Day 24 Saint Léons to Rodez

May 11, 2023

Across the Causses

Full cold weather gear was out today. We’ve been a bit smug over the last three weeks as we’ve been browsing journals of other folks who’ve been riding in other parts of France and seemingly freezing their butts off. Aside from the cold morning when we set off from St Pierre d’Entremont on our third day of cycling, we’ve had pretty ideal conditions for biking.

Don’t get me wrong, today wasn’t bad, but it was far from ideal weather wise. From a terrain and biking perspective though, it was another stellar day. France continues to deliver in variety and excellence of terrain, all in a relatively compact area (compact to a Canadian prairie boy).

When we left Saint Lèons this morning the pavement was wet with a few puddles here and there, the temp was a balmy 8° C and the winds were as forecast …. 20- 30 km/hr out of the NW, the very direction we were travelling. At least we were fortunate that it wasn’t raining, the terrain we were riding through was sublime and we had the road more or less to ourselves, once again, for most of the day, although we did spend about 10 km’s on D-roads with centre lane and shoulder markers. These roads do have traffic on them. You wouldn’t want to spend all day on them, but for a few km’s they’re ok and the drivers are very courteous.

Sublime terrain in today’s context roughly translates into a mix of lush pastures and forests spread accross continuously rolling hills. That adds up to a lot of vertical for a relatively modest day distance wise. Coupled with the temperatures and the wind, it was a solid day of biking and we were happy to arrive at our apartment in R0dez. But just to give us a little reminder to not get to cocky about the weather we had, it starting raining on us as we approached Rodez. The folks living here 800 years ago had the same idea as the Tuscans did and built this town on a hill with very steep approaches. Every tour has its ‘push the bike’ moments and that was the last km of today .

Not many pics today, I had full gloves on for most of the day making it cumbersome to take photos, and although beautiful, one field, flock of sheep or herd of cattle pretty much look the same as the next. You’ve been saved from aunt Betty.

Rodez has turned out to be a lovely town and we have a great apartment right across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral. This is the largest town we’ve been in for a while so we had some domestic issues to deal with and we got those done within minutes. This set us up for a tour through the Catherdal, believe it or not, our first in over three weeks in France. Armed with my low light lenses we set off for the tour, K demonstrating her usual unbridled enthusiasm for these excursions, only to find out that that the Cathedral was locked up tight!

K was saved, and we just set off for our usual random walk of discovery around the very beautiful medieval area of Rodez adjacent to the Cathedral. Innumerable patisseries, bouchers, vignerons ….. this made us start to think about where we were going to have dinner. The thought had not crossed our minds yet since for lunch today, we actually stopped in Pont de Salars for a full sit down French lunch. We took this one step further than necessary too, and rather than just have the plat du jour, we had a cassoulet (it was cold, we were cold and our breakfast was underwhelming). This took up close to two hours and was far more food than we needed,or should have eaten. However we had to stay true to the theme of the tour, and we plowed through most of it. All this to say we weren’t starving when we got to Rodez, and we (almost randomly) made a walk-by booking at La Gargouille (the Gargoyle) which was directly behind the Cathedral and a 3 minute walk from our apartment.

This random booking turned out to be a lottery win for the day. Great food, great service and great atmosphere. We were restrained …. A shared entrèe and no dessert, but we’ll still add a notch on the gorging totem.

Tomorrow we descend into the Lot valley. The cool weather and winds will still be with us, and there will be a lot up and down through the day, but net down overall. We are seeing a lot of different areas and that’s great, but each area we’ve been through deserves it’s own week or two to explore. Our trip is well and truly the K-Tel version of France rather than a full album experience, but isn’t that how we discovered new artist and genres when we were kids? We’ve now got a full catalogue generated for future exploration.

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Patrick Parnogood god that last little bit looks vertical...
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11 months ago

Kirsten KaarsooTo Patrick ParnoIt pretty well was. A fine way to end the day!!!!! 😬
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11 months ago

SOTD - Cold by Annie Lennox, the great lass from Aberdeen. When asked for a single word to describe today, both K and I said ‘cold’…. In unison. There you have it, and the vid looks like it was shot here!

K always wants to show where the Tout’s spent the night … so here it is!

Leaving the very comfortable and welcoming la Pierre Pointue Chambre d’hôtes in Saint Leons

Lovely parting gift of a hand made Occitane cross from our host!

And we’re off, leggings / tights and full gloves went on after we set off, It was single digit temps and a stiff wind … but beautiful rolling country and largely deserted roads for the majority of the ride.

Just some more of the beautiful and lush country we were riding though

No I did not photoshop this. Synchronized cows!

Sublime riding …. In the picture, the reality was a little less than perfect due to cool temps and strong headwinds …. But we still wouldn’t trade the ride for a day in front of a screen!

Hungry calf trying to get mom to stand up so he could get to the fridge. She was having none of it.

We needed a video with audio of this. All of thees sheep crammed into the fenced corner of the field and bleated away as K rode by. It was quite a cacophony

Nearing Rodez. We were lulled into thinking our climbing was over, only to face a steep 100m drop into the Aveyron river flowing around the base of Rodez and then a 120 m climb into Rodez …. RWPS put us on a direct route …. 22 - 28% ‘push-up’ grades. It was short and not so sweet!

And there’s Rodez, dominated by Notre Dame Cathedral. can’t see the 100 m + up and down that lurks between us!

Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 1,063 km (660 miles)

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