A wonderful landscape to be travelling through, this part of the Massif Central has a number plateaus which are rarely as flat as I would like but wonderful to cycle through. I’m in or on Margeride, the various landscapes have my imagination on overdrive, in this area I keep expecting Cro-magnon man to come stumbling out from amongst the boulders after an unusual long nap.

More recently there was a beast that terrorised the area that is supposed to have been a wolf, but I’m not so sure  that it was. This is a carving of The Beast of GEVAUDAN with Saugues below.

Saugues was an odd place and when I think back on my awful meal in the bar it did have that sort of terrorised populace air to it with everyone hovering around the bright lights of the town.

I spent a bit of time around this Gite and church, its a remote and idyllic spot the weather was fabulous especially for November and I’m very glad I did spend some time there.

As when I began the descent to town, I met this joker, thankfully after the fact. Im not certain which I found more amazing his lack of injury or his story as to how it happened.I was later to meet him in the bar of which he was the proprietor, where pizza was available for dinner. Needles to say I didn’t return for the duration of my stay. The cuisine alone was enough to put me off but the sour attitude of his daughter who was an even greater deterrent.

I had not intended stopping in St. Alban sur Limagnole other than for the night. From no where I found my self in an amusing often repeated dialogue with Jean or Dominique, “so your staying another night then”

The Gite is nothing special, except perhaps for the diversity of mushroom population growing in the bathroom,  Gregory House would have a field day. Yet I was instantly comfortable, Dominique’s was a delight when I arrived. Monday is an awful day in France – everything is closed, to the point that I’m often surprised when the Auto-tellers still work, anyway she supplied me with a few staples to cook something and the next day I just decided to stay.

There were some key attractions, Wifi was one, a bath & washing machine another and it was warm enough. I doubt my Uncle John (of Aran Jumper fame) would have been satisfied with the temperature particularly the day Dominique & Jean were away and forgot to switch the heating on. I suspect my Uncle John would have been burning the furniture by oh lets say lunch, at the very latest.

I was a little too comfortable and got to know a few key people in town. The butcher had in addition to good quality meat, fabulous home made pate that was just perfect with a little cheese a pear and toast for lunch. The baker baked a loaf very similar to the bread I was baking in Sweden as all Swedish bread is shit and full of sugar. I say similar, the form colour, texture and the flour mix were similar its just his is better than mine. I even got a haircut, long overdue after six months.

I planned to leave after two weeks, but the night before my intended departure I made an update to my  Linux installation and the laptop was dead and so spent an exhausting day re-installing the machine and another recovering from my self induced stress. Then I organised Christmas gifts online, did a few nights of IT support for family & friends and a month had gone, so I packed ready to depart and was met by snowy icy roads the next morning.

The local grocer was amused and said “looks like your stuck till the thaw sometime in March” to which I blanched. It was indeed looking as though I would be spending Christmas there when it started to rain on the 21st and didn’t stop. The temperature had also climbed by about ten degrees and the roads were clearing so I decided to leave on the 23rd and at least get some distance before Christmas brought everything to a standstill. I’m certain many of you are familiar with old story of a couple who were unwisely on the road at Christmas and ended up sleeping in a manger…