November 7 Monday Bicycle France touring from Bourg-Lastic France to Mauriac France Brrr! Chilly one last night. Frozen water bottles. Frost. We are at 2400 feet elevation. Climbed 4000 feet yesterday on our overloaded touring bicycles. Touring by bicycle certainly can give one tired legs. Two passenger trains jutter past -- each two cars long -- clackety-clack. We push our bikes up the path back to the main road over slippery frosty leaves. Endless autumn. We eat breakfast in the little town of Auvergne. We cycled through a gorge to get here. We crossed over the Dordogne River. I took a picture of the gorge far below ... mist steaming along the valley off the river below. Magical. Cruising downhill on our loaded touring bikes into the vapor had a mythical quality to it. Serene. Ultra scenic. I am amazed at how lovely France is. Forests, streams, rivers, old towns, countryside. I saw some brown cows with long curved horns. Donkeys. Horses. Goats. Sheep. Chickens. Cows. All in little pastures beside ancient stone houses. We saw three old people with walking sticks, herding cows. The pace of life in the countryside is life in the slow lane. Just like us bicycle tourists. We eat our baguettes with jam in the middle of this little town. People go about their business as if it were entirely normal to have two touring cyclists with a gas stove boiling water on a stone bench in town centre while eating yogurt and fruit. "Bon appetit," one says. "Bonjour," says another. A woman came over and said we didn't have to eat out in the open -- we could use the community hall. At that particular moment the sun was shining, so we graciously declined her kind offer. I think touring by bicycle brings out the best in folks. I went over and looked at the community hall. It looks like a great place to sleep. The nice part about bicycle touring in France is that people acknowledge us, but they don't rush over. They give us our space. We like that. But, at the same time, they just don't ignore you or pretend you're not there or like you're some sort of alien life form (like when we were eating watermelon at a picnic table outside a store in some rural Manitoba village). A woman was busily cleaning up flower boxes and throwing flowers out. The flowers still look charming, but I guess it's winter for them now. She had a huge load in a wheelbarrow. Sharon held onto the wheelbarrow while I took a picture. Saw two old guys walking along the road yesterday. One had a wheelbarrow full of moss and the other had a garden fork over his shoulder. Saw an old man in rubber boots and earth on his hands coming out of a garden with a basket of flowers slung over his arm. Each morning, we see bedding airing out of second story windows, shutters wide open. We pedal down the road to Mauriac and pull our bicycles to a stop beside a man-made lake. There is camping, a golf course, and a beach -- all closed. We are under an overhang near the snack bar; water gurgles in the background. Sharon apparently misaligned her new brakes. By the time she discovered it, they had worn a hole in the sidewall of her new bike tire. That girl never fails to amaze herself. It is cloudy, but I can see my breath. Pizza for supper, warmed in our frying pan. When I was in a store buying the frozen boxed pizza, a man, knowing we were touring by bicycle, was trying to tell me, "You need an oven for this, you know." I also bought a bottle of $2 wine in a plastic bottle. It's surprisingly good. Just another joy of bicycle touring in France. |
