Day 7

Jerry removing the pedals from his bike was a symbolic act that signalled the end of his cycling tour with Les Gits de France. The rest of the bike was dismantled and packed in the regulation bag, to allow it to be flown home. A few posed photos in front of Lac de Vassiviere, and to the chorus of our cycle bells, we finally left Jerry to make his way home by air from Limoge. We have had a good laugh with Jerry, and it was sad he was no longer cycling with us.We started to climb even as we skirted the lake, and although hard work, we were encouraged by beautiful vistas, and the promise of more to come. The weather was damp, but not uncomfortable and we made steady progress.An irritating noise started to develop on Simon's bike, and despite our best efforts to identify the source, it remained an invisible mystery. After much slogging up long hills, we were finally rewarded with an impressive downhill run on a good clear road, and recorded a top speed of 39.7 mph...VERY frustrating!The intermittent clicking noise from Simon's bike was becoming more regular, but was difficult to pinpoint.We passed a sign in the middle of nowhere, warning of aircraft, further down the road we were amused to see an aircraft fuselage, without wings, pointing nose first from the side of the road, giving a good impression of a chicken shed!

We stopped for coffee and Oranginas at around our 350 mile point. Simon's cycling computer got accidentally reset, which was very annoying. A few miles down the road the mystery noise eminating from Simon's bike got much worse, so we removed all the panniers, and turned it upside down to carry out a thorough investigation. It quickly became apparent that the rear wheel bearing had broken up, and the wheel would no longer spin on it's own. After a few trial runs we decided to split Simon's luggage between everyone else, to reduce the weight on the rapidly deteriorating bearing, to encourage it to last as long as possible.We made a long and steep descent to the river Dordogne, which was huge and made us realise how high we had climbed. Any such descent into a gorge is inevitably followed by a long, steep, hairpin-laced ascent. Thus was no different, but 7 miles of continuous uphill cycling was more than we needed Peter's ankle was in pain, Simon's rear wheel was hardly revolving, and John and Andy were now carrying extra loads. Using sheer Git-Power, we somehow ground our way to the days desination of Mauric.

It should be recorded here that tonight Simon had Duck Surprise for supper. The surprise, of course, was that there was no duck! Simon is not a great fish eater, but the choices left on the menu were thus reduced to duck, duck....or duck! He has had duck for four days now, his pedalling technique is developed a waddle, but all the jest and ribbing at his expense is simply water off a duck's back!

Jerry dismantles his bike to fly home











John relaxing after lunch








Simon wearing his underpants outside his trousers again!

(notice any similarity Simon??)

Bridge over the Dordogne followed by a 7 mile steep climb back to the plateau!






Frogs finding the going tough today!!

End to a hard day