TOURS DE FRANCE : In the heart of the Dordogne, 40 miles a day from castle to chateau through the heart of foie gras and truffle country

When travel writer Jonathan Raban moved from London to Seattle, he spoke of the newcomer’s plight: “This world, in which he has no experience and no memory, is presented to him as a supernatural domain . . . The immigrant needs to grow a memory and grow it fast.”

Visitor or immigrant, what better way to grow a memory fast than on a bicycle? My bottom and legs attested to the immediacy of the experience as I collapsed into our soft canopied bed at the 10th-Century Cha^teau de Roumegouse, near the famed cliff village of Rocamadour in southwest France.

I’d not soon forget the morning’s two-mile, uphill ride from Carennac to the Gouffre de Padirac, a subterranean gallery of limestone formations. Hollowed by an underground river, this chasm of unearthly shapes and giant stalactites has inspired centuries of superstition. Fellow cyclists were surprised I didn’t end up in the van with most of the other women in our group. But uphills were not my problem. It seemed I had another nemesis.

As I waited for my husband to finish his shower, a lavender scent from the oaken writing table stole through my half-doze. A few moments before we had been greeted at the tower entrance by our chatelaine. Chattering in French-laced English, she led us down the hallway hung with tapestries, flung open doors--to the dining room gleaming in silver and mahogany, to the balcony where we would soon have champagne cocktails--and guided us up the stone stairway to our bedroom with its coat-of-arms emblazoned on the door.

Later, I read the parchment on the writing table that began, “Once upon a time there was Roumegouse.” This castle is still haunted, they say, by Resplendine de Rignac who died of a broken heart after she learned of the death of her betrothed in the Crusades.

It’s all here, princesses pining away in towers, knights jousting under the battlements, and kings and queens playing deadly chess games with their domaines. But reality or fairy tale, I cared not at all as the evening continued over a feast of garlic soup, truffles in scrambled eggs, foie gras with endive, salmon in sorrel sauce, and a rose-crisped cre^pe filled with orange mousse.

*

Twelve years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed I’d be cycling 25 to 40 miles a day. Twelve years ago I thought I’d never ride a bike again. Yet here we were, my husband, Norm, friend Sara, and our 10 companions on a nine-day biking trip in the Perigord-Quercy region, the heart of the Dordogne River Valley.

We’d succumbed to the lure dangled by Progressive Travels, a biking-walking company based in Seattle that promised to provide every amenity to soothe or stretch the body and mind: accommodations at chateaus and inns; all meals except for a few lunches; bikes, entrance fees and a thorough introduction to the lore of the land. Oh, not quite everything. You pay for the optional massage in Souillac and the hot air balloon ride over the valley. Our American guides--who ran the Beaune office of the company--were both fluent in French and intimate with the terrain.

Otherwise, how would we have known to stop at the studio-cottages of two local painters, Pascal Magis and Guy Weir, who are not listed in any guidebook? Or, more important, how would we have known where to find a strawberry tart at the next good patisserie along the road?

We started our adventure on a mild May morning in the town of Brive-la-Gaillarde, where we’d arrived by train from Paris. Sara and I were still licking Chabichou, the delicious regional goat cheese, from our fingers at the Saturday market when we spotted the van with its rooftop of bikes. Our guides, John Brooks and Kim Brown, could have been brother and sister--both blond, all smiles--as they rushed to pick up our bags, and we set off for the hour’s drive to Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, the tour’s starting point.

At the Hotel Central Fournie in Beaulieu, we stood in the courtyard and, like children at Christmas, examined our new toys: 21-gear road bikes with seats and handlebars set to our previously stated requirements (Want a softer seat? Handlebars up instead of curled down?), helmets, water bottles, pumps and zippered handlebar bags with plastic on top for easy insertion of map and detailed route instruction for each day. John explained the gears and rules of the road. We were free to ride at any pace, stop at will, take side trips or jump in the van for a rest. The only requirement was to arrive at the day’s destination by dinner time.

Our first bike excursion that afternoon, a three-hour, 30-mile round-trip to the pretty, turreted town of Argentat, took us along the Dordogne River, under bowers of plane trees that opened to walnut groves and fields of strawberries. Castles were everywhere--mirrored in the river, sprinkled in the hills--and every dwelling, from manor house to woodcutter’s cottage, was hewn from golden limestone.

By the second day we were already comfortable with each other. With a happy range of skill levels and ages--18 to 60--we were students, widows, accountants and lawyers, and hailed from California to New Jersey. After a typical breakfast of strawberries, juice, apple muffins, croissants and coffee at the hotel, we began our tour in earnest, peddling about 30 miles southwest from Beaulieu to Cha^teau de Roumegouse.

Few cars traveled the back lanes, and the pace of life matched the river’s, easy and slow. Men stood on corners in hamlets, berets over one eye as they smoked their pipes and passed the time of day. I steered by a Frenchwoman in a dress and apron on her no-gear bike with a couronne (doughnut-shaped bread) over one handlebar and handbag over the other.

No one among us could resist pointing a camera at the fields ablaze with late-May coquelicots. Summoning her best French, Sara asked a man whose cottage stood in the middle of these crimson poppies if she could take a picture, “Puis-je prendre un photo des coquelicots?” The man looked at her blankly and said, “I don’t understand English.” So much for trying.

After pushing up and down hills all day, it was easy to fall under the spell of royalty at night. One evening, after stopping for the day at the Cha^teau de la Treyne, we strolled down river. Walking across a little bridge, we looked back on the chateau, bathed in gold from the shine of water and light. Even my husband, whose idea of heaven is to stargaze from a tent at the top of a mountain, was seduced. The day came, though, that erased my euphoria. It was Day 4, and I would have jumped in the van in a minute had I read my direction sheet in time. “Coming into La Roque-Gageac there is a steep downhill.” Too late. I was descending the twisting road as the wind, the memories whipped in my face. There was another time, a downhill in a park in Anacortes, Wash., Mother’s Day, 1982. On that day, as a speed bump loomed before me, I veered to the right. I don’t recall a sound, nor any pain. I just remember cradling my chin in my white sweat shirt as I picked myself off the ground. A car stopped. People put me inside as I felt my fingers grow sticky, saw my shirt turn red.

Three months later and one week after my jaw was freed of wires, my husband, four teen-age sons and I set off on our own bicycle trip in England and Ireland. Much to everyone’s relief, we modified the original plan. Mom rented a car.

Now, 12 years later, I reached the bottom of the hill intact. With effort, I pried my fingers from the hand brakes. I checked the direction sheet, “Look for the cross.” How appropriate. As I rode to join the others picnicking on the grassy riverbank, I wanted to shout. I was in Dylan Thomas’ poem, “Fern Hill”: I lordly had the trees and leaves/Trail with daisies and barley/Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And the elegant picnic that John and Kim had spread out was my just reward. Here was the gastronomic largess of the region: great rounds of country bread, cheeses (Brie, chevre, Carre Bleu, Chabichou, St. Marcellin, Tomme Blanche, Cantal), grapes, foie gras, rice salad with olives, fruit tarts, caramel bars, chocolate-covered walnuts and wine from Bergerac.

I could hardly count myself a martyr considering our recent visit to Rocamadour, where 12th-Century pilgrims climbed 223 steps on shackled knees to prostrate themselves before the Black Virgin in the Virgin Chapel. Carved of time-darkened wood, the small figure was thought to produce miraculous cures. The faithful still visit today, camping out in the valley below. The ancient abbey seems to defy gravity, jutting from a cliff face rising more than a thousand feet from the gorge below.

The afternoon we came into Sarlat-la-Caneda, a microcosm of medieval France, it had rained all day. I almost opted for a van ride along with others, but each time the van passed, each time John hollered out to me, I got an extra charge of adrenaline. It was like a safety net, a security blanket. Wrapped in my cocoon of Gore-Tex, hood to toe, my legs spinning around to the hiss of tires on wet pavement, I moved in my own watery capsule, past blurs of green and gold, the woods, the fields.

*

In every age the ennobled spirit emerges. We found it our last two days in the engravings and paintings of Cro-Magnon man. As we hunched through the antechamber and acclimated to the cool and dark of the Font-de-Gaume cave near the village of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, a little horse startled to life under the flashlight beam of our guide. No childish pen scratching, this drawing that configured to the rock surface was created 15,000 years ago by a master who understood lighting, perspective, spatial relationships--techniques not discovered again until the Italian Renaissance.

Later, as I leaned out casement windows into the night sky from our turret bedroom in Cha^teau de Puy Robert and looked down to the twinkling lights of Montignac, I saw again that horse and the other animated cave scenes that transcend thousands of years and still speak movingly to our minds and hearts.

At Lascaux II the next day, I felt the reverberations as bison, mammoths, reindeer, layer on layer in a frieze, thundered around me in cavern light. The precisely rendered images are copies of the originals in the cave Lascaux I, once called “the Sistine Chapel of Perigord,” but now closed to the public because of environmental damage caused by human presence. A wonder in its own right, the replica cave was built over 13 years and painted with the pigments and tools of the original Paleolithic artisans.

Outside again, there was the pungent grass, the road slipping behind us. Each in his or her own reverie, we cycled under the massive outcrop of La Roque St. Christophe. My husband was certain he’d been here before in another time, another setting.

The magic of past and present mingled. For the moment we lived like our ancestors; in consonance with our conditions, with the rhythm of the seasons.

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GUIDEBOOK / Touring France by Bike

Getting there: Fly nonstop LAX to Paris daily on United and Air France, four days a week on AOM French Airlines; direct on American, USAir, Continental and TWA; connecting service on most international carriers. Round-trip fares on AOM start at about $800 including taxes and fees; all other fares at about $1,075.

The price of most biking tours does not include air fare from the United States, nor transportation to the tour starting point.

Best times: Mid-May though mid-June is mild; green fields bloom with wildflowers. Mid-September through October is crisp and sunny; leaves change color, fires in fireplaces.

Bike tours:

The following generally recommended companies offer guided package tours in either Provence or the Dordogne or both. Most offer luxury accommodations and fine dining; some have standard trips, even camping. Some trips may no longer be open, and prices are subject to change. Chateaux Bike Tours, P.O. Box 5706, Denver, CO 80217; telephone (800) 678-2453, fax (303) 393-6801. Five- to nine-day tours in France. Provence tours start Aug. 23, Sept. 5 and 19, Oct. 4 and 23; $2,650.

Progressive Travels, 224 W. Galer St., Suite C, Seattle, WA 98119; tel. (800) 245-2229 or (206) 285-1987, fax (206) 285-1988. Dordogne luxury tour Oct. 1-8, $2,950; standard tours Sept. 18-25, Oct. 2-9, $1,990.

Backroads, 1516 5th St., Berkeley, CA 94710; tel. (800) 462-2848, fax (510) 527-1444. Dordogne inn-to-inn, eight-day tours, $2,698; camping tours, $1,098.

Bike Tour France, 5523 Wedgewood Drive, Charlotte, NC 28210-2432; tel. (704) 527-0955. Custom tours, guided or independent, exclusively in the Loire Valley, April through October. Custom, unescorted tours about $37.50 per person per day; fully escorted tours about $250-$350 per person per day.

Butterfield & Robinson, Suite 300, 70 Bond St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6B 1X3; tel. (800) 387-1147, fax (416) 864-0541. Eight-day Dordogne tours: Aug. 24-31, Sept. 4-11, 9-16, Oct. 2-9, $3,190. Eight-day Provence tours: Sept. 7-14, 14-21, 18-25, Sept. 25-Oct. 2, Sept. 30-Oct. 7, Oct. 5-12, 12-19, 14-21, 21-28; $3,250 and $3,290. Five-day Provence tours: Sept. 12-16, Oct. 24-28, $1,985. Country Cycling Tours, 140 W. 83rd St., New York, NY 10024; tel. (212) 874-5151, fax (212) 874-5286. Dordogne tour Aug. 28-Sept. 5, $2,099; Provence tour Sept. 22-29, $2,199.

Europeds, 761 Lighthouse Ave., Monterey, CA 93940; tel. (800) 321-9552, fax (408) 655-4501. Dordogne luxury eight-day tours, Sept. 1-8, Oct. 6-13, $2,395; standard six-day tours, Sept. 26-Oct.1, Oct. 23-28, $1,475.

Euro-Bike and Walking Tours, P.O. Box 990, DeKalb, IL 60115; tel. (800) 321-6060; fax (815) 758-8851. Dordogne 10-day tours, Sept. 1-11, Oct. 6-16, $1,995; Provence, Sept. 1-11, Sept. 29-Oct. 9, $2,145. (Prices do not include $90 bike rental).

For more information: French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 715, Beverly Hills 90212, (900) 990-0040 (calls cost 50 per minute; call before 2 p.m. Pacific time); fax (310) 276-2835.5

* BIKE TOURS: A list of companies offering cycling tours in France. L21