We rode up the hill into St. Cirq from the Lot, east of St. Cirq. It was a pretty climb, with good views of St. Cirq most of the way up.

August 25th

Cabrerets to Cajarc (32.7k; 1:54 hrs; 17.1 avg kph)

Having assured the coffee drinkers the night before that there was a snack bar with coffee up at Pech Merle, I got up early and bought some croissants, pains au chocolat and pains au raisin for breakfast, and hiked up to Pech Merle to get in line for the tickets planning to get them, and then sit down to breakfast with Sue, Bill and Teresa a bit later. (I brought my book.) A good plan, but the snack bar didn't open until 10pm, just when our tour was coming up, so Sue and Teresa had to suffer through Pech Merle, coffeeless.

Pech Merle (the name related neither to peaches nor to fish - the "pech" is some variant of an Occitan word for Hill. Supposedly "puy" is the same word, although they are not pronounced the same in French or English) is astonishing. It is a long sequence of chambers with spectacular geological formations. Stalactites and stalagmites. "Pearls." Various limestone flows. Fractured blocks of stone. And then, it has been extensively decorated with paintings, including the famous "two horses," sometime between 17,000 and 20,000 years ago. There is also a nice museum near the cave about prehistoric man in the region.

After our tour of the grotte, we had some coffee and tea, and then walked down to get our bikes from the hotel. Cabrerets is on the Célé, just a couple kilometers east of the confluence of the Lot and the Célé. We rode west to the confluence on the D41, along the north bank of the river, and then crossed over to the north bank of the Lot and turned east on the D622. We passed St. Cirq Lapopie above us across the river, and then crossed the river at Tour-de-Faure and turned west again, up a hill to come into St. Cirq. We finished the climb (in the rain) and parked our bikes at the top of the town. In fact we locked them, but we left most of our stuff in our panniers on the bike. I took lunch stuff, and we all took raincoats and set out to walk around the town. At this point it was a little wet, and we ended up sitting on the steps of the tourist office and eating lunch. Our usual repas, plus the end of the boar sausage. After lunch, the rain was a little lighter, so we climbed about on a viewpoint adjacent to town formed on the ruins of some old fortification, and watched the other tourists for a while. The adjacent pictures are from a pause in the climb up to town, and then two pictures from the viewpoint - one of the town, and the other of the river.

We spend the rest of the afternoon riding primarily on the south bank of the Lot, east along the D8. Mostly through farmland and villages too small to have shops. Lots of corn and ducks. Toward the end of the day, the rain started to come back, and at some point Teresa noticed that her front tire was losing air. She noticed this because it was so wet that one could here the air bubbling out. The leak was very slow though, and she got another couple kilometers before it needed to be fixed (this of course happened when the rain was coming down hardest, and when some of us were strongly desiring a bathroom!). Bill and Teresa stopped to fix it along the D19 at the top of the hill into Cajarc, and Sue and I continued into Cajarc to look for our hotel. (Hotel du Pont, right near a bridge, of course). We checked in, showered, dried off, etc., and then had a nice meal at the Restaurant Chez Moulino. Delicious garlic soup, and friendly staff. Then we went to bed. The pictures on either side are a couple more from Saint Cirq.

August 26th

Cajarc to Figeac (34.2k; 2:26 hrs; 14.1 avg kph)

Cloudy, but not raining on rising. We get some croissants at a local bakery and took them to a sports bar (a very different thing in France than in the US - recognizable because horse racing is on a TV, and there seems to be information to help bet on things scattered about). And of course they are open early and people are (primarily) drinking coffee at that hour.

Then we went shopping for lunch food. As the weather wasn't great, we didn't feel in a particular hurry. Then we packed and left, crossing to the south bank of the river and heading east on the D127 and up hill. At some point, Teresa's flat tire came back, and we had a little stop (again in the rain, but this time very light) while Bill patched it. This time he successfully found the very small puncturing object.

We continued up a moderately long hill to the "Saut de la Mounine." Mounine seems to be in Occitan for monkey. Thus "Leap of the monkey." The story is, some local noble was upset about the company his daughter was keeping, and decided to have her thrown off a cliff by some of his servants. A local cleric, horrified (for some strange reason) by this idea, dressed up a monkey (this isn't the only local monkey story, and where they found monkeys in France in the middle ages, I'm not sure) as a young woman, and had the servants throw the monkey off the cliff instead. Seeing this from a distance, the nobleman was horrified at what he'd done, and griefstricken for his daughter. When the cleric confessed his ploy, the nobleman was greatly relieved, forgave his daughter, and everyone lived happily ever after (apparently it wasn't an issue whether the daughter forgave her father, and the disposition of the suitor isn't discussed in the account we read).

Anyhow, there is a magnificent view from the cliff, though visibility was only passable because of the clouds and mist. The Lot is down there too, but obscured by the vegetation on the cliff. (And also probably because the lens on my camera isn't wide angle enough to get the river at the bottom and the view toward the horizon.) The D127 goes back down the hill, and continues with level and fast riding along the Lot. We kept to this road until we reached the D922, which we took across the Lot. We were headed for Figeac, as was the rather busy D922, so we took what turned out to be a lovely detour across high hills covered with grazing cattle and sheep on some roads slightly to the west of the D922. The sun even came out briefly at the top of the hill!

We came into Figeac on the D19, and rode around town for a few minutes, eventually finding rooms at the Hôtel de la Courte Paille (the short straw). The rooms were on the top floor over the bar, and had a great view down into a covered market and the surrounding buildings. Figeac is a lovely small city, with lots of buildings dating back to a prosperous period in the 13th and 14th century. Also, the birthplace of Charles Boyer, and of Jean François Champollion (who decoded the Rosetta stone).

We had lunch when we arrived. Teresa found a camera shop on the same square as our hotel where the proprietor knocked her lens back into shape! (Something had come loose, which she had noticed in Saint Cirq; when zooming, the focus changed. This isn't how it was supposed to work.) Then we spent an enjoyable couple of hours walking about town. Figeac has a really nice municipal museum with a lot of history of the town. Also great patisseries! And we stopped at an internet café. Eventually we decided to dine the brasserie associated to our hotel. After dinner we took another walk, and went to bed.

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