The Two Bears
(Dordogne Cycle Touring 5/6):
Our weekend at Lisle in June was a great start to learning to be a couple again, having been parents for 20 years. We considered it so useful in terms of Abandoned Parent Training (APT) that when we had the chance to progress further via a second APT weekend, we seized the opportunity.
This time, we would do it in style. For starters, we’d leave for four days instead of two, and we’d take our roomy teepee rather than the little tent we use for party sleepovers. Our daughters were busy with their summer jobs and claimed they’d hardly notice our absence. I’m sure they were just being brave and would miss us terribly.
Without the kids’ belongings, the car seemed empty, so we found some items of comfort to fill it – such as a folding table and deck chairs – as well as our bikes. We were cycle touring on a different level to our week in the Charente in 2019, when we’d been towing a bike trailer.
We decided to discover the River Dronne upstream of Bourdeilles. The village of St.Pardoux-la-Rivière seemed a good base because, as a meeting place of five roads, it would give us five different directions to explore.
When we arrived, we discovered that the village was perfect. Not only did it have the necessary shops and a market, but it also boasted access to the Flow Vélo cycle route along the former railway line to Thiviers.
The campsite, La Font Pissole, was perfect too. Quiet and friendly, it sold the local beer made by ‘Les 2 Ours’ (The Two Bears) brewery at Nontron.
Keen to cycle (rather than falling into a guinguette trap), I suggested we begin as soon as our tent was pitched. So, at 4pm we left the campsite and headed towards a landmark on the map that intrigued my partner: the Saut du Chalard.
“A saut is a kind of waterfall,” he told me. I’d already translated saut as a jump, and now I envisioned a steep hillside with a dramatic waterfall and a ledge at the top from which someone called Monsieur Chalard must have jumped or fallen. The local legend would be described in detail on one of those information panels I like so much.
The day had been hot, and although the first five kilometres were uphill, it was shady and we even saw deer in the woodland. We passed an unlikely wedding group in the tiny village of Champs-Romain, and this, coupled with a bagpipe-player blowing his heart out in the middle of a field near the cemetery, made us wonder whether we’d ventured onto a film set.
The footpath sign to the Saut du Chalard indicated a 1.5-hour walk and a 100m descent. I was a little surprised that we would view the waterfall from the bottom, rather than the narrow ledge at the top. But perhaps we’d be able to walk behind it, like in those Enid Blyton adventure stories.
“Is the path suitable for bikes?” I asked a family returning on foot from the waterfall. They assured me it was.
It was suitable, to begin with. But it soon became obvious that we’d have to dismount if we wanted to spend the weekend cycling rather than nursing broken limbs in hospital. Or maybe that was because we took the wrong path at the fork? Anyway, it didn’t matter that we’d have to push our bikes back up the steep hill afterwards. The sight would be worth it.
The young River Dronne, when we reached it, was as impatient as a mountain stream. There was a good bathing spot with a little rush of water about a metre high between two rounded boulders, making a jacuzzi pool (you can see some photos at the bottom of this page here). I put down my bike and started to walk along the riverbank.
“Where are you going?” my partner asked.
“To find the waterfall. It’s probably upstream,” I said.
When he gave me a sideways look, I realised I’d miscalculated.
“This is the waterfall,” he said. “It’s a saut, a jump, not a chute, a fall.”
That was it: no narrow ledge. No information panel. No broken-hearted Monsieur Chalard jumping to his death in despair.
However, we did complete 16.6km, a record for a couple of hours’ cycling.
Best of all, when we returned to the campsite, there were two cold beers (or two cold bears) and two deck chairs awaiting us.
That was the point I realised that what I love about cycle touring is the arrival, the moment you can refresh yourself with local beer and reflect on the day’s highs and lows.
Carrying the logic of that idea further, did we have to wait until the end of the bike ride to refresh ourselves? I would test this theory the very next day.
