IT WAS agony, I can tell you. Without going into unseemly detail, it seemed to me only too obvious that I was going to have to walk bow-legged, like a jockey put out to grass, for the rest of my life.
You can hire bicycles in the village, at a place called Oxygène, which is just a shed with a lot of bikes of different sizes in. I suppose it takes its name from the vast amounts of oxygen you need to cope with the mountain tracks this area abounds in. Oxygène relies for its custom on a local feature I've often mentioned before, the old railway line which runs along the valley for miles . . .erm, kilometres and kilometres. Some years ago they took up all the tracks, laid a fine gravel all-weather surface and encouraged its use by cyclists, riders and walkers, and I have to say it has been an entire success. They call it la piste verte, the green track.
