August 11, 2014
Sun 10 & Mon 11: Carcassonne to near La Seu d Urgell (Spain).
Sad to say goodbye to people that shared the hostel room with me. To Dan even if he can be hard understood at times. What is all the staring into space when you comment on something about? Like "Dan its nice and peaceful in this room". Then after a few seconds delay in acknowledging me while looking away up into the corner between the wall and ceiling, he'll turn and face me and answer simply "it is".
And Brian an American ex-solder from a military family. Your ears prick up when someone says their grandfather took part in the D-Day Landing and liberation march to Paris. He spend his childhood in England. His father was stationed there during the Cold War built-up of Nuclear capabilities and has spend his own career in the Middle East as a translater with diplomatic services as he speaks Arabic, most recently in Irak. Now in his early fifties he's retired from the military life and describes himself as a Tea Party Republican and has walked from Turkey. He is in the process of buying a house in a small town outside Carcassonne to set-up a retreat for solders returning from conflict zones. As I'm packing he is looking for something clean to wear to church.
I really don't go in much for route planning. I ride down the hill from the citadel old town and into the city centre expecting to follow direction signs for places south. But following the one way traffic system through narrow streets, I return back and I'm riding along the opposite side of the square that I rode into town leading out along the same highway I joined after the descend from the citadel.
I turn round and descend down to the bank of the Aude river, but the path along it isn't taking me anywhere quick. I return into the central narrow streets and break out of the car after car going around, finding the road for Toulouse then the split off for Limoux. Before leaving town I stop at a boulangere to buy pizza for lunch. It being Dimarche everywhere will be closed by twelve thirty.
The grey morning burns off and the temperature creeps up in the mid-thirties by afternoon. I lunch on a bench under a tree in Limoux, then reaching Quillon around four, I couldn't resist the sight of people sitting in the shade of umbrellas outside a café. I stop and have a cold Pelforth beer, then a second.
Onwards is into a mountain gorge and looking at the map the way I've chosen has a col of seventeen-hundred metres. Perhaps it'll take all day riding tomorrow.
There's a small shop open in the winter activity village Ataxa. Here I stock up on eggs and potatoes in case the next place with a shop is more than I can ride in a day.
The road climbs steadily up through the gorge and there seems little scope for a level campsite, until I come to a layby with a grassy track in along the river. A place more than big enough for the tent and hidden from the road by scrubs.
Fried potatoes and eggs for breakfast, at last after nine. being put off getting up earlier by rain. There's still a few spots of rain as I get going, which fizzles out and further up the gorge the road is dry. Then low cloud descends with light drizzle and I stop to put on my rain jacket.
Before that I'd passed up through the narrow street of a ghost village with barred window shutters and faded Hotel and Restaurant signs on gables. A relic from a time when cars were slower and roads not as good. There was only one occupied house with an old woman outside the door washing pans.
I keep turning the pedals hard with the speed on the speedometer fluxuating from nine to eleven. I've only covered twenty-five kilometres on this D road and with the same again until the red N road where I should be on the descend, it is getting monotomous. But soon after the road levels out upon an upland pastural plain where the sun is breaking through scattered clouds. Where there's fields of haymaking and fields of cattle to the side.
I reach a village with many other tourists, mainly sitting outside the café across from the church. There's a boulangere. But closed, not to reopen until three, and it is only quarter to two. I cycle up the street on the road onwards, pass a pizza place with people outside eating and come to a small shop which is open, where I buy the ingredients for a cheese sandwich and return to lunch sitting on the bench by the church door.
After only a few kilometres of riding in the afternoon, I feel drousy, unable to keep my eyes open, just as the road begins a longish climb. I turn off right down to a winter activity village by a lake, something- Du Lac. There I lay on the grass lakeside and sleep a short while.
I descend and join the red N road and descend a good way more down into a wide valley to Boug Madame. Here I stop to stock up at an Aldi. Most of the shoppers are Spanish and a little bit on through town I pass the ring of stars European flag with Espania in the centre. Then pass under the old customs building no longer used.
I keep riding until eight wishing to get as far as poss, when I come to a tunnel with the old road off to the left with access down to the river. Another reasonable campsite at the end of the day.
Today's ride: 181 km (112 miles)
Total: 3,324 km (2,064 miles)
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