13. Bike Brenac, Puivert, Esperaza, and Dry Clothes!

Lynn and I got a leisurely start to the day. First, Croissants and hot chocolate for breakfast, then washing some clothes in the goofy French front loader, after which we try to get them to dry. More on that later. 

Quillan church and clock tower we walk by several times a day. Today, en route to the Boucherie! 

Perfect weather yet again today, 60 degrees in the am, 80 in the pm, sunny, not much wind = ROAD TRIP on the bike. The fun just never stops.

Locally-produced bike route map is fantastic. I used this map photo to navigate some of today's ride

Using the best bike maps I’ve ever encountered, I vaguely planned a loop similar to one I rode earlier, only in the opposite direction and leaving some new places to explore. This bike of mine has been perfect for my kind of riding, and I love the disc brakes on a road bike for safer fast descending. My plan was to do some early climbing to get that out of the way, then spend most of the latter part of the ride going really fast downhill for miles at a time. It sort of worked out that way! 

My first stop out of Quillan was in the beautiful tiny village of Brenac. I’d forgotten to fill my water bottles, so took advantage of the “Eau Potable” fountain near their Hotel Marie (kind of like City Hall) to fill them up, then decided to show you what their public bathroom looks like. Remember those public "Toilettes and Urinoirs” I wrote about a few days ago? Well, this ain’t those! This is a modern version of an ancient toilet design. Put your feet on the pads, and aim for the hole in the floor with whatever you are depositing! Watch out for your clothes. Time to ride on! 

Puivert was the next stop, when hunger struck just as I realized there’d be no more chance to buy food after I left that town. What do you mean, can’t buy food? Well, you must adjust your activity schedule around certain fixed unchangeable facts of eating here. First, EVERY business seems to close between 12 noon and 2:00 pm, EXCEPT food places. Cafes and restaurants stay open until 2:00 pm (cause everybody from the other businesses comes there to eat lunch) , then close until at least 4:00, and oftimes 7:00pm. So, I had to buy food BEFORE 2:00. After you bike out of Puivert, there is not much else in the food business department until arriving at Esperaza. No telling exactly when I‘d get there, but most likely AFTER 2:00. Sooo… Just to be sure, I stopped at Poxi, a little chain store/bar/boulangerie, and got a beer and ham sandwich. Fun stop too, I used my little French vocabulary to order, the waitress understood, then talked to me in her broken English to explain how much money I owed, and we both practiced back and forth a few minutes. THEN I got some road directions from the drunk hugely-bearded hippie guy outside, which I sort of understood, too. The day was going great.

I headed out for Esperaza, and my “plan” was coming true: the majority of the route was fast downhill after all the work done earlier in the day. Super beautiful rural scenes, which I’m never able to capture in photos, so just trust me: this place is beautiful in its own unique way. Pastoral beauty, vast farmlands in broad valleys, with the distant tall Pyrenees Mountains peeking over the smaller limestone foothills ringing the farmlands. And they have an excellent rural road system with little traffic, mostly well-maintained pavement, and (usually) helpful signage to designate routes. 

Cool building entering little town of Fa

I made a stop in the town of Fa, probably named after one of the words in a Julie Andrews song. It has a beautiful War Dead Memorial, like most French towns, right next to the Marie. I read that this memorial was built in 1989 to honor the anniversary of the French Revolution. Most of the names inscribed were, again, victims of the First World War. As Americans, I think we can’t imagine how that war devastated the population of France’s towns. The along came WWII. 

Esperaza has been a hub for many of my rides this trip, so I kind of knew where to go. I headed down narrow Route D2 along the River Aude, to my favorite hydroelectric dam for yet another dam picture, then got lost seeking the extension of that obscure road. Giving up, I rode the last few miles to Quillan on a more commercial road. Safer than you’d imagine. Traffic is uniformly disciplined in dealing with cyclists, giving at least 4 feet clearance before passing, and waiting patiently for passing opportunities if needed. No one ever swears at you, or crowds you on the road. I think it’s because most drivers are also cyclists when they aren’t driving a car. Many people of all ages and genders can be seen using bikes for errands, carrying goods home from the  market, hauling small kids to school, or riding seriously with other cyclists in mini-pelotons for training. 

Once home, I saw Lynn had been hanging our wet clothes out to dry. I took a photo of the first batch, so you can see the complex hanging rack with dangling carousel for socks and underwear. Amazingly, it seems to work well here with our bright sunlight and breeze off the river. Why outside drying? Well, because the “dryer” here is like we’ve encountered before in French homes. It seems to ‘bake” the clothes rather than tumble and dry them. Our earlier attempts at machine drying literally took hours. So, today we reverted to the age-old method.