Vaucluse Dreamer

Over the last 10 days, we’ve chanced on some wonderful Chambres D’Hotes, and last night was no different. We had decided to stay just north of Agen, after crossing The Lot river, finding a peaceful little chateau that offered rooms and a swimming pool.

It was an incredible place, that has been in the same family for a few generations and was (using lines from A Good Year) ‘filled with the patina of a bygone era’. The building was stunning, and the welcome we received was so warm, that it felt as if we were being welcomed as old friends.

So we went straight up to the swimming pool and relaxed our muscles with a gentle swim in the chilly water, as we watched the Woodpeckers and Golden Orioles flitting around the trees. The perfect way to end a hard day’s ride, before munching take-away quiche and drinking thimble sized glasses of cider on the chateau’s chapel wall, writing the day’s blog.

Setting off after breakfast this morning, our generous host sent us away with a large pack of their home-produced mi-cuit prunes, which will come in very useful as snacks, over the next few days (apparently they are cooked for 16 hours to keep them fruity and juicy), which is just perfect.

Having ridden to the B & B up an energy-sapping long, steep hill, I had imagined we would just start today with a nice, gentle and long freewheel down to Agen, where we would join the Canal path, to start making our way to Toulouse.

Andy always tells me that I am overly positive, and today he was right. After the short cycle down to the road, we started to climb again up long inclines that snaked their way up the hills between us and Agen. I have to admit that both of us felt a little weary and our legs felt leaden at the bottom of each rise, but we kept turning the pedals and finally turned off and swished down the long hill I’d been dreaming of all morning.

At the bottom of the hill, just before joining the canal path, we found a Boulangerie and stocked up with sandwiches and drinks. One thing Andy had learned from his adventure with the boys was that once you join the cycle path, then opportunities to find food and water are few and far between, so it was much better to be organised, than to be caught out.

Joining the Canal des 2 Mers cycle route, we started to head out of the town, slowly but surely leaving the houses and factories behind. The noises of the town were quickly replaced with birdsong, and the metallic scent of fumes was replaced with the heady scent of the flowers on the Linden Trees that lined the path.

After the hills of the last few days, and especially those from yesterday afternoon and this morning, it just felt so good to be on a flat path, making progress with just the ramps up to the locks to test our climbing legs.

We settled into an easy rhythm, pottering along and chatting, as the kilometres slipped by. It was nice not to have to navigate and also nice not to have to worry about cars, especially after a close pass by a driver of a van, on a blind bend earlier in the day had seen me screaming expletives like a fish-wife (and believe me I can yell!)

We started to notice the little things. The plop of a fish breaking the surface of the water, the flash of turquoise from a Kingfisher disturbed by our passing and the buzz of the bees, busy in the Linden trees too. We even noticed how the path’s surface changed as we moved out of the Lot et Garonne into the neighbouring department.

The path follows the canal, occasionally hopping from one side, across a bridge to the other and even having a long & narrow cobbled stretch, where it is on an aqueduct across another river. That tested the suspension on my bike and made my teeth chatter, as everything jiggled on the way across … I’m not tempted to test myself on the pavé of Roubaix after that!

Late morning, we took a road away from the path to the little town of Valence, where we sat with a coffee, and booked a night’s hotel in Toulouse, so at least we had an end point for the day’s ride. Or at least that’s what I thought I had done.

When the confirmation came through it was for a night at the end of the month, not tonight at all, and it seemed that some glitch in the system (certainly not a glitch in my brain) had managed to book the wrong night. After a minor panic, I called the hotel and they sorted it out over the phone, changing the booking so that we knew we had a room, and hadn’t lost nearly 100€ in the process. Hey ho, these things happen, but at least it had been quickly and easily resolved.

Hopping back on the bikes, we made our way back to the cycle path and pottered on, passing a sign telling us it was 91 km to Toulouse, which was a long way, but at least it was flat…

Then disaster struck and there was a clunk, as Andy’s bike came to a grinding halt with a snapped chain. Now if you had asked me about all the things that we thought could go wrong on the trip, I think this would have been pretty near the bottom of the list, but it had happened and we were literally in the middle of nowhere without a place in sight.

Happily, he had brought a quick link with him, which meant there was a possibility that he could make a repair that would keep us rolling, otherwise there was a good chance that we would have to abandon the ride.

At times like this, convention goes out of the window and with nothing around, the bike was tipped upside-down for Andy to try to fix the chain, using just the limited, essential toolkit that we had brought with us, which was packed on my frame, in a carrier that wasn’t much bigger than a Toulouse Sausage! 

It wasn’t textbook, but it was the only thing he could do in the circumstances and somehow he managed to fit the new link, which left him covered in oil, but a tentative push on the pedals saw the fix hold, and after a few minutes, we were underway again. After doing our Daily update

It wasn’t the most relaxing next few kilometres, as every click or clunk had my heart in my mouth, worried that something had gone wrong, but happily it was OK, and slowly but surely my heart settled and we focused again on getting to our hotel for the night.

We passed through pretty towns, with little basins filled with boats of all different shapes and sizes…

And then came across the water slope at Montech. Andy and the boys had been fascinated by this piece of engineering, when they cycled the route 7 years ago, but this was the first time I have seen it, and it has been renovated and restored since, with a visitor centre added to help people understand the site.

Along the canal, there are regular locks, but here there is a ramp, where an engine pulls the boat up to the next level. It’s an incredible (and now very colourful) piece of engineering, which had been in use for 150 years, and it’s great to see that it has been preserved for generations to come.

By now, I was so pleased that Andy had insisted we bought supplies before joining the canal, as the opportunity to buy anything else en route was pretty rare. I munched the rest of my sandwich and we carried on, watching the kilometres tick by, thanks to markers at the side of the path, although these disappeared when we moved into the next department again, Haute Garonne.

At least we felt that we now had Toulouse in sight, glugging a full-fat coke, at the only trail-side café we found, to keep our legs spinning for the last 20km.

If I’m honest, the final run into Toulouse wasn’t the most attractive arrival to a place that we’ve had, following the cycle path through industrial areas and alongside the motorway, where I’m happy to say that on bikes, we were travelling a lot faster than the cars. But finally, we arrived at the hotel, parked the bikes in the garage and collapsed on the bed, feeling ridiculously exhausted after the day’s ride.

It felt silly as all we had really done was ride along a flat cycle path (after the hills of the morning), but then Andy looked at The route and then we understood why. Somehow, we’d only climbed 100m less than the first days ride across Dartmoor, covering 132km too. A bit of a bigger ride than we both imagined.

So tonight, on the more exhausted side of tired, we’ve celebrated in style with a takeaway pizza and wine in paper cups, sitting on the bed in the hotel room.

Honestly, we know how to live!