Jan. 20-21, By Eric

The only trouble with the food in France is breakfast. Really it's the same problem we had in every other country. In Thailand for instance, we loved the food but in the morning we often couldn't find anything other than pork balls in rice gruel (especially in Northern Thailand; in Southern Thailand we usually ate Pad Thai for breakfast). The problem in France is that they don't really eat breakfast -- though they are certainly willing to charge for it.

In Orcival we made the mistake of getting the hotel breakfast - bread, butter, and coffee for US$6 each. They didn't even refill the coffee. To me this "meal" was just a prelude to a breakfast. Especially since we planned to ride in the hills and cold weather all day.

Fortunately it was sunny again. We climbed up and coasted down innumerable times. I liked watching our shadows, long from the low winter sun, race along the snow and over the fences beside us.

In the distance we saw tall snow-covered peaks. Closer by we could see a strange volcano peak that look like a giant tree stump.

A wind started blowing from the south early in the afternoon. We had to ride into it for several kilometers on a particularly high (1000 meters/3280 feet) and exposed road. Fighting that wind was one of the few times I was cold.

The wind blew the snow around the hills making the landscape look like a meringue pie.

By the time we reached the town of Laqueuille I felt weak and shaky from hunger. Damn those petit breakfasts. We stopped in a restaurant to get sandwiches and coffee, but ended up with full five course meals and wine. (JOAN: I was ready to keep riding but we now know from experience that if Eric doesn't eat enough he literally passes out. So purely for charitable reasons, I went along with this notion of having a full meal).

It started with a delicious mushroom and cheese omelette, then salad, steak with huge bed mashed potatoes and gravy, cheese and bread and finally a pear tart. It was unbelievable. Also it also cost a hell of a lot. (It was 155 Francs, or a little less than $30). Joan kept saying, "I can't believe we ate that much."

We rode about four more hours to Ussel. Until we reached the city limits, I don't think more than one car passed every 15 minutes. Sometimes less. Drivers might have avoided the road we were on because it plunged down into a deep forested gorge (about 700 feet deep) and then climbed out again, almost doubling back on itself. On the way down we passed a road crew clearing a fallen tree with a chain saw. Forty minutes later, climbing up the hill, it sounded like the chain saw was right next to us.

It was beautiful though. Very much like the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. It took us about an hour to go down and come back up the gorge and not a single car passed us the entire time.

We both agreed that these roads are the most pleasant, best roads we have been on during this entire trip, and that includes the excellent roads of New Zealand. No wonder the French like cycling so much.

We reached Ussel just at dusk. In the winter we use all the daylight we can except the early morning light when it is still very cold.

Ussel is far bigger than Orcival. We wanted to stay near the quaint old part of town but couldn't find any open hotels so we ended up a mile or so away near the train station. As we now had come to expect, the town was dead by 7 p.m. and all the shops, including the huge supermarket near our hotel, were closed. We were prepared this time with yogurt, bread, sausage, cheese and oranges for dinner.

The young woman who ran the hotel and the adjacent bar, let us keep our bikes in her basement, where she kept her bicycle. We offended her somewhat by locking the bikes. As I fiddled with the cable she was telling me, in French, "You don't need to lock them. They are safe here. Don't you trust me?" Of course I didn't understand any of that at the time. Joan translated for me later. Joan made the woman feel better by telling her that we always lock our bikes, even when they are in our garage at home.

I guess this worked because the next morning the woman was very nice to us and told us about the trip she planned to take to America - 12 days from Florida to California. (JOAN: She was totally jazzed, especially about seeing the Grand Canyon).

We knew not to get the hotel breakfast. Instead we rode to the old part of town trying to find the equivalent of a Starbuck's -- a place we could sit down and have coffee and a croissant. We had given up on the idea of fried eggs, toast and hash browns but we were still amazed that with all those great bakeries and great cafes that we couldn't find a place that was both.

That morning we discovered a "salon de the" or basically a tea house. Despite the name you can get coffee there and good pastries as well. After that we knew what to look for and had better luck, though still we just got small cups and no refills.

After a brief tour of Ussel's narrow medieval streets and a look inside the cathedral, we had another fantastic day on the white roads. When we saw cars they often gave us the thumbs up. Pedestrians continued to occasionally call out, "Bon courage!" (Good luck!)

Earlier I had bought a bottle of cheap table wine - 1.5 liters in a plastic bottle for US$2 - and stuck it on my bike in a bottle cage. I rather liked the idea of have a wine bottle in my bottle cage.

Joan's French was quite good and we had no difficulties ordering food or getting rooms, etc. In France they tend to eat their big meal of the day at lunch. We decided to do the same to make up for the tiny breakfasts.

In Meymac we split a big pizza -- far cheaper than a five course meal. Joan was hesitant to eat Italian food before we got to Italy but I had no such qualms. I like pizza.

A few delightfully sunny, though extremely hilly, hours of riding later we reached the town of Correze. We had hoped to stay there. But after waiting around for about 20 minutes for the owner to show up, we found out that the only hotel in town was closed for the season.

We were bummed because Tulle, the next town we could stay at, was 25km away and we only had a little over an hour of daylight left. Now it never happens like this, but just when we needed it we got 25km of downhill! Really. We lost about 1,300 feet on the descent to Tulle. We just kept going down and down and down. We kept expecting to get to the bottom of the hill and start climbing again but it never happen.

After about 12km we reached the Correze river. We followed a very pretty road along the banks of the river. The whole gorge was forested and magnificent. We met virtually no traffic until we were right in the middle of town. It reminded me of the Youghigheny bike trail in Pennsylvania.

One hour after we left Correze we were checking into a hotel in Tulle.

Next: Tooling around in Tulle

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