To Aniane

Day 3 Anduze to Aniane (73km)

Mostly cloudy but warm

Start the “wrong way” in order to go along to roundabout so that we can return along the far side of dual carriageway, where we pull in to supermarket to buy sandwiches and PaRs. Back into Anduze and out on to the road to the Herault gorge. In order to go down the gorge we have first to settle for some steady climbing into the hills to reach the top of the gorge. John remembers well the stiff ascent from Anduze, so we are pleased to find it steady rather than severe.

Quiet scenic road as we progress through St Félix de Pallières and Monoblet to reach St Hippolyte du Fort. It is market day in St H, so we cycle slowly through threading between shoppers and stop at a suitable café. Enjoy a coffee and deal with lots of ATQs. PaRs turn out to have chocolate chips instead of raisons so probably should be PaCCs. OK, but not as good as the genuine article. Admire the hat stall in the market but resist a purchase – great advantage of cycle touring is the limited baggage capacity, which curbs any impulse purchase urges one might have.

Continuing we reach St Bauzille de Putois where masterly navigation by Sheila threads us through a maze of small lanes to reach a longish bridge over the Herault. Bridge is narrow and decked with longitudinal metal strips spaced so as not to match the tyre tracks of our three wheels. We wait for a gap in the traffic and set off. When vehicles arrive at the far end we hold our hands in the air to deter them from proceeding and they reverse and wait for us to complete our crossing.

The village of Causse de la Selle offers an inviting bench so we stop for our picnic lunch. From here we are into the Herault gorge. Superb scenery and a descent with some steep drops and hairpin bends on the way. We speed down over a fairly rough road stopping to take in the views from time to time. At the end of a particularly fast and bumpy whizz we are pleased to reach a smooth piece of road, but in just 50m there is a loud gunshot explosion and our rear wheel rim hits the road – emergency stop. Investigation reveals what we fear: TP3 - the rear tyre is completely destroyed. By what is not obvious. We push the trike to the roadside above a river weir and set-to to replace the tyre with our folding spare. This is never a speedy job because we have to remove all the luggage, prop up the rear end of trike and remove cables from the dual drive hub. Process not helped by the arrival of a minibus that parks on top of us and empties out a horde of people who walk all over us potentially scattering tools and tyre tubes as they go. A passing French cyclist stops and chats to us as we work. Not liking to be without a spare tyre we ask about cycle shops in the area and are pleased to be informed there is one in Pezénas, which we intend to travel through tomorrow.

All done, we say au revoir to our cyclist friend and set off. We make a brief stop at St Guilhem le Desert. This was a charming medieval village with two Michelin stars when we visited 13 years ago. Today, like many hilltop villages in Provence, it has been strangled by tourism. There is now a park and ride on the Aniane Road and a shuttle bus to St G le D delivering large numbers of tourists for whom all the regular tat is on sale. Pity, but at least we were lucky enough to have seen the village in solitude on our previous visit.

The gorge ends at the Pont du Diable. The old bridge, which we have cycled over, is now pedestrian only, but it has been quite well done. We stop at “the café” beyond the bridge for cold drinks (We were last here when we cycled the Manche to Med). The café patron is hard to describe, but eccentric would be the polite version. From the café it is downhill all the way to Aniane. We note that this is fine now but in the morning we will be retracing our route back along this road to the bridge.

The hotel is familiar (this is now our third visit) and we are pleased to see that Balthazar the hotel dog is still lying across the top step of the hotel entrance in the way of everyone coming and going. We are invited to bring the trike in via the disabled entrance and park it in a corner under the stairs. We have to adjust the rear light (which sticks up from the rear seat) and then it just fits.

S&W and as we have a ground floor room John rigs up a washing line in some trees discreetly out of site in a corner of the hotel grounds. Then it’s swimming pool time again. Yippee, three in a row – good job Sheila remembered to put swimming togs on the packing list. We round the day off with a good meal in the hotel.

DAY 4