jeudi 28 juillet
The Iceman takes the car to do research for the 2012 trip so I pedal to Gare Luchon, then ride to Gouaux de Luchon via Bagnères de Luchon, Montauban de Luchon and Juzet de Luchon. Cier de Luchon is over the road but I don’t go there.
Gouaux de Luchon village perches on the side of the mountain up a hammy-twanging five-kilometre climb. The usual thoughts assail me: how do people live up here? They can’t all be farmers: what do they do for a living? A small, but new, car sits in a nook outside every house: how do they make an income?
The village at first seems dead. I sit at the well. The road outside is littered with free range barkers' eggs. Fat ones. An old woman emerges from a doorway and totters down the chemin with a plastic bag of garbage in her hand. The shutters on a doorway fold back, the door opens and a sleepy young bloke steps out as though half past ten on a bright sunny day is simply too much for him.
A woman is chatting garrulously to a neighbour over a stone wall. Two blokes are working in the cimitière in the churchyard. Bright flowers clutter every grave. A walled garden is full of beans, tomotoes, herbs and other legumes. A sage older man strolls down the road, decides all is as it should be at the village boundary, then strolls back.
As I wheel the bike along a narrow lane the garrulous woman’s whippet rushes the fence to warn me off. She coos at it, bonjours me. In the yard of every house is a perfectly stacked woodpile ready for the snowy months to come.
I can’t help but think that life here might be slow and sleepy, but it’s good.
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