|
six: Speed
IT'S OVERCAST and there's a rain so light it seems merely that the air
is moistened. The air is in any case fresh and cool -- but not, as
yesterday, cold. Shorts and T-shirt.
 The farmer is tilling the
next field: Stu and Ian say he often has tobacco there. His tractor is
-- no, you cannot say that here. To call the tractor ancient would be
an affront to Mme. Moulinier's farmhouse, stone-walled, rough-beamed.
And to call that ancient would leave no word for the caves up and down
this valley, that the signs call the Vallée de l'Homme: habitations of
men for two thousand generations. And the Vézère valley, rugged,
granitey, is older than that and, with its weathering, shows it.
All agree it's good cycling
weather. We emerge from Madame Moulinier's and go down a little slope,
up a little slope, and down a another little slope to The Bridge at
Tursac. Total distance, as they say in TdF circles, about 100 yards;
total ascent, about 6 yards. At the end of it, at The Bridge, I'm
hoping that this is the hill-climb stage over with and that the rest
will be flatter -- but suspecting this won't happen.
There's a long freewheel
down to the base of the Roque St. Christophe, and then a dreadful
climb up to a small viewpoint. "That's where we're going," said Stu,
pointing, "round behind there."
| | It's Ariane -- no, hang on, it's still in
one piece, it must be the church at St Leon instead.
| "But that's the other side of the valley," I say, "and we've just
spent all that effort getting up this side!"
Stu laughs politely. "We're not even halfway up this side of the
valley," he says. "Look where the river is. We're more or less at the
bottom." My chest is still fair heaving: I'm clearly more unfit even
than I'd thought.
| | Hard to make out on this pic of
the back of the church, but there's a line and '1830'
marked on this stonework a third of the way up the picture.
Translation: they have some major floods round here from time
to time. |
After that there was a coast down into Peysac, another climb (not
at all as severe), and a long coast down into St. Leon, a village
having, like Lavardin, a sign announcing it as being officially "one
of the most beautiful villages in France".
"How far have we come?" I
ask. Stu and Jen have tiny cycle computers on their handlebars. "Five
miles", says Stu.
"Oh, that's not bad!", I
say. "Five miles over all that up-and-downy stuff!"
| | A touch of Transylvania: the
best view you can get from outside of the château at St
Leon.
| "No, it must be all that walking you do in Cambridge," agrees Stu.
"I had you down for lying on your back in a field saying 'I want to
die' at this point."
Thus encouraged, we set out
from St. Leon and the road soon becomes a long gradual climb, which
Jen and I both aver to be the worst sort. After each turn we hope to
see the top. Eventually we think we can: there is sky ahead, not more
hill. The gradient here has shallowed, but at the top of such a hill
our tiredness is increasing faster than the gradient is decreasing. By
the last fifty yards, this has happened so acutely that, even though
under normal circumstances we'd be pressed to say for sure which way
uphill lay, I'm counting the remaining breaths I need to take to be
finished.
The top is a T-junction onto
the ridge road: it's surrounded by fields. I don't have the energy to
get into a field to lie down, let alone to say coherently that I
wanted to die.
Much squirting of water
bottles later, we set off along the ridge road to a picnic area Ian
and Stu know. Iron men, they've dragged not just themselves but a
picnic in panniers up that hill, and we are all very glad of it. St
Nectaire cheese, edammy but with a pleasant wonkiness; rillettes de
canard, a bottle of red. It rains briefly but heavily, and we take
refuge, bodily dragging the picnic table-and-chairs under the nearest
tree.
|
| Down the hill
is amazing. No pedalling for miles and miles. We pass a Buddhist
monastery, and I slow, not wanting to be at one with anyone walking
dreamily the other way. Ian is ahead of me, and when he takes a corner
I can know there's no traffic on the other side.
 At the bottom, the
road injects us, still hurtling, into the village of Le Moustier. We
get some beers in at the village bar: feeling victorious, but looking
(the waiter wordlessly makes this quite clear) like mad overexerted
Brits. Stu says that his cycle computer clocked him at 31mph down the
hill, and Ian and I were going faster than he and Jen.
That evening, back at Madame Moulinier's, we cooked and ate what
was probably the only chicken Madras anywhere in Périgord. And
probably the only one in the world being served with a bottle of 1992
Crozes-Hermitage.
 All Rites
Reversed -- Copy What You Like
|
