This post recounts the sixth day of my English Channel to the Mediterranean cycle tour in France with Peak Tours in June 2025. Read Day 5: Argenton-sur-Creuse to Aubusson.

I’d been looking forward to today since studying the Channel to the Med route long before the holiday. I first visited the Auvergne in 1976 on a school skiing trip to La Bourboule, just four miles from today’s destination, Le Mont-Dore. I liked the idea of saying I’d cycled to the region from the English Channel.

The day started with breakfast at the hotel in Aubusson. I’d had sinking feeling about this last night, after we’d been asked to choose items on a breakfast menu. I ticked two baguettes as I suspected they’d not be large. I was right. There was no muesli or granola option, which concerned me as these really fuel me on long rides. But the food I had seemed filling, so I hoped it would be enough.

On the first, gradual hill I felt lethargic. It was easy to blame the breakfast, but looking back another poor night’s sleep was more likely to be the culprit, given this was the start of the day, and the gradient was hardly punishing, as the gradient profile above shows. Whatever the reason, I didn’t enjoy this early session, despite the pretty, forested route, so typical of the first half of the tour. But I felt better after the morning brew stop at Monteillaud, where another dog showed a keen interest in us.