France - Tour de Dordogne *****

27/08/2018

We booked this French tour through an Australian company called Tour de Vines and it was operated by French Cycling Holidays. Our guides/mechanics/drivers were Susan and David and they did a fabulous job. We were collected from our hotel in Brive on the Sunday morning and a week later we were back at the same hotel to collect half our luggage which we had put in storage to reduce our impact on the transportation of luggage in the minibus as we did not know that there would only be four riders joining this tour. We were transferred to our Chateau for the night and did a short exploratory tour to the Caves of Le Saux get used to our Trek flat bar road bikes. The rest of the week was taken up with lengthy rides along the Dordogne River visiting very interesting places including the Troglodyte Caves and some interesting castles and we spent a day canoeing down part of the Dordogne. The accommodation was first class, the food and wine was usually Michelin quality and the bikes were perfect for the ride although the climb to the top of the mountain behind Rocamadour was too much for the two of us and we each spent parts of the climb in the bus. This was the first time that we started to think about the advantages of riding on E Road Bikes.