Cahors - Angouleme
A long day’s riding at 211 km but, for the second day running, completed in glorious weather. Seems we are generally dragging good conditions around behind us for the pros to enjoy riding in. Shame we couldn’t have some of this for the final tough day of the Pyrenees as the views from the climbs would have been spectacular and they would have been more pleasurable than they already were (for sick puppies like Mick who has decided he likes riding uphill…).
One of the write-ups of the stage said it was boring terrain. We certainly didn’t think so, at least for the first half which was over very pretty rolling terrain and through the Dordogne. The second half was along a single, busy main road from Perigueux which seemed to drag on a bit, especially the uphill sections.
In the end, it was a tough day as we decided to crank up the pace for the last 50 km to get the job done and the haul into Angouleme seemed to hurt as much as a hors category climb to finish like the Aubisque.
Found a nice campsite about half way to Cognac, in good time to finally get a team meal at the café rather than in our little camper. We’d all been talking about eating pizzas for days (lots of cycling does tend to focus the mind on food…) so a round of pizzas was the order of the day. The pizzas seemed to have been prepared earlier and heated up with extra cheese in the microwave but it was universally agreed that they were the best to be found this side of Napoli after all this time waiting…