Nasbinals – Conques
96.4km, 6hr 35 mins, 2135m total climb
As I packed up (had an extra few mins
snooze really) Johanna went over to the local boulangerie and got us
some delicious apple pastries for breakfast which we had with a stove
made coffee again.
The day should be easy as we were
slightly climbing for about 7km and then downhill all the way for
about 25. Nice, but might get a bit cold without pedalling. The
weather looked good, but always with a chance of some rain. We passed
a point where they have some skiing routes, showing that we were up
at 1300m still.
The road down was indeed long and we
stopped a few times to cool the brakes off and warm ourselves up a
bit. We passed into the county of Aveyron, we were ticking off France
pretty quickly.
We stopped for a coffee at the bottom
of the hill and had a look at another church (d'Olt) and got speaking
to a French guy who had done a lot of travelling and was interested
in our cycle. Took about half an hour of pleasantries before we got
out of town.
We got pretty hungry half way through
and were passing a town called Estaing, which was another medieval
looking place on the banks of the river. We sat down in the sun at a
busy restaurant but didn’t get served very quickly. Then a big
group of French walkers turned up and got served before us so we
decided not to give them our custom. We tried two more places, one
didnt do food and one was too busy again . The Boulangerie was also
closed for lunch (everywhere is closed at lunchtime for 2-3 hours
apart from restaurants), so we headed off again after a wasted stop,
with only a couple of cereal bars and a pear each for the rest of the
day. Hungry.
The last section was fairly easy,
following the river all the way. We started to see the famous high
cliffs all along the side of the road that make this region famous.
The air was warm and humid and each inhalation brought another strong
smell of some plant, flowers or sweaty earth. The strongest ones are
the Blauregen or Wysteria that the French like to have growing on
their patios, or hanging alongside their garden fence. It is a nice
smell but sometimes so strong it almost makes you sneeze.
We arrived at the campsite and just
managed to get the tent up before it started raining. Perfect spot
though, right next to the river. The woman and son team who ran the
place were really friendly and quite funny (for French people ;). She
said that they had a great cook and that we should have dinner there,
the nearest supermarket was 20km away, and it was a bank holiday so
even all the small shops were closed. After some showers and a change
of clothes we were the first customers in the restaurant. The chef
she was talking about turned out to be herself!
We had two main courses, a steak
frites, and a Aveyron sausage with Aligot sauce (a huge pot of thick
stringy cheese and potatoes mixed). It was very nice, but we were
still hungry so chose to share a pizza also instead of two desserts!
Great customers.
http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1308187
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