Vaucluse Dreamer

Sometimes, the best-laid plans fall apart, whilst those made on the hoof turn out OK, and that certainly feels as if it has been the case, this year.

It’s been a very strange start to 2024, which has unexpectedly seen us criss-crossing the border much more than we had imagined. In fact, apart from long-planned for breaks in January and February to mark my birthday Romance meets reality and our 35th anniversary Let’s meet in Nice we have only managed to be at home together for less than a week in total.

We have snatched a couple of days together here and there, making the most of being in the same place, at the same time. We have filled these days with cycling, walking and doing the necessary and invariably tedious chores that we can only do together.

During the time apart, we have spent our days walking or cycling in both places, covering miles in East Devon and Provence, grateful for the technology that allows us to chat over our morning porridge and later sharing a coffee across the ether. But it is never quite the same as being together, chatting about everything and nothing as we ride, sitting on walls and watching the shadows shift across the landscape & simply just enjoying ourselves.

If you have followed us for a while, you will have followed our cycle adventure last year, when we rode from East Devon, home to Provence, filling our saddlebags with memories as we went. Saddlebag of Memories… A few days on… What we learned

Then, in October, we headed off again, taking our bikes to Montpellier, cycling across to Pezenas for the huge October Brocante fair, before riding home again. Bikes and Brocante … Day 2, Montpellier to Pezenas

It’s fair to say, we had a ball on both of these trips, loving every moment of planning our days as they happened, making our way along quiet back roads between towns and villages, just absorbed by turning the pedals and watching the french countryside slip quietly past.

Once home, we started planning our next adventure for this summer. A long ride from Amsterdam, through the Netherlands into Belgium and Germany, before hopping back into France to pedal our way back to Provence

The maps were bought, the first few nights’ accommodation booked and the trains reserved to take us and our bikes to Amsterdam at the end of May, with 3 weeks planned for the trip back.

As the chaos of life gathered pace early in 2024, we stayed focused on the dates and looked forward to the adventure of making our way to new places, through countries we have never visited before.

But as the weeks (and then the months) slipped past, life didn’t settle down and as we continued our life over the internet, our priorities started to shift. We just needed to spend time together, in the same place, with as few worries and as little stress as possible. And however much we loved our cycling adventures last year, they really can’t be described as stress-free.

The cycling on our trips is really wonderful and we love exploring on 2 wheels, but as our trips are unsupported, and we make things up as we go along, we have the daily anxiety of  trying to find places to stay for the night. Then once everything has been washed and set out to dry, we find ourselves eating supper, whilst planning a route for the following day. It’s great fun, but not exactly relaxing.

Slowly but surely, as the weeks passed, reality dawned. And a couple of weeks ago we took the big decision to postpone doing the ride this year, changing our plans to do something that would minimise the day-to-day stresses. We just want to be able to enjoy time together, cycling and doing the things that we love, but have missed since the start of the year.

So we have decided to rein ourselves in and now have another little break planned, revisiting the Dordogne and into the Lot, both areas that are special to us, having spent many holidays there over the years.

To make things simple, we are taking the car and have booked houses in different villages. Rather than move on every day, we will use the houses as little bases and simply ride out to explore the areas by bike. That way, we still get to do what we enjoy, happy that we know where we will be each evening and not having to plan long A to B trips each day.

If I’m honest, it’s been a really tough decision to make, but we couldn’t have written what has happened, so far this year. We need to just take a breath and catch up, which we just wouldn’t be able to do on an unsupported 1000 mile cycle ride.

In many ways it will be a miniature Saddlebag of Memories break, as we have so many fond memories of the area.

We first visited together 35 years ago, when we arrived at the stunning Hotel de L’Esplanade in Domme on our honeymoon, throwing the shutters open and feeling as if we were falling into the valley below, and have been back to the area regularly since.

We had dreams of pulling up outside the hotel again, when we drove Fifi down from Devon in 2020. Only to arrive exhausted, in a basic hire car, after Fifi’s brand-new clutch collapsed in a puff of smoke at Brantome. Hardly the arrival we had dreamed of, but we sat in our room, munching peanuts (not feeling in the mood for dinner on the terrace) as we watched the sunset along the valley.

We’ve kayaked the river, visited the prehistoric sites and spent hours at the castles with the boys, when they were younger.

And any family game of I-Spy always has to involve ‘Troglodytes picking up sticks’ after a very young Tom used this as his answer for  every letter of the alphabet, after visiting the Roque Saint Christophe.

We’ve visited Sarlat in the snow, watching the flakes  swirling around the beautiful medieval buildings, whilst exploring the market

And have swum in the river to keep cool on the warmest of days, watching the kayaks drift past on the current

We also spent many hours whilst on holiday there, looking at houses and dreaming, so there was a time that this blog could very easily have been called Dordogne Dreamer instead.

We have taken our bikes before, but these were precious breaks away from work, and we just did the occasional ride. This time, apart from moving between houses by car, we aim to do as much as possible on 2 wheels, hopefully revisiting some favourite places and finding some new ones too.

So the plans have been changed and the Amsterdam to Apt ride has been put on ice for this year. But at least we have a plan involving bikes and some quality time together.

And yes, we’re already counting the days ….