September 30, 2022
In Perigueux: up the Isle
Weather looks ideal for today’s ride - light breeze and clear skies, gradually clouding over as the day progresses. It’s chilly in the morning so we relax around the apartment while the day warms up, enjoying scrambled eggs and coffee while the clothes drier completes its cycle. It’s nearly noon when we leave the building and bike past Perigueux’s distinctive cathedral descending to the Isle. Once there we turn east and upriver, following the same excellent riverside trail we rode into town on yesterday. The next seven or eight miles are as good as it gets, cycling wise - sunny, scenic, flat. Cycle candy.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podarcis_muralis
Nice photo!
2 years ago
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After about eight miles our route leaves the Isle and continues upstream, now following its tributary the Auvézère. We’re on a quieter, coarser forest road now, and after a few miles start gradually climbing the only real ascent of the day. Rachael has gotten ahead of me here and has been out of sight for a few miles. I’m tracking her position on the Garmin though, and not long past the summit I’m surprised to see that she’s moving my direction even though our turnback spot is still some miles off.
About half a mile into the descent our paths intersect where she’s waiting for me at a junction. The route I have mapped for us, a marked cycle route, turns to gravel here. She’s been down it far enough to see that it’s worsening as she goes with no end in sight so she turned back. Why not keep riding on this perfectly nice paved road instead, she suggests?
An excellent suggestion, quickly adopted. We follow this road for another three or four miles rolling along at generally the same elevation, but eventually come to the point where it’s starting a sustained drop and decide that’s our cue to turn back. We backtrack a few miles to Sarliac-sur-Isle and pull off at its small church to sit on a bench in the sun and eat lunch.
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The ride back is as enjoyable as it was on the way out, although there’s a bit of a headwind now and it’s starting to cool down. It’s nearing five by the time we make it back to town, push our bikes through the congested pedestrianized zone around the cathedral, and drop to our apartment.
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Video sound track: Lalene, by Keith Jarrett
The fine day continues well with a second fine dinner here, this time at La Bouteille Bleue. At the end though our otherwise perfect day nearly ends in catastrophe when we approach our apartment building and Rachael asks if I have the keys. No, and neither does she. We haven’t made this mistake in a very long time, and as a humorous touch to the situation I tell her that I had just been reminding her over dinner of another forgotten key episode, three years ago in Toro.
It sounds like this might have been prescient, and that maybe I subconsciously knew we’d forgotten to check with each other for the keys before leaving the apartment. It wasn’t that though, just an interesting coincidence. We were seated next to a wall lined with wine bottles, and I noted that the one by my shoulder was bottled in Toro and it reminded me of the incident.
This is the only other time I can remember us pulling this stunt, and it’s remarkable that it came up at dinner even though we haven’t thought about it in ages. It’s probably our best locked-out story ever (in contrast to our best locked-in story, when I locked Rachael inside an outhouse in southwest France and had to carve out the lock with my Swiss Army knife). We realized we were locked out then the instant we closed the door behind us and immediately called the hotel’s posted after-hours emergency number with no response (we later learned that the number was incorrect). It’s quite a saga, and if you have a minute to spare you might follow the link to see the interesting way that it eventually resolved.
Tonight’s situation thankfully resolved more easily - we called the apartment owners, they eventually answered, and even though they don’t speak English really at all I succeeded in communicating the situation and five minutes later the owner walked up, smiled, and let us in. Embarrassing, but no catastrophe.
Ride stats today: 40 miles, 2,200’; for the tour: 482 miles, 31,300’
Today's ride: 40 miles (64 km)
Total: 482 miles (776 km)
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Of course in rentals you get what you get, without any choice in the matter.
2 years ago
In this case the room wasn’t the problem. Since we’d left the key to our room, the door to it was unlocked - as our host tried several times to explain to me. I was pleased tha I was able to get across to him that the problem was with the door to the entire building, on the street.
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