Ride Day 30—11 Oct 2005—48210 St-Chely du Tarn/Sainte Énimie — Circle

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">My wife had planned out a great 100+ kilometer ride.<span> </span>However, with the relatively dark overcast sky, the occasional raindrop, and the strong chilly wind that kept us bundled up, even on the two long climbs of our ride, she scaled it back considerably.<span> </span>As one would expect, the sun actually made a showing just as we arrived back at St Chély-du-Tarn at the end of the ride.<span> </span>So what else is new?<span> </span>The important things, though, are that we didn’t get dumped on and we had a great ride.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">From Ste Énimie, we climbed up to the plateau from the Tarn and headed northwest across the plateau to get to Chanac.<span> </span>On the way up to the plateau, we had spectacular views overlooking Ste Énimie.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">We found Chanac to be a particularly pretty town that would be a great place to stay.<span> </span>It also had one of the nicest small modest churches that I’ve seen.<span> </span>I should add that Chanac is on the Lot River.<span> </span>We descended several hundred meters from the plateau to get to it…which of course meant that we had to climb back up to the plateau to return to the Gorges du Tarn and our hotel.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">On D998, just before the long descent into Ste Énimie, there was a nice small hotel at a panoramic point that was just incredible.<span> </span>The view stretched for miles up and down the gorge showing many turnings of the river and the rock walls.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">From the painting on the roadway, the Tour de France had recently gone along D32 to Chanac.<span> </span>At one point, we saw contradicting painted remarks about Armstrong.<span> </span>One said roughly that he uses drugs and that the Tour officials overlook it because of the money.<span> </span>The other supported Armstrong and referred to his ten years of diligent work training for the Tour.</span>

Background:<br /><br /><br />My wife and I have been doing self-supported tours in Western Europe (a majority in France) since 1993.  This series of rides covers our 2005 2 month route through parts of France.  Our beginning and ending point is near Chaduri (south of Angoulême) where our friends have a farm with Gites and Chambres d'Hotes.<br /><br /><br />We rode our Dawes touring bicycles purchased in 1993 heavily loaded with 700Cx32 tires.  All of our riding was on paved roads, mostly with very little traffic.<br /><br /><br />If any questions, feel free to email me at jeffkadet@netdiving.com<br /><br /><br />Jeff