Cycling TOULOUSE 🧱 Pink Brick City of Students & a Surprise Saint

Day 58. 35km (86433kms 8yrs)

I wondered a little too late if I should’ve had a dip in the river, but looking at the rate is was flowing it seemed best avoided.

I was looking forward to a relaxed day ahead; only 20 or so kilometres into Toulouse where I would spend the afternoon checking out the ‘La Ville Rose’. But first I had a growing headwind to battle. I should’ve stopped to put sunglasses on; dust in the eyes, bugs in my mouth and eyelashes, I couldn’t wait to get out of nature and into the city!

‘The Pink City’ moniker is a bit misleading. Calling it France’s brick city would be more accurate, though I realise somewhat less romantic. Regardless, it’s a very lovely city, vibrant with students, and chockablock with cyclists (though I notice drivers aren’t nearly so friendly towards cyclists here as they are elsewhere in France).

I visited a bunch more churches again; of particular note today was the Couvent des Jacobins where to my great surprise I found the relics of Saint Thomas Aquinas! I’d studied him in a first year Political Theory class, and here he was! These days I feel like I’m racing about quite a lot so I took the opportunity to just sit for a bit in the cavernous nave under the palm-shaped columns and take it all in.

After which, I visited yet more churches, peered through gates at stately homes, and wandered the gardens in the south of town until it was time to meet my hosts for the night. Post graduate students of archeology, their flat is eclectically decorated and they spoke passionately about their subject. How fitting to be able to stay with students in this university town. I loved chatting archeology with them and was blown away that Ethiopia’s ‘Lucy’ is off their homemade scale of French palaeontology, while Stone Henge, Carnac, and Uffington’s White Horse are all in the final couple of centimetres.

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