I have decided to ride on the road today, my legs really don’t want to do any more rough tracks for now. I’m way up high, so lot’s of downhill to come.
I don’t plan on the sat-nav, I’m heading to Le Vigan and follow signs, but I’ll get there too soon at this rate, so I follow signs to a “Village Caractiere” -“Saucieres”.
Down and down through these steep secluded valleys, very few cars on the road. but I do reach the bottom and have to start climbing again. 7km to go, uphill, 1 p.m. if I go steadily I’ll make it by 1:30 and might find a restaurant or cafe for lunch.
but it isn’t, and after 20 minutes hard climb I am in a farmyard of madly barking dogs with no way out – must turn around.
Half an hour wasted so I arrive at a lovely little restaurant with a sheltered sunny terrace just as Madame is putting away the sign. I ask if there is any chance of something, a sandwich? No, lunch is over, that’s that.
What about the entrepreneurial spirit? What about providing a service, what about a little bit of sympathy? No.
This iron rule of lunch-time is frustrating for us more casual, more northern types. But on the other hand it represents the principles that make France loveable, most especially maintain the quality of the food. Once they start letting the iron rules slip, once they allow lunch all afternoon, once they stop always wrapping any piece of patisserie in a box plus wrapping paper plus ribbon, that will be the thin end of the wedge on the way to a Starbucks in every town and McDonalds wrappers in every hedgerow (like in Devon). Long live the formality of French cuisine.
I ate from my emergency rations of dates and nuts, brought in a pouch on the handlebars from home, now half-empty.
It’s a long trudge up out of Saucieres, I’m thinking, “Surely I haven’t descended 1,000 metres yet?” I have really been looking forward to an easy day and it’s not turning out that way, why did I follow that sign to the “Village of character”? But the top is reached, there is a tunnel through and a milepost on the other side informs me that I’m at 808m altitude, I know Le Vigan is at 220, so – please let it all be downhill now …
Le Vigan is an unappealng place, small town with a couple of industrial estates, road intersections, dust. Supermarkets, since I’m hungry I pop in one and buy food and drink.
The hotel looks like an American Motel, right next to a main road, concrete, two stories, huge empty car-park (parking lot).
I lock the bike to a piece of discarded tower crane that lies in a corner of the car-park. As I approach the doors two staff, sitting on chairs outside in the shade, eye me up and down rather derisively. I suppose I can’t blame them, I’m dusty and sweaty, carrying a black plastic bag which I use to transport my luggage (to hide the mud), my baggy cycling shorts bulging at the pockets, containing a quiche, apple tart and bottle of peach juice (I’m John Wayne having just dismounted his horse, ambling into the hostile saloon bow-legged with two heavy 45s bumping on his thighs.
But I give back a similar stare and enter. The woman follows me in and hops behind the reception desk, polite enough. In my room though the bed is unmade and the detritus left by the previous ocupant scattered about.
So I return downstairs and explain, Madame is very apologetic and gives me the key to another room, all fine there. Was it on purpose?
Everything else goes well, dinner is quite nice, eaten in a large dining room empty but for one other diner, a German lady who finds the situation “Bizarre”, which I suppose it is.