To Saint-Emilion

May 18, 2008 to May 19, 2008

Well, here’s a shock. I consulted my prodigious memory of our arrival in Bordeaux and our first day of the tour, a ride up the Dordogne to the famous wine town Saint-Emilion. I didn’t dredge up much. I remember walking the alleys of old Bordeaux looking for a restaurant. I have a fairly vivid memory of the reflecting pond and being mesmerized by a quartet of women dancing like performance artists there, intermittently springing into motion and then freezing in a new pose. I remember biking across the impressive 17 arched Pont de Pierre across the Garonne on the start of our ride to Saint-Emilion. I remember biking north along the Garonne looking across at Bordeaux. And I vaguely recall walking around Saint-Emilion, admiring the scene but finding it fairly touristy even though in mid-May it was still fairly quiet.

That’s about it though. I’m not even sure now if we left the day after arrival or if we stayed over a second night in Bordeaux before starting to tour. Not much more than you can glean from the few photos that survived the intervening years.a

So I asked Rachael what else she recalls. She confirms that we were in Bordeaux, and has warm feelings thinking about it.

From this, two conclusions: it’s important to keep a journal at the time; 15 years after the fact is too long if you’re hoping for much content. And, as was always the case for tours back then, we were moving too fast and covering too much territory. And, we should go back.

At the reflecting pond in Bordeaux, the city’s feature that I have the strongest memory of. I hope it’s still there if we return some day.

Image not found :( — Well, I looked it up and it’s apparently still there. It’s the Miroir d’Eau (the Water Mirror), and is the world’s largest reflecting pool. We were lucky to see it - it was built just two years earlier, in 2006. Now I’m sure we need to go back.

The Monolithic Church, Saint-Emilion. The church derives its interesting name because the body of the church was carved out of a single stone, and is the largest underground church in Europe.

The Cordelliers Cloister in Saint Emilion, a world heritage site.

Like all other maps in the journal, this is a best guess drawn from memory. I at least found a distance and destination log for the tour, so it’s probably at least close.

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Ride stats: 38 miles, 800’

Today's ride: 38 miles (61 km)
Total: 38 miles (61 km)

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