It’s all going up the Ardeche and across the mountains to Issoire.

In which Sid and Doris string together three tough days to cross the Mediterranean/Atlantic watershed to visit Barnas, St Privat d’Allier and Issoire.

Sid is telling these days together to show you the pictures. This crossing is very dramatic, and while Sid and Doris did stop on the hills it was not always to take pictures. There is a lot of nothing up here so the opportunities for piquant Sid writing are very slight, so just look at the views and imagine you have cycled up to them. Doris is updating the maps and is putting in some of the cols. This is near S and D max.

It took about an hour of slow, steady climb out of St Martin d’Adeche to this view.

There is nothing up here, we did not have to dodge behind a bar or caravan to get this shot. Well, there are goats.

This is on the road to Vallon Pont d’Arc, the town that has bagged the only rock arch in France where the eroding river still runs through it. This is after the Col de Serre de Tourre which is at a dispiriting 323 metres, the road having climbed, fallen, climbed, rinse, repeat, etc. Anyway, here is the Arc.

Which is great, but it is noon and the only useful hotel is still a very long way away the other side of a battery and Sid recharging lunch.

The jollier part of the afternoon is spent on the voie verte Ardechoise railway. This is fabulous in such hilly country, gliding over bridges and not going down into the valley and grinding out again. Cuttings, tunnels and viaducts such as this near Vogue (say vog you ay).

Here is an explanation of the volcanic creation of this landscape.

It is very interesting but it is also 6.15 and we are still plugging uphill to Barnas, a place without any place except for the essential N102 …. And it is starting to rain. But Barnas has a hotel with dinner on the terrace with what appears to be a meeting of the Bohemian artists for the promotion of tobacco.

Tobacco was a key crop in the south west of France. Now Gauloises are only 6% of the market (Sid recalls it was about 60% when he started smoking in Ribiers). Now Marlboro has 25% and Gauloises are made at a plant in Poland.

On Thursday morning the software offers an ‘off main road alternative’. It was Kenyan in inspiration with, at first, not much climb before going through a ford before turning and climbing at about 30% to regain the road to where we are actually going. The duo will be on The Road. There is no picture because most of the next 18 kms goes at 10%. Motor homes with bike racks make up about half the traffic.

Here is Doris, triumphant at the Col de la Chavade (1266m, enough to earn ice cream points).

And Sid with the exciting (to S and D) Water Shed Picture.

There is then a drop and another col followed by some tiresome flogging along past shut shops until we find Cayres, the emotional highlight of the day. At L’Ami du Pain Madame is open and has a cabinet full of delights, and is herself delightful in helping us to our stand up picnic. Here she is.

At Bains we are back on the Le Puy to Compostella route and this chapel is at St Bonnet.

We get into St Privat d’Allier (which river we will see a lot of) to find the pilgrim trade has not picked up yet since the May rush. We are the only ones in the bar, then the only ones at the pizza place.

In this next picture we bring you the horrid truth of cycle touring. Sid is holding up his phone trying to get some response from the iPad in the other hand, handsomely framed by the day’s washing. It is odd that it’s not more popular.

On Friday we rode to Issoire, using the legs we had been using for the last two days. EPO was always about the rate of recovery.

For our American readers we pause at Chavaniac, now known as Chavaniac-Lafayette, because that was where he was born. (For those without an American education, such as Sid: Lafayette fought the British in the American Revolutionary Wars leading the Continental Army to victory at Yorktown in 1871 securing US independence. Back in France during their revolution he was a writer of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and opposed slavery. The revolution ate its own and he fled to the Netherlands, where captured by the Austrians to be released by Napoleon in 1797. After the Bourbon restoration he became a liberal deputy. In 1824 President Monroe invited him to tour the US where much feted.)

Doris will put up a note on the mileages and heights but the run to Issoire just felt tough. Sid was looking forward to reviewing Pierre Mesquin’s Museum of the Resistance at Frugieres le Pin.  This six wheeled armoured car stands outside. The sign on the front says to ask in the bar, but the bar was shut. Is this the way to remember heroes?

At Issoire they have developed Vendred’ Issoire.  Once the storm passes through there is music and feasting in the streets with no plastic chair or fold out table, Sid or Doris left out of the brouhaha.

Very nearly at Clermont Ferrand.