St Ybard Charade 2009

Friday July 10th 2009

What an excellent bit of bike riding from David Millar yesterday in atrocious weather at the end of the Barcelona stage of the tour. It’s a hard sport and he gave such a good interview to ITV after the finish which was so similar to Andy Murray. Anyway today we were up on time and down to the baker’s where we heard of a Farmers Market in Uzerche tonight and we decided to eat down there this evening. But before that the bikes offered us another day en velo au Coeur du Limousin. We started off north on gentle lanes through Corbier and Benayes to Masseret where we climbed to the Tower. The hotel there is building a new extension. Trevor offered us a visit to the top of the tower but this was declined when we found it had no lift installed. From here the Garmin took over and led us on a merry chase through heavily wooded parkland but revealed the rear of the impressive Chateau des Greniers. The next stop was at Condats-sur-Genaveix for coffee where we got on the wrong side of the proprietor when he found us wandering through his living accommodation; we’d gone in the wrong door. Then it was further across country to reach Lonzac at 1.30pm where the restaurant was fully booked with a family party and the shop had just shut for lunch. Onwards, ever onwards to Borelive, where we found a fine place able to give us a lunch on the terrace with white beer, blond beer and red wine to slake our thirsts. After an hour or so we were out on the road again to Espartignac and along the old railway track into Uzerche to watch the end of the Andorra stage of the tour at The Bowler. A successful breakaway win by Frenchman Brice Feillu of Agritubel, the yellow jersey on the back of another breakaway participant from a French team, Rinaldo Nocentini of Italy, and a superb final 2 kms from Alberto Contador all renewed our faith in the old values of the Tour de France. Bradley Wiggins is still up there too in 5th place. How much better it is to see the race on TV live instead of by way of the sanitized evening edited highlights.

So it was quite late by the time we returned to the ice cool pool for our evening freezing; Mick’s fingers were still deathly white 30 minutes after he got out. At 7.30 five of us drove into Uzerche for the Farmer’s Market which we found disappointingly low-key so we drove to the south of town to enjoy a pleasant evening meal outside. The working party who had remained home, Trevor, Martin and Paul, are still working as I finish typing this instalment of the blog at midnight. Mad or what?