First Taste
My first taste of cycling abroad was in 2004 when I transported my bike in the car to the Midi-Pyrenees near Albi, the birthplace of Toulouse Lautrec.
My wife Sue, daughter Heather and I were staying in a gîte near the gorge of the river Viaur. I should have realised perhaps from the word 'gorge' that billiard-table smooth terrain was not going to be likely. but we live and learn. The first morning of the holiday I awoke early and armed myself with a local ' Randonée ' guide book that I'd found amongst the tourist information in the house. I set off to explore a way-marked circular route to the Viaur river and then along its banks before climbing back to the village. Small direction arrows are painted on trees, walls, telegraph poles, buildings etc; it's difficult to get lost as a wrong turn is marked with a painted cross after a few metres. The guide advised the route would be 'of 16kms, medium difficulty, with some off road sections'.
Within a couple of kilometres I was slithering across a steeply descending meadow to the forested valley side; my back wheel was fish-tailing left to right as my brand new slick road tyres fought a losing battle for grip on the bone dry grass surface. I should have left the knobblies on but I thought I'd be riding paved surfaces. The track narrowed to a tiny dirt path and became even steeper as it snaked down around rocks and fallen trees.
I got off and walked, carrying my bike over the obstacles only slowly becoming aware of the potential dangers.
It was getting darker and the early morning sun was struggling to penetrate the gloomy depths of the gorge through the forest canopy. I was beginning to feel spooked, literally miles from civilisation on a path that was rarely, if ever used. If anything happened to me it could be months before anyone stumbled over my bleached scattered bones. I was beginning to panic, realising just how stupid I'd been. I'd broken all the rules and not told anyone where I was going, I had absolutely no identification with me, and my mobile phone had long since lost its signal - I was totally alone.
Suddenly, a few yards from my side all hell broke loose as a large animal exploded out of the darkness.
I froze with fear and stared into the shadowy gloom of the dried up streambed I'd been following, frantically trying to make some sense of the sound while briefly my imagination ran riot. It was a boar, with coarse dark grey fur, tusks, and abso-bloody-lutely as wild as they come. I must have really startled it because in its panic it was crashing and thrashing about amongst the rocks and branches trying to climb out of the stream-bed towards me.
I squealed and yelped like one of Porky's distant cousins as I blundered through the undergrowth, dragging my bike and clumps of grass and creeper with me as I ran, I was too scared to even look over my shoulder in case staring at him should make him any angrier.
Eventually the sound of porcine pursuit became more distant; probably because we were fleeing in opposite directions, but even so - I didn't stop running until faint signs of a path emerged from the undergrowth. I recklessly leapt over the bike's crossbar, clattered down a couple of gears and pedalled like hell in search of tarmac and safety.
I was so shaken by the wild boar incident that I cut short my planned trip.
Instead, I headed shakily back to the gîte sweating like a pig (excuse the pun) with my head in a buzzing halo of thirsty flies as I slowly climbed the absurdly steep road out of the 250 metre deep Viaur valley.
I had learned several valuable lessons that morning: slick tyres are useless on steep dirt trails: you should always tell someone where you're going in case you should die: wild boars are terrifying creatures: I'm not very brave; and lastly, I don't like cycling up hills.