Starting out full of bread and jam on a bright cold morning. The way went quickly uphill onto a plateau of high pasture. As I passed a field of brown dairy cows a white grebe flew up from the hedge, I stopped to watch it circle around and land among the cows, hunting for insects or frogs that they disturb I suppose.
All was going well and I was feeling great, I came across this curious structure – something to aid putting donkeys or cattle into a harness I thought.
But then it happened, don’t go feeling good and relaxing, that’s when fate likes to ruin things for you.
My back brake started rattling, the pads had worn through (all that sliding down hills). I had spare pads but … they didn’t fit, they fitted the front, but not the back. So now I needed a bike shop. Some frustrating searching on Google maps finally found me one – 15km away and it closed at 12 noon. This was Friday, would it be closed for the weekend? If I didn’t get there by 12:00 would I be stuck for the weekend, two hotels of accommodation paid for and wasted?
I had an hour and a half to get there, so I asked google for directions and set off as fast as I could, with only a front brake. The route took me along plenty of bumpy tracks as well as roads, it was difficult to keep up speed and I had to be careful downhill, on the steep hills I was slamming on the front brake the whole way down, nerve wracking – trying to go as fast as possible but not too fast to stop. Pushing up hills, panting like mad.
I got there by 11:45. The sign on the door said it closed at twelve but opened again at 14:00. Of course, the sacred French lunch hour, I hadn’t thought of that in my panic.
I went in and had to wait for 15 minutes while the only person there chatted in leisurely fashion to an old geezer (like me) who was thinking of buying an electric bike. How some people talk, I can never think of relevant questions to ask when I buy things, I just point and mumble, but they were nattering on, moving from bike to bike discussing finer details of some kind.
Finally the old guy left and the rather dour patron had a look at my bike and said he could fix it after lunch. Hooray. Now I had a two-hour French lunchtime to kill.
I discovered that I was just outside St. Flour – which was on my route. Brilliant, the day was redeeming itself, I was calming down.
St. Flour was above me at the top of a cliff, there were steps up. Up in town it was pretty quiet, except there was a restaurant in the main square, well attended, so I treated myself to a leisurely French lunch. Auvergne Salad and a beer, auvergne salad turned out to be most of a lettuce in a large bowl with about half a pound of mixed cheeses and dried ham piled on top, and a basket of bread of course. Not to be consumed as part of a calorie controlled diet.
After dessert and coffee I wandered into the church across the square.
Back in the bike shop the mechanic was mumbling and moaning because although the back brake was fixed he was trying to improve the front one, which was a bit ropey bcause I had fitted a non-standard brake on the new forks, not very perfectly (or, a bit of a lash-up).
But we got fixed in the end and at 4 p.m. I rolled out with supersonic brakes.
I was on the route and only a couple of hours behind schedule, with a couple of shortcuts I arrived at my B&B at 6:30, just in time for dinner at 7:15, which was specialities of the area, starting with a sausage meatloaf with prunes in it, delicious, then cheese and potato pie with roast chicken, half a bottle of wine and creme caramel for dessert. I had survived a crisis and eaten well!