Ride Day 19—29 Sept 2005—11350 Cucugnan to 11000 Carcassonne

@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Although much of today’s ride was spent on "yellow" road, there was little traffic until we got close to Carcassonne—and especially of course on N113.<span> </span>Happily, this section had a wide shoulder.<span> </span>We hadn’t intended to take this yellow road for all of today’s ride, but we’d missed our intended cut-off (D123) and just kept going.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Early in the ride, we passed through a beautiful gorge along D14.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">Then along D611, we passed the Château d’Aguilar, the Col d’Extrème (251 M) (which wasn’t so extreme), and the Château at Durban-Corbière.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">While on D3, we passed the ancient abbey at Lagrasse and then a nice but not spectacular gorge just after Lagrasse.</span>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;">The defining aspect of today’s ride was the constant wind, sometimes feeling like gale-force strength.<span> </span>It was continually a headwind during the last two-thirds of the ride, causing us to struggle often to go above 6 mph on flat sections and 7 or 8 mph on some gentle downhill sections.<span> </span>Life’s tough, huh?<span> </span>I figure that we arrived in Carcassonne at least one to two hours later than we would have arrived had there been no wind.<span> </span>When we saw other bike riders heading toward us, they were simply flying.</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