What goes up must come down!

I am writing this blog a few days after the event. We left the Australian-to-French electrical adaptor in a hotel accidentally and have been conserving power until we found a solution, which turned out to be a French iPad charger purchased at a local mobile phone shop in Puy-en-Velay, where we are now staying for a couple of nights.

After leaving Marvejols we headed for Chanac, a trip that was planned to give our legs a rest after a week on the road, but we decided to go further as the town was not particularly interesting and we arrived there at midday. On the map it was a bit of a climb out of the town and then a long stretch on a high plateau, which had the highest concentration of dolmens in France, finishing down hill into St Enime.

Heading out of Chanac




The weather was great for cycling, but when we got onto the plateau at around 1000m the wind was in our faces and the so called flat stage became similar to a slight uphill and quite cold. On the plus side the views were excellent and the landscape was littered with stone dolmens and other features made by early man. Eagles floated overhead as we made our way towards St Enime, several hundred meters below. As St Enime was several hundred meters lower than where we were cycling we knew that there would be a downhill section at the day's end, but nothing prepared us for the descent. When we first glimpsed the village it was like looking out of an aircraft's window onto the houses below. We took it very easy, taking care to avoid small rocks that had fallen onto the road and oncoming cars! The views were out of his world.

Descending into St Enime










As it was Sunday, lots of day-trippers were in the village, drinking beer and eating ice cream on the promenade by the river. The canoeists were lifting their crafts out of the water and fly fishermen were casting their lines by the bridge. We could clearly see the fish stationary in the water waiting for flies.


After checking into out hotel we walked around the old (very old) town and had dinner in a small restaurant just as it started to rain and washed away the tableware from the outside tables.









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Location:Rue des Capucins,Le Puy-en-Velay,France