August 7, 2006
Day 29: Bourret - Agen: On the pilgrims path
Back up over the hill. The road to Castelsarrasin takes us through lovely countryside and small villages. We have come to the edge of our map and hope to find new maps in this larger town. We are now using the IGN maps, a competitor of Michelin and also excellent. www.ign.fr The series, 1:100,000, is called "cartes de promenade" and shows some bicycle and hiking paths.
While we stop, we meet a friendly young French cyclist and talk about our routes. He describes his route coming from Bordeaux and tells us of bicycle paths in the area around Bordeaux that we didn't know existed. In a few days we will follow his advice and have a wonderful day cycling into Bordeaux on a 55 km rail-to-trail route.
We now continue to Moissac, at the confluence of the Tarn and Garonne. In the Middle Ages the Abbey of Saint-Pierre at Moissac, noted for its Romanesque sculpture, was a major pilgrimage church on the medieval Chemin de Saint Jacques or Camino de Santiago. The capitals in the cloisters are one of the most complete sets of Romanesque capitals existing.
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In the main square of Moissac, we make up for our missed evening meal last night. There are a fair amount of tourists here, but we find tourism doesn't always jack up the prices. Often the competition of the many restaurants keeps the prices in a moderate range, as is the case here.
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From Moissac we continue along the canal next to the Garonne, then on small roads to the town of Valence (not to be confused with Valence on the Rhone) where we look for the campground listed in our guide. Here we have another strange campground experience: I think the man running the place was a psychopath. When I say I want to look at the sites, he starts to scream and curse and says to get out of here ... He didn't have to say that twice. We were gone in no time. This is a Camping Municipal, run by the town, and we should have reported the incident, revenge would have been sweet, but we wanted to move on.
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The rest of the day to Agen we enjoy country roads. Looking for the campground listed in our trusty little book again turns out to be a wild-goose chase, the campground closed years ago. By the time we discover this, it's late and we turn into the first hotel we find.
Today's ride: 88 km (55 miles)
Total: 1,744 km (1,083 miles)
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