🇫🇷🚴🥶Cold➡️Climbs➡️Cantal 🥶🚴‍♀️🇫🇷

5:25 / 64 miles / 6,542 ft. Saignes, France (The Cantal District) The 9th day of cold, mist, fog, and not the stunning blue skies we were expecting for September in France. Left our Warmshower host at about 9 AM. We knew we had a tough day ahead of us and the cold and misty weather was not going to make it any easier.
A traditional breakfast of toast and various spreads along with a bowl of coffee to dip it in, got a little warmth in our bellies before we left. Right out of the driveway without any warm-up, we had a 9.6 mile climb of an average gradient of 5.4%. At least finishing this climb would knock off about 1/3 of our climbing for the day. We battled with staying warm, and not getting too sweaty. At one time I was wearing six layers of clothing as we were coming down from the pass and I could still feel the cold air cutting through them. Again, we took refuge in a cathedral from the elements, as we ate a couple of bananas and sipped on a Coke. This was to be one of our more beautiful days as far as scenery goes, but the foggy weather blocked out the stunning views we were hoping for. We did not see the Puy de Mary (an inactive volcano) today, which is the highest point in the Cantal district. Although we did not have the stunning views of the mountains and valleys, we still enjoyed the historical churches, the stone houses, and the fresh air of the mountains. The romanesque basilica of Orcival was amazing, and we chatted with another bicycle tourist as we enjoyed the historical village. With all of the difficult riding, we were worried that we would not make it to our Warmshower host before 7 PM. Luckily, we had tailwinds that pushed us along and we reached Saignes, FR at about 5:15 PM. We found a place near the center of the village next to the centrally located church and had a beer. We reached out to Hugo, our Warmshower host, and within one minute he was joining us. We had an absolutely wonderful night at Hugo’s house. See the post titled “Hugo.”Read more