Thiviers to Prudhomat
Maybe I was overly excited about getting home, but I barely slept last night. For some reason I had assumed there were only a hundred kilometres left — but when I plotted a couple of routes, trying to find one less hilly (to no avail), both came in close to 130 km. I even tried Google Maps. Same thing. The beeline home turned out to be very jagged, both horizontally and vertically. I was pedalling before sunrise.
Thiviers was the final stop on the original Flow Vélo, though the route has since been extended to Sarlat-la-Canéda — not that there’s any new cycling infrastructure; they simply designated some rural roads as such. The routes I plotted inadvertently coincided with the Flow Vélo at times, and it wasn’t until Terrasson, some sixty kilometres in, that I finally parted ways with it.
It was a difficult ride. I entered hilly terrain with nonstop climbs and descents that left no time to recover between the two. After five hours I had covered only 60 km — roughly halfway. It was getting hotter. I began questioning my decision to do it all in one go, but stubbornness prevailed. On several occasions I got off and pushed Greengo — the hills were either too steep or I decided to treat them as such. Small rural roads are unforgiving that way: you hurtle down at breakneck speed and then crawl back up like a turtle. I prefer departmental roads — more mellow gradients, better surfaces, and just enough traffic to keep me alert.
Then, somewhere in the final stretch, familiar names started appearing on the road signs. There it was: light at the end of the tunnel. Twenty-five kilometers of flat road ahead. Hurray.
Exactly nine hours after setting off, I rolled into our village. Completely exhausted, and very happy to see Julie. This leg — and with it the whole Tour de France, in a manner of speaking — was over. That evening we opened the half-bottle of Vouvray I’d bought after the wine tasting, and rounded off dinner with a digestif of the Cognac I’d carried all the way home. The trip had come full circle — in a glass.
Today in Numbers:
128 km — distance cycled
1,660 m — elevation gain, the highest of the entire three weeks; a cherry on the cake, so to speak
3,038 — calories burned
Summing up the Flow Vélo
The Flow Vélo was my least favourite part of the trip. The route itself wasn’t exciting, the surfaces — even the paved ones — made neither me nor Greengo particularly happy, the surroundings were bland, and the towns unremarkable. But I hadn’t researched it in advance, I wanted to cycle home rather than take a train, and so I didn’t have much choice. I pushed further each day just to get it over with. Live and learn.
Against the Flow in numbers:
392 km — distance cycled, on and off the official route, including the stretch home that isn’t part of it
400 km — total length of the Flow Vélo, Sarlat-la-Canéda to Île d’Aix, ridden in reverse as far as Terrasson
~50% — of the route runs along rivers, notably the Charente
V92 — national route code of the Flow Vélo