I spent a very pleasant two days with my hosts Dirck and Jennifer in Catllar, then on 30th it was time to leave to catch the pre-booked European Bike Express back to Leeds. The route I took back was much more direct than the way I had come, and it was also mostly gently downhill. The coach arrived more or less on time at about 1300 and Jason was there again to help load the bikes into the trailer (see photo). I had been warned that coming back on this coach was...

I knew I had about 100km to do today (102.85 to be precise), and there was a bit of climbing involved as well (a total rise of 2359m, including a category 1 climb - Col de Jau. It was part of the Tour de France after all!). So I had an early breakfast, bade farewell to Hazel and got on the road. Yesterday afternoon there had been a little drizzle, but this morning it was dry, but also very cold! On the first section to Limoux there was a bit of mist, and I was w...

Back on 20th Sept, my friend Jennifer offered to contact her friend Hazel who lives in the small village of Cailhau. This is exactly 100km away from Jennifer's house in Catllar, so was well placed as the start of my final day to complete the loop. I had phoned Hazel on 23rd and arranged to stay over tonight. I had a choice of routes to get there. Possibly the most obvious was along the Canal du Midi, but I reckoned that would be a bit slow going. Jennifer had s...

It was a day off, so rather than cycle into Toulouse I decided to take the metro. The nearest station was Ramonville, about 2.5km for the crow, but about 5km for me, because of the canal and motorway in the way. I probably walked somewhere that I shouldn't have, but I got there anyway. The metro line took a very weird twisting route to get into the city centre. Once there I enjoyed walking around, and spent some time in the Musee des Augustins (fine art) and t...

At half past midnight last night I had booked two nights in a hotel in Toulouse. Once again a budget hotel (Innostar - see photo opposite) at 43 Euros/night, in the outlying South-East suburb of Labege. I must have been feeling quite fit, as the distance was just over 100 miles (161km). What I hadn't realised yesterday was that there was rather a lot of climbing involved (978m) because the route went against the grain of the land, with several deep river crossing...