The Bicycle Trip

If I wanted chronological order, I shouldn't have started this blog with this picture.   This is me today on the way back through a town I rode through a week ago.    But it's the only one of me actually on the bicycle.  I wanted to document that I did go on a bicycle trip.   The bicycle tour is self-guided up and back along the river Tarn west of Albi.  Hotels, meals, bicycle and luggage transport are provided.  I have to bring myself and the bicycle.  

 

The first day of the tour involved following a map along city streets in a gentle rain.  So when I saw a patisserie/boulanger across the street around noon, I braked.    I meant to have a lunchy thing such as one of the brochettes or sandwiches shown above.

But darned if right alongside the lunch things were the dessert things.   For once, I didn't do the  "right" thing.   I asked for the pastry with two layers of creamy custard and the chocolate stripes on top - a Napoleon,

I thought of taking these pictures just as I was finishing the Napolean.  I almost couldn't stop to leave enough of it for a  picture,  but I did.

This was the view out my window of the first hotel.  I had cycled about 20 miles, mostly along the Tarn River, to Ambialet.

Ambialet is built on a "presque isle" - a nearly-an -island.   We have at least a couple in the United States, one on the Great Lakes and one in Maine.   The presque isle in this case is formed because the river doubles back on itself, but is prevented from joining by a high rocky ridge.   I climbed up that ridge before I left to take this picture.

I had two nights in Ambialet.  There I met again an English couple who were on an almost parallel tour, but walking.   Rather than riding my suggested bicycle rides on the in-between days, I walked walks the English couple told me about.   This one is up along a stream to a couple of other villages, through fields.  It was on this trail that I saw foxglove for the first time in Europe growing wild  (the purple flower on the right.)

On top were farms and fields and clusters of homes.

It was during this walk that I realized three surprising facts:  

There are no chiggers and few ticks - I walked through the thickest grasses and berry patches in shorts and sandals and had no itchy spots afterward. 

There are few deer ( we did see some) so plants in the wild and plants people grow can grow freely without protection.

Very little of the ground is carefully mowed, neither as lawns or along roadsides.  They must mow once in a while to keep bushes from growing, but usually it is just lush grasses with flowers and other plants mixed in.   Maybe their lack of concern with neat lawns has something to do with not having chiggers to walk through.

Next morning, after the climb,  I left town by this tunnel to cycle to Brousse le Chateau about 23 miles away.

On the way, I saw that almost everyone keeps a garden of some sort.  This one is mostly ornamental.

And this one, one of the most organized ones I saw, was vegetables with many flowers and fruit trees around.

I stopped at the suggested picnic spot along the river for lunch.

 My farthest away stop, the village Brousse le Chateau, is also listed as one of the prettiest villages in France (I'm beginning to wonder how many are on the list!)    It sits along both sides of a stream.

I got there early enough that I had several opportunities to hang out on the patio of our hotel.  It was a local gathering  place where people stopped to have an ice cream, coffee or drink.

 The very old and beautiful church in this village

A sign just beside this walkway explained that a long time ago, people learned that gathering rounded stones and putting long sides down made for a better and longer-lasting walking surface for people and animals.  There's another, prettier image of this from another town just below.

The next stop was two nights in Villeneuve sur Tarn, again taking the off day to hike up to a church called St. Andre and hiking back down a different way.  This church is from the 12th century.



Today I cycled 27 miles back to Albi, going through Ambialet where I spent those first two days.   This sounded daunting.  But I soon realized that rivers go down so so must the trail most of the time.  A lot of it is single track where an occasional car comes along, but mostly no one but a few other bicyclists.  I was back just at noon.

I finally felt like I had the time to linger and do stuff like set my camera on a timer and take a picture of myself.  I had to fluff up my hair from having the helmet on continuously.

Okay, I had to throw in this little French lesson.  I see this sign from time to time and am amused, especially by the illustration at the top.   The word I remember most from this is "dejection."   What can it mean here?  (You may need to zoom to see the words.)  I think it might be a polite word for another French word "merde."

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