St-Céré to Figeac

May 11, 2019

This is why it's so green!

What can I say? It was another day riding on quiet roads through beautiful pastoral scenery. For interest, there were a few significant hills and several cloudbursts.

No, that's not the same château we kept seeing yesterday.

Our hotel in St-Céré spread through at least 3 buildings. It was a confusing warren inside! But nice enough with very friendly staff.

I thought our son the musician might appreciate this sculpture in front of the Mairie in Lacapelle-Marival. There's a music school in town....

We arrived in Lacapelle-Marival just before noon and picked up supplies for a picnic lunch. We thought we might eat it in St-Bressou but it was raining and there wasn't a sheltered place to sit. We continued on to Cardaillac where we ended up eating in the sheltered doorway of the locked-up salle des fêtes--after a pair of hikers who had been doing the same moved on.

The sun came out while we were eating our lunch so we moved to this wall. Al made friends with some locals.

Somewhere along the road. It seems that Al is also trying to develop his artistic side. (Al's photo)

From Cardaillac we took D15 until it hit D840 and then continued straight across (after first turning left onto to D840 and realizing we were off course). "Sauf riverains" said the sign, local traffic only. There was a fair amount of traffic calming but as cyclists, we like that! This is the route suggested in Lonely Planet's Cycling in France and it was definitely very quiet. The surface was much better after the first hundred metres or so.

We arrived in Figeac and first looked for Figeac Bikes. We got there to discover Google was right. It's closed on Saturday afternoons (and all day Sunday, Monday mornings, and Thursday afternoons too). Strange to us, when most bike shops in the Vancouver area are open 7 days a week most of the year.

The other thing we noticed in Figeac was that there was a Gilets Jaunes march underway. Some streets were closed, there were ambulances and police motorcycles moving around with and without sirens, and occasional loud bangs and running police officers. Apparently these things are always on Saturday afternoons (and this is why Paris was so strange--we were there on a Saturday). Last Saturday we were in Les Éyzies but I think it's just always dead.

Here we have an apartment for the night. We are in the centre of town and heard the gilets jaunes for a while, then there was another cloudbursts and now it's quiet.

It's Al's birthday today and he decided that, since we have an apartment with a little kitchen tonight and we've been eating out every night for the last two weeks, we should get some groceries and eat in. Even though we are in the centre of town and there are lots of specialty shops around, he wanted to go to Casino across the street.

That man is a danger in a grocery store! This sort of thing happens at home too. We came out with chicken (two precooked legs, packaged), a 250 g package of dry pasta and a small jar of pesto (serves 2 to 4, it said), two small cheeses, a good-sized tin of roasted peppers, two half-bottles of wine, plus a litre of milk and one of orange juice and half-dozen eggs for breakfast. (Coffee is provided at the apartment.). Then we went to the greengrocer (my idea, as the Casino didn't have much selection) for a bunch of green asparagus and some raspberries for dessert. We got butter at Leclerc (Casino didn't have packages smaller than 250 g) and, at one of the several boulangeries in the area, a small loaf of bread and two desserts.

At the end of what's left of the ramparts, Figeac

Wine shop just a few doors from our apartment. We spoke with one of the owners who offered us a glass of wine (see the barrel out front). This shop has been open for just a year and there's another wine shop on the same block.

Inside the wine shop. I didn't take a photo of the glass section of the floor which gave a view into a wine cellar.

When we got back to the apartment and started cooking, the skies had opened again. It was nice not having to go out!

Birthday dinner. Well, dessert, actually. (Al's photo)

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Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 521 km (324 miles)

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