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John and Sheila
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DIARY - Sault to Sault + Mont Ventoux 2011
Day 16: VILLEFRANCHE de PANAT to St CHELY du TARN (105km)


Sunny and pleasantly hot

Get ourselves ready and packed; and come down for breakfast at 7:30. Or, rather, we don’t – the sliding door is locked on the far side and is immoveable. We knock on it to no avail. We can appreciate that those staying at the hotel may be locked out of the bar so they don’t sneak down and help themselves in the night, but it is now after breakfast time. We prowl around looking for an alternative exit and study the fire safety diagram on the wall, which requires advanced interpretative skills to follow. There are no “run-out” signs, but there is an unmarked door beside the infamous sliding door. John remembers that there is a second unlabelled key with our room key. We try it in the lock and hey presto we are out on the street at the back of the hotel.

We walk around the block to find the four resident workmen, fags in mouth, standing beside the locked front door. A van arrives to collect three of them for work and we ask the fourth about breakfast. He shrugs. Sheila returns via the back door, stamps about loudly and hammers on any door marked ‘Privé’, finally obtaining a response of ‘j’arrive’ from one. We re-assemble at the front door and eventually Madame arrives, first fag of the day in mouth, to unlock the front door. Sheila’s pointing out that we have a long journey to make and 8:00 am is not an acceptable time to serve a 7:30 am breakfast is met with a shrug. We decide to get the trike ready while we await breakfast and ask for the garage key. Apparently we cannot have it because it is too early for Madame to get the key from the owner of the garage. Sheila moves into “angry and authoritative”, summoning up an impressive new range of French vocabulary, and as if by magic the key appears and is handed over. Not a total disaster, but we will not be putting the Hôtel ******, Villefranche de Panat on our recommendation list. We have the distinct impression that we are both the only foreigners (by which I mean someone coming from more than 50km away) and the only tourists to have come to V de P this century, and may well be the last for a very long time, allowing the locals and Madame to settle back undisturbed into their bar and fags.

On the road we discover that the only road out is via Besse, so having avoided it yesterday, we now have to start with a climb up to and through the town. Up on the tops we have some great long views of the countryside that was shrouded in mist yesterday, now in sunshine. We had been planning to take an unclassified road down the steep sides of the Tarn gorge to Le Truel, but fearing this might be more mountain track than road, we decide to take the longer way round using a small D road. Nonetheless it is an exciting hairpin bends plummet down the vast cliff sides of Tarn gorge. We stop a couple of times on the way to take in the stunning view and to take some photos.

Through Le Truel and over the bridge to the south bank of the Tarn we climb again to a barrage. From
Sault to Sault + Mont Ventoux
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TOUR DIARY

Pre tour and Travel south
Day 1 Roquemaure (76km)
Day 2 Anduze (84km)
Day 3 Aniane (73km)
Day 4 Narbonne (105km)
Day 5 Carcassonne (78km)
Day 6 Carcassonne (0km)
Day 7 Castres (73km)
Day 8 Cordes sur Ciel (68km)
Day 9 Cahor (88km)
Day 10 Salviac (51km)
Day 11 Salviac Rally (28km)
Day 12 Salviac Rally (68km)
Day 13 Vers (50km)
Day 14 Villefranche de Rouergue (65km)
Day 15 Villefranche de Panat (105km)
Day 16 St Chély du Tarn (105km)
Day 17 St Chély du Tarn (0km)
Day 18 Chamborigaud (81km)
Day 19 Vallon Pont d’Arc (65km)
Day 20 Vaison la Romaine (88km)
Day 21 Sault (72km)
Mont Ventoux (51km & 1912m)
Non-cycling sightseeing

here it is a serious climb out of the valley up the side of the gorge to the cliff top again. Sheila, who thought that once we were on the Tarn it was a flat run (like the Lot), is a bit moanie. A stop at the top on a balcony opposite St Victor for great views,and more importantly a PaR to supplement our meagre breakfast, soon cures this. Then it’s steep downhill time again back to the riverside in the bottom of the valley and a repeat up and down climb before we re-cross the Tarn at a barrage. From here on it really is riverside cycling and we can relax in a middle gear and enjoy the scenery as we pass St Rome de Tarn on the other bank.
Our journey takes us on and under the Millau viaduct carrying the A75 motorway over our heads way up in the sky above. This is certainly an impressive, and almost slightly scary, piece of engineering well worth the two Michelin stars it has gained as a tourist attraction in its own right. We run into the large town of Millau itself and are unfortunate to run into some road works where the road has been newly tar sprayed with gravel chippings being thrown onto it. The trike tyres become coated with tar and chippings and look like a black version of a piece of fish coated in breadcrumbs. We grind into centre ville. While Sheila goes into a bar to seek cold water refills for our bottles, John settles to the task of scraping the tar and chipping coating from the tyres, not helped in the task by some drunken youths seeking to be a nuisance and indulge in pointless ATQs. Once sorted we head out of town.

The run out of town to Aguessac, although on a yellow D road, is horrible. It is busy and in part a dual carriageway, but with one lane closed making it difficult for traffic to overtake. Things improve after Aguessac but it is still quite busy. After a while we realise that we have made a mistake, because although we have followed the route we intended, for some reason we got this wrong when originally route planning. We should have crossed the Tarn in Millau and used the unclassified small roads on the other bank through cherry orchards to  Le Rozier where that road crosses again to the north bank. Too late to retrace now, so we continue the next 15km to le Rozier on a road which is not perfect but becoming less busy. Half way along we take a break in Rivières sur Tarn for a picnic lunch on a shady bench. This is opposite a café so Sheila goes across the road to get two ‘takeaway’ SdM&C to have with lunch.

Once past Le Rozier we are in the gorges proper and the scenery ramps up from splendid to spectacular. The road remains gently undulating. We continue through les Vignes, beside Pas de Soucy, around the Cirque des Baumes and into les Detroits.

At the les Detroits belvedere we pause to peer down at the river far below.

On to La Malène, where we stop to contemplate a boat trip. The trike is parked out of harms way down beside the canoe hire location and we share a traditional La Malène flat bottomed punt with a French couple for the 8km trip down to Les Baumes through the deepest and most narrow sections of the gorge. Return is by minibus.

Back at La Malène we retrieve the trike and notice that there are six vintage Velox  mopeds parked there. As we continue they overtake us and we overtake them in turn. They manage about 30kph, which is better than us uphill, but we can outrun them downhill. The riders are elderly gents with yellow tape measure braces and pudding basin helmets. Like us they have spare tyres lashed to the back of their machines. The whole entourage looks as though it should be taking part in a film. John decides that this is the machine he wants when he can no longer pedal a bicycle.

A few not too severe ups and downs bring us to St Chély du Tarn. St Chély village is an attractive huddle of old buildings in an impressive setting on the river but off the road, nestling below the gorge cliffs in the middle of the Cirque de St Chély. We turn down the small lane to St Chély and drop down to cross the bridge into the village. Much of the village belongs to the Logis hotel or is now Gite de France, but it is well restored, peaceful and with no sign of obtrusive tourism. Picturesque is the word. We are in an annex building beside the small stream that ends into a fountain into the Tarn.

After S&W we have a short walk to explore the village and riverside, before adjourning to the hotel restaurant for drinks followed by a relaxing dinner and early night.

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Diary Abbreviations

Not too many, but some thing come up so often in the course of our cycle touring that it is not worth writing them out in full each time:
PaR - Pain au raisin: Essential fuel to get through that mid-morning dip in energy
SdM&C - Sirop de Menthe and Cassis: No, not mixed, but Menthe for John who likes the lurid green colour and Cassis for Sheila. Not a new drink, but a great cold drink alternative to fizzy pop like Coca Cola and Orangina and only really finally appreciated by us on this tour as being for adults too, not just what you give the kids in a French café
OdT - Office de Tourism: Often our first port of call in a new town to acquire detailed street map, what’s on and if possible walking tour of historic sites
ATQs - Answering Trike Questions: If you choose to travel by tandem recumbent trike as well as being regarded as eccentric “les Anglais”, one has to answer an endless litany of regular questions – Is it comfortable? Did you make it yourself? How do you steer it? Why are there 3 gear levers? (answer: dual drive rear hub, if you are wondering) Is it heavy? How does it come apart? …etc.
We never got around to, but always meant to have a multi-language laminated sheet with all these FAQs on, which we could hang over the rear seat when the trike is parked and we are having a picnic lunch or similar. But then we would miss out on lots of interesting conversations and opportunities to expand our foreign language vocabulary of obscure bicycle parts.
S&W - Showers for us and washing of cycle kit: Normally (unless the need for a drink prevails) priority number one when checking into overnight accommodation. Includes either finding a washing line or engineering our own with the length of nylon cord carried for this purpose. Years of cycle touring experience have given us grade A skills and ingenuity at this.
TP - Technical Problem: Not something one wishes to encounter too often
TdF - Tour de France
GG Gertrude (aka Gertie) Greenspeed: We aren’t great ones for naming bicycles but if the ‘trike’ is referred to in an abbreviated form the alliteration of ‘Gertie Greenspeed’ seems appropriate

Click on any photo to enlarge and scroll through gallery

DAY 17 - Sightseeing in St Chély du Tarn


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