September 10th, 15th, 16th & 17th, 2006

We should mention the food at Hotel Victor Hugo in St. Céré.  We had the demi-pension since we stayed for 2 nights. The price was right and the food turned out to be quite good.  Spencer was even pleasantly surprised by the magret de canard (duck breast).  We have had at least 10 servings in 2 or 3 variants by now and he was leery of getting the "same old, same old".  To his surprise the duck breast was served with apples in crepes.  The dessert, of course, was incredible and outrageously rich.

As we ate breakfast, we noticed a tandem getting ready to leave.  It turned out to be an American couple from Seattle riding an Ericsson, We were to run into them later enroute to and in Sarlat.

Our route today took us along the Dordogne on the smallest D roads possible.  It is a good route as it is mostly quiet and shaded roads that are relatively flat.  Surprisingly it also took us through many medieval and scenic villages like Carennac and Creysse.  We had to change the side of the river several times to keep away from the traffic.  The morning was fortunately cloudy and we managed to cover about 75 km before lunch and before it gets very hot again.  The last 15 km was unpleasantly warm.  The weather still hasn't cooled down which means short riding days and hiding indoors until late afternoon.

Sarlat had a 'Living City' celebration one night with demonstrations of traditional dance and one of which looks suspiciously like the precursor to square dancing.  There were oratorios and music.  The square was lined with thousands of votive candles and people followed the routes outlined by the candles to get from performance to performance.