Tour de France 2024 - stage 12

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Aurillac (Auvergne) to Villeneuve sur Lot (Nouvelle Aquitaine)

    Day 12 is listed as flat... but the landscape in the southwest foothills of the Massif Central is flat only in relative sort of way. The day's cycling brings plenty of ups and downs into and out of the river valleys that have carved their way through the limestone hills  between the Cantal peaks and the valley of the Lot. The day's journey begins in Aurillac, the capital of the Cantal department in the  Auvergne, and  will take riders through a very rural part of the Lot department of the northern Occitanie region, famed for its chateaux, picturesque small towns, and landscapes.
    A third of the way into the day's stage, in an area of France known as the Quercy, the route pases the Gouffre de Padirac, one of greatest and most visited among several popular underground caves in this part of France. From there it's on to the stunning historic site of Rocamadour, one of the main pilgrimage centres in France, where houses and monasteries are built up the steep side of a chasm.
    Many of the roads here are narrow, winding their way through the scrub oak forests that are characteristic of the Quercy - a name derived from the latin Quercus, an oak tree.
    The last part of the day's journey takes riders past the historic bastide (medieval city) of Montflanquin in the Lot-et-Garonne department of the Nouvelle Aquitaine region, before the finish at another of the well-known bastides, Villeneuve sur Lot, with its 13th - 17th century Pont des Cieutats spanning the river Lot

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