Yesterday was a more difficult day than the first two. It seemed to us that the Kilometers were more like miles. 100 Ks in 5 hours. Part of the equations is how many times does the route cross a river. We went down to a river three times yesterday so that meant quite a bit of climbing out. Not to complain though. The climbs are all around 5 ks and so far not more than 7%. We climbed a total of 1700 meters yesterday (something around 5500 feet). We saw the Tour de Merle. A very old a ruined castle that was situated in the bottom of a canyon on a small island. It looked like a safe place to be in the middle ages. The turret was as perfect as the ones in Disneyland, only it is real.
We were traveling in a rural area and though we had been looking for a place to get a cafe au lait for some hours (Muffy will tell you that I passed on one cafe thinking there would be a better one later), we didn't find one until we were almost done with our ride. We stopped anyway as that is why we come to France. We noticed they were replacing the rafters on the church in the plaza. How old were the old rafters we had to ask ourselves? 500 years. I really don't know but if look at the photo you can see they had been repaired quite a few times.
There were a few unscheduled turns yesterday, but again everyone had a great time. Today will be a shorter ride with less climbing, tomorrow it is off to the Peche Merle, a famous cave with prehistoric paintings and then more castelet for dinner.
Don
No comments:
Post a Comment