Day 13

Thursday, May 11
Chaudes Aigues to Ste Enmie
103km

Another wonderful day of cycling, with some very different scenery.

Last night we had another fixed price menu french dinner in the hotel, as all of the other local resteraunts were closed each Wednesday afternoon.  How very french.

We lost another rider today.  Rob returned to his home in England with a sore tooth.  Aparently his filling (which he had put in himself using a mirror) had come out and the tooth was now aching.  As he is a dentist, we couldn't really argue with him, although I suggested that he could have come up with something more original.  Before Brian's trouble started, I had mentioned my stereotype that brits had bad teeth.  My case grows stronger by the day.

Today's ride started with a sharp series of switchbacks as we climbed out of the town.  After that, there were two more cols today, although the climbing was not as tough as the past few days.

In the moring, the scenery changed from the lush valleys of the past few days, to rolling moores with rambing loose rock "fences" and larger patches of exposed rock in the fields.  It looked like Scotland.

About halfway through the day, the scenery changed again as we climbed into rockey mountains and then decended into a rocky canyon.  There were many interesting rock formations along the canyon walls, some hanging over the road and others seeming to grow straight up to form giant pedastles.  There were several tunnels that the road passed through as we travelled along the canyon wall to our hotel.

The decent into the canyon was the best of the trip.  Lots of fun.  It was very long and very steep, with a series of regular left-right-left-right curves that you really had to throw your weight into to make it around.  At the bottom was a touristy little village, where we stopped for ice cream.  Big John, who was feeling ill this morning, impressed up all by riding up a huge series of switchbacks on the opposite wall of the canyon.  I didn't feel like any extra climbing myself, but he said that the view was lovely.

After we came down from the cols, the weather got really nice.  Bright sun and very warm. It finally felt like we were in the south of france.

The last couple of days have really ben fantastic.  Over dinner last night, Harold said that he had never experienced such a great combination of scenery, good road surfaces and low traffic.  Comming from someone with over 700,000km of cycling in his lifetime, it was quite the compliment to Kevin.