Villefranche de Rouergue

Day 14 Vers to Villefranche de Rouergue (65km)

Sunny and hot with increasing humidity and threat of a storm

Breakfast in the hotel and then we start the day with easy cycling along the Lot valley beside the river. We make a couple of stops to photograph St Cirque Lapopie and Calvignac across the river.

We pause in Cajarc for some food shopping before we leave the Lot valley; and make this into a PaR stop sitting on a bench in the town square. Various walkers go through and one small group comes over to us for a chat and ATQ session. From Cajarc our route pulls out of the valley on a small road with steady climbing and some steep parts, but there is also quite a lot of welcome shade from trees.

Only tiny villages from here to Villefranche de Rouergue so we pause in Marin and find a quiet corner by the church where we can sit on a kerb in the shade of a large tree for lunch.

We continue through Toulojac and then there is a very satisfactory 10km downhill spell that takes us to Villefranche de Rouergue, a bastide town at the edge of the Aveyron gorge. We head into the narrow streets to the town centre, but fail to find our hotel in the street we think it is in. A bit of asking reveals that the hotel is in the Place de Republique, not Rue de Republique. This is on the edge of town across the river, so we head down there and walk the trike over the pedestrian bridge. At this point John realises he has left one of our drinks bottles on a wall in the town centre arcade, but neither of us inclined to go back for it.

We check into the hotel and take the trike quite a way down a side street to stow it away in the hotel garage. It is hot and increasingly humid so S&W followed by a short rest and then SdM&C in the hotel bar seems to be a good idea. Our hotel room is on the corner of the main road bridge overlooking the river. There is a bike shop very close to the hotel so we go there to buy a replacement bottle. The cheapest they have is a bright yellow number printed with Chrono-Cycles, the shop name, and Villefranche de Rouergue, so it is a suitable holiday souvenir. We wander back into the bastide to explore the historic town, do a bit of shopping and write postcards. On the way we retrieve John’s drinks bottle still sitting on the wall where he put it down. We aren’t sure how much this reflects the local population’s honesty or the scruffy and undesirable appearance of this much travelled and worn bottle. Unusually, restaurants seem to be almost totally absent in the town.

Back at the hotel for an afternoon nap in the cool and then across the road to a nearby brasserie for an omelette and frites supper, followed by a stroll along the river banks before retiring to bed.

DAY 15