Lot and Dordogne Cycle Tour, 2003 home cyclingLot and Dordogne 2003 Introduction Updated 07 April 2008

This page is about a trip to the Lot and Dordogne river valleys in France in September 2003.  It's an outstanding area for scenery; I've always loved the juxtaposition of big old stone buildings, deep river gorges, and wooded valleys there.

I made my first sweep of the area on a tour with Nick Barnett in 1988, when we covered an astonishing 1050 km in twenty days from Loche in the Loire Valley to Toulouse.  I have some great memories of that trip, which was also undertaken in late August/early September.  The route was lifted from the pages of the indispensible Pan guide to "Cycling in Europe" by Nicholas Crane, which has always been an inspiration and mandatory fireside reading on cold winter nights. We took our fairly new touring bikes to Waterloo (the London terminus for cross-channel boat trains) in the early morning, and crossed the channel fairly uneventfully.  To our relief, the bikes were transferred to the same train as us for the second leg of the journey to Paris.  We had to sprint across from the Gare de Nord to the Gare de Lyon for the onward connection to Limoges, though, and they were fairly menacing when we left our bikes with them for the final leg.  However, it all worked out and we spent the following weeks happily cycling and camping our way from north to south, crossing the Massif Central and the Auverge before hitting the wine country and the richly historical Cathar region around Toulouse.  Nick managed to knock me off my bike with a deftly placed camping pole (strapped to his rear rack, it caught the crook of my handlebars on a downhill section) but we were soon friends again.  And the scenery and food were fantastic.

Janet and I last toured the area in 1990.  Our holiday was memorable for my colliding with a parked car, shortening the wheelbase of my beloved Eclipse touring bike by six inches and writing it off. I was rooting through my handlebar bag for change at the time; fortunately the car was undamaged, and the bike crumpled gently enough for me to leave the saddle with only minor bruising!  We continued the tour with Janet carrying most of the gear while I pedalled gamely along on a sit up and beg bike hired from the SNCF. Happily this upset didn't occur until we were half-way through the holiday and had covered a lot of the hilly area around Clermont-Ferrand (because this two-week trip used French railways to start in the Auverge).  Although we took camping gear, we spent most nights in pleasant two or three star hotels; the tent was there in case we got caught out.  We covered more of the classic Dordogne on this trip than on the previous one, which had focussed on the Lot and Célé valleys.

Touring on a Brompton

For the 2003 tour, I rode my then-unmodified Brompton T6, a six-speed folding bicycle.  I agonised over this.  The bike is mostly used for short commuting rides (because it packs down small enough for friction-free public transport on buses and trains).  It was in immaculate condition prior to the trip.  In contrast, the touring bikes all have nicks and dings from baggage handlers and the inevitable pile-ups and deraillments that occur on long trips.

So why risk the beautiful Brompton?  It was really down to avoiding the angst over finding somewhere safe to lock up the bike at night - and of course the trials of getting to the jumping off point for a tour by air or rail.  These fears should fade into the background with a suitable folder, one small enough to take indoors without feeling self-conscious.

I feel that rail has become a lot trickier in France over the last decade with new rules and rolling stock, but flying is also a bit of a gamble.  Driving at the start or end of a holiday or combining cycling with driving misses the whole point , which to me is all about stripping out the things that disconnect us from the real experience of travel.  Driving is a chore these days, no matter what we're told by the advertising industry.

I've never lost a bike in transit (touch wood) but there's always the risk of some damage occurring. I feel that the Brompton is at less risk, because the tender parts of the bike are on the inside of the folded package and its overall novelty tends to make people careful with it.  To make sure, this time the bike travelled in a hard suitcase (more on equipment below).

The Route

Here's a summary of the route showing overnight stops:

In outline, the route was adapted from one for the Dordogne described in a Lonely Planet guide titled "Cycling in France".   This route is a loop starting and ending in Cahors of about 8 days duration, averaging 35 miles per day and following the "green routes" of the Michelin maps (marked with a green border for being scenically outstanding.

Day One - Sat 01/09/03 - 5 km

I flew into Toulouse (Blagnac) on the morning of Saturday September 1st, and caught a train from Toulouse-Matabiau station to Cahors a couple of hours of later.   Trains leave six times a day from Toulouse Matabiau SNCF station, a straight forward bus ride away from the airport.   Most of the town center was being worked over by diggers working on the Metro extension when I arrived, which detracted considerably from the charm of the "Ville Rouge".   I couldn't leave the bulky suitcase at the SNCF station because there is a 24 hour time limit on the lockers, so I ended up on the dusty gravel forecourt at Cahors station with a bungy cord in one hand and a recalcitrant plastic suitcase in the other, struggling to somehow secure the case to the bike.   I attracted a fair amount of attention as I pedalled around the town looking for a room for the night, but I found one in the rather up-market Grand Hotel Terminus about five minutes up the hill from the station.   I hadn't planned on spending the night at a five star hotel, but the room rate was reasonable and Corrine (the owner) was quite happy to look after the damned suitcase for a week or two. It rained heavily during the afternoon; I read a book she'd leant me in my small room on the first floor.

Later I went out for a gentle pedal around town, where I bought a razor-sharp paring knife and some fresh food for the next day before enjoying a pleasant meal at a restaurant just down from the market place.  I also managed to pick up an unusually rare IGN cycling map for the Cahors region (seemingly only available in Cahor), which was heavily annotated by the time I left the area.

Nerdy Equipment Notes

My only justification for these notes is that there's so little coverage elsewhere on the Net of touring with Bromptons.

The bike travels to the start of the tour in a hard suitcase provided by mail-order from those friendly people at the Avon Valley Cyclery. The case measures 22.75"x11"x23" - just big enough to take the folded bike if the top part of the (telescopic) seat post is removed from the frame and laid crosswise. The ensemble weighs just under 20 kilos, the British Airways baggage allowance for checked items is 23 kilos, so most clothes for the trip will need to come with me into the cabin in the touring bag that attaches to the front of the bike.

I substituted Ritchie clipless pedals for the platform pedals provided with the bike. I replaced the leading rollers on either side of the luggage rack with 1" steel washers (and shorter Allen bolts) because I found that from time to time I'd catch the lip of a cycling shoe or trainer on them as I pedalled. I chose to pack gear into two bags only - the reasonably capacious 28-litre touring bag and the ubiquitous (British) Carradice long flap saddle bag.  Both bags are pretty waterproof but as usual things that must be kept dry will be inside Ortlieb canoe bags ("dry bags"). This may seem like overkill but it's nice to know that no matter how hard it rains your clothes are keeping dry.

And I'm carrying more in the way of security measures this time so that I can leave the bike without having to worry about it; the touring bag on the front of the bike is protected by a hardened steel mesh net that can be locked around it with a small padlock. The cable that comes with this can be run through the saddle rails to prevent anyone using the QR lever to remove the latter. It's not secure against bolt cutters, but arguably better than just leaving it exposed. It's a pain to need to carry a heavy U-lock around with me, but experience suggests that heavily touristed areas such as this one are more prone to thefts.

I've packed two spare inner tubes and a spare tyre. My pessimism about finding spares for a Brompton in France is based on bad experiences with a Bickerton folder on a previous tour in Norway, when I had to waste a day scouring Copenhagen for a new tyre after a blowout.

Rear panniers aren't really an option with the rack provided because of ground clearance (and the protrusion of the hub gear selector).  I've seen photos of Bromptons with a Top Peak detachable luggage rack secured to the seat post but this seems like overkill; instead I rode 40 miles on a "test drive" with everything I thought I'd need in the two bags with space to spare and it worked much better than anticipated.  In fact, the bike is a lot punchier on the flat due to the small wheels and the fairly stiff frame design; the gear ratios are lower than on the stock T6 (I requested the 44-tooth chainring to get a 13% gear reduction for our local hills, the "Surrey Alps"). However, I am lazy hill climber and the T6 compares unfavourably with our other bikes (which have lowest gears of around 20").

Keeping a weblog on the move

I kept a diary of last year's cycling through Norway on a Handspring Visor PDA which I carried with me (with a Targus folding keyboard for sensible typing). This year, I'm going to attempt to go one better with the Visor by uploading the diary entries to a weblog kept on this site as I make each entry, in order to safeguard the Visor against memory loss (rare, but it can happen if the thing is damaged or the batteries go flat). The uploading mechanism turns out to be quite straightforward:

• Type entry into the Visor using the keyboard and Eudora's Palm Pilot software to compose the message
• Switch on IR reception on my little Nokia 8210 mobile phone
• The Visor then dials my dial-up ISP (Demon Internet) to deliver a POP3 message to my mail account (a short call)
• Once an hour, a short Perl script on a Linux box at LogicaCMG connects to the POP3 account at Demon, finds any waiting POP3 messages, and copies them to the bottom of the weblog pages it holds (currently not on-line).
• Every now and then, the pages from the Linux box get uploaded to the "live" site (the one you are reading this from).

Simple, huh?

[Strictly Business | Near Misses | Cycletouring ]