A blog post about our recent "Tour de Croissant" bike trip (Geneva to Sete, following the ViaRhôna EuroVelo 17 bike path), organized impeccably by Amy, as always. Technically this was a self-guided tour, but Amy put a lot of effort into picking out a good tour agency to rent us the bikes, book the hotels and to arrange for luggage transfers, I can attest to the amount of time she spent emailing and on the phone to get all the details ironed out ahead of time.
Tuesday Sep 8
Flew with Pete and Rosana on Delta out of Boston through Amsterdam; that went relatively smoothly overall. Airplane was not 100% full which is always a blessing; it took off about a half hour late but made it in on time. There was a little nervousness in the Amsterdam airport getting through the passport control: they had set up a big bank of automated machines, with long lines running to each machine. The machine would scan your passport and take your photo, then it would either A) let you through, yay or B) reject you, in which case you had to shuffle off to a second even longer line to go talk with a human. There was a sort of "Judgement Day" quality to the scene, with the rejected/damned souls (all of whom had woeful expressions) being shunted off into Purgatory while the rest continued on with their journeys.
We took the train from the airport to the main Geneva train station, then walked to the hotel from there. Quite hot, high 80's. The hotel was basic but nice, and the folks there were friendly.
Interestingly in the hotel the air conditioning was controlled/rationed in order to save energy (there is some sort of municipal policy at work here), so you don't get the same kind of aggressive cool normally present in an American hotel. The temp aspect of this is fine with me, although the corollary is that the air inside the room doesn't get as dry, so it takes a lot longer for things like towels and hand-washed stuff to dry out.
After arriving and getting unpacked we took a short nap (50 minutes! absolutely no more than that!) and then decided to head out and explore a bit. We walked down to the lakeshore and over to a sort of pier/projection where they had the "Bains de Pacquis", a local swimming area with a small cafe.
Bains de Pacquis was fun; it had the feeling of an "institution", a place that's been around for some time and is used and beloved by the locals. Swimming areas on both sides of the pier, changing area and cafe in the middle, the infrastructure had a sort of "town pool" feel as opposed to "glitzy resort" feel. You pay 2 CF or 2 € to get in, then change for swimming in a long set of little cubbies/cabanas. The various swimming areas seemed to be (implicitly) segregated mostly by age, one for younger/teenage kids, one for older folks, and off to the side an area with just women, mostly younger and a good portion of whom were topless, very scandalous. Photo:
We were both hungry to start with, so we went to the cafe and ordered "salade grecque", which turned out to be china bowls with big honking chunks of tomato, cucumber, and feta swimming in a large pool of olive oil and dotted with olives (weirdly, no salt or vinegar). A little odd but tasty, along with a basket of fairly decent bread.
The swimming was great, lake water cool but not cold; we splashed around for a while to cool off. I think we would have stayed later after that and maybe gone for another swim, but we were still a little tired from the flight and wanted to explore a bit more in order stay awake.
We walked down the shore a bit to the Mouette Genevoises ferry service, a microscopic little ferry boat that you can take to get shuttled over to the old town / English Garden area. Amy and I then strolled around the old town looking for a place to have tea and get something sweet to eat. This part of town is clearly where you go when you want to spend lots of money shopping, there were various high-end brands and watch stores, etc. It was pretty busy + crowded.
We eventually got tired of wandering and circled back towards the hotel, crossing over a big pedestrian bridge and eventually walking along some smaller streets that paralleled the larger Rue de Lausanne. We encountered Pete and Rosana back at the hotel (it was around 4:30 or so at this point) and mutually picked out a place to eat, then spent some time in the room relaxing.
All around in the areas where we walked there were lots of young people, kids + high schoolers + slightly older youth, it was good to see so many youngsters. Geneva is clearly not one of these cities where all the young people clear out, leaving nothing but grey hair. Very ethnically / racially diverse, especially the smaller kids.
At 6:45 we met up with Pete and Rosana again and walked a block or so to a local Thai restaurant for dinner, Restaurant Mamasan. Food was quite tasty, we had pad thai, a green curry, a dish of leafy greens, and some fresh rolls. We tried out our French speaking on the waitress, who was willing to play along a bit-- she started with French and would continue until we bungled something, then switched to English (no bungling for Amy of course but Pete and I only lasted a couple of sentences).
We did our best to stay up until 9pm back in the hotel room, but I was really way too sleepy at that point (I hadn't really slept on the plane to speak of) so we made it until around 8:15. Sleep was pretty decent, I think Amy woke up around 5 and I made it to 5:30.
Wednesday Sep 9
Rain today! It was supposed to continue all morning, so we decided to do indoor stuff. Amy had picked out a visit to CERN, which is not at all far from the downtown part of Geneva. We took the train to the town of Meyrin, then walked a bit and then trammed it to the CERN museum. Tickets are free, and we had hoped to sign up for a walking tour, but that proved to be a sort of misleading/illusory prospect -- when Amy went to the front desk to sign up for the 9:30 tour she was told it was full (this was around 9:15); when she asked about the 11:15 tour the desk person told her that we could sign up online, but when we tried at exactly 9:30, the 11:30 tour went from available to instantly booked in just a couple of seconds (poo). Our conclusion was there are bots or big groups that basically hoover up all those spots before any regular people can get to them.
In any case, even with all of that, the museum was still a fun visit. Lots of material about high-temp plasma, particle acceleration, and collision detector stuff. There was a mildly entertaining live presentation as well. Museum was crammed with young people of all types sizes shapes and genders; the overall energy level was good.
Walking up to the museum entrance:
Decent meal at the museum cafe; it was spacious enough that we didn't have to wait for a table. Tram back to the hotel for the all-important nap! Reinhard and Hildegard rolled in a bit after that, as did Greg and Mary.
Afternoon visit to the Patek Phillipe Museum, which was interesting and different. There were three floors, one for actual PP watches from the 19th+20th century, another floor for antique watches (this for me was by far the most interesting), and then a third floor with temp exhibits and library. The antique stuff started in the 16th century, lots stuff from various makers in the 16th/17th/18th century as well. Most/many of the timepieces were intensely decorated (boatloads of gold, diamonds, etc), can't even imagine how much they would have cost.
Meetup with Bruno from Cyclomundo to collect our bikes at 5pm. For our rental bikes we had a choice between hybrid and gravel; Pete and I went with the gravel, which turned out to be Trek ALR4 machines. My bike had Shimano gears with two chainrings up front, whereas Pete's looked like it had been given a transplant, converted from Shimano to SRAM (one chainring up front). The hybrids were Trek FX2's, serviceable but not exactly racing bikes, just basic rides.
Dinner out at Cippolini restaurant, a nice place back in the old part of town.
Thursday Sep 10
Fabulous first riding day -- it was lovely. For starters the weather was really almost perfect, mid 60's to very low 70's the whole time, clear, slightly windy, just terrific stuff. Wind was out of the north, which we were glad about.
Tour t-shirts! Yes, we figured this was a significant enough occasion that we needed to mark the milestone with shirts:
The first part of the ride was getting us out of Geneva, so a lot of back alleys and small cycle paths and turns every 50 yards or so. It eventually straightened out into slightly larger bike paths, and then was a mix of paths and roads the rest of the way. A representative path/alley:
The Rhone river for most of the way was a very chalky shade of green, definitely looked like the sort of water you see coming right off the glacier, with lots of rock dust mixed in. The bike route definitely did not track the river slavishly, there were lots of segments that went a good ways away, and sometimes a good deal up the side of the valley that it runs through.
We had lunch in a small playground just before the very small town of Vulbens; it was about at the 21 mile mark and we were all ready for a break and bite to eat. Reinhard rode into town and bought us a small pack of beers (hah!), that was nice.
After Vulbens the trail noodled around for a few miles and then we had a medium downhill and then a really cracking uphill ride; all of of were working very hard on that section. When we finished the uphill though we had a fantastic long downhill run into the town where we finished the ride, Seyssel. Very sleepy place, a lot of the stores and restaurants were closed that day for some reason, but the hotel we wound up at was fine. I walked out around 5pm to try to find an open grocery store and an ATM to get some euros -- found a cash machine, but nothing doing on the grocery store, everything in that department was locked up tight.
Dinner at the small hotel we were staying at turned out to be excellent, I am happy to say. Most folks ordered the trout,;I asked for the perch/pike filet. It was all very well prepared and quite tasty (big dessert menu as well). We shared a couple of bottles of the local red wine, which was quite good and not too expensive.
Friday Sep 11
Second riding day was excellent as well. Another perfect weather day, cool in the morning but not freezing, then warming up later on. We biked past Lac du Bourget (around which Amy and I had cycled back in 2024 on a wedding anniversary trip to Aix-les-Bains); at the town of Chanaz we divided our group by gender and the men cruised over to a beach near Conjux where we had a most excellent swim. The ride from the Via Rhona to the lake went along an interesting old canal, that was kind of cool.
After the swim we circled back and met up with the women in Chanaz again; they had been visiting a walnut mill there. Remainder of the ride was mostly flat and tracked the river a bit more closely. Final uphill to get to Champaneux (ugh), thankfully not quite as steep as a couple of the climbs on day 1. Lunch was sandwiches we had bought in Seyssel -- I had a "veggie burger", kind of weird tasting but it filled me up.
Scenery was nice, still fairly agricultural, with wine grapes in the distance (up on the hills) and corn & hay fields lower down. River is huge and fast flowing here, still very chalky blue ; I wondered at the time whether it would be that color all the way to the sea or if at some point the dust would settle out.
The hotel in Champaneux was very much out of the way, but it turned out to be larger and more active than I had expected, and with a small swimming pool that a couple of us tried. It was named "Hotel des Bergeronnettes"; I had to google bergeronnette to find out that it is a bird, the "wagtail".
View from the hill above the hotel, looking down into the river valley:
Dinner was at the hotel; it was tasty but man did it take a long time! We were there from 7:30 to well after 10pm. I had a veal dish, salad, bread, and a tiny cup of asparagus soup (yum). Rosana and Reinhard were more adventurous and order the grenouille (frogs legs) and then the soft cheese with cream for dessert, wow.
Saturday Sep 12
Third riding day was from Champaneux to Villebois -- we split up a little bit on this ride in the later sections.
Lovely view of the valley in the morning. Way in the distance Amy noticed a couple of plumes of steam -- hotel person told us it is a nuclear reactor (I had read that there were a couple of them along our route).
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We rode past a hydro plant along the river -- there are more than dozen big hydro stations on the Rhone, it is very extensively used for that.
In the town of Morestel, where we found a place to sell us some lunchstuff, then found a park to have our meal. Amy bought me a smoked salmon sandwich, that was nice (a good change from the more generic jambon + fromage). Lots of fishermen at the park! I was impressed by the number of anglers. Also a few other cycling tour people there.
At that point we split up; Reinhard wanted to swim, a bunch of the others wanted to continue on, and Amy and I took a side detour to visit the grocery store. We had been told by Bruno that the dinner options in Villebois (where we were supposed to stay the night) were basically zero, and that he had arranged for the host of the BNB to bring us dinner "on a tray". We were not quite sure what that meant (I had mental images of TV dinners, but more on that later). Amy figured out that the BNB had a shared kitchen, so we decided to buy some green veggies and supplement whatever turned up on the "tray".
Just short of Villebois was another big dam that actually had a cool water park as part of it -- Reinhard rented a "hydro sled" and had some fun with that, it looked like a hoot.
When we arrived at the BnB it was maybe 2:30 or so? Something like that. Unfortunately there was a sign posted on the door saying that we would not be able to check in until 5pm, ugh. That was kind of a bummer since there weren't really any cafes or bars open in Villebois. We messaged Bruno, but it seemed that we were out of luck, just had to cool our heels in the town square.
When we did finally get into the BnB it was nice -- smallish outdoor pool, very refreshing, and a nice green back yard with a collection of chickens.
Dinner turned out to be fine, I think that the "dinner on a tray" was a mistranslation of "catered dinner", so we had a pan of rice, one of chicken (quite tasty) and small salads made from grated carrots. Our veggie dish (sauteed spinach with garlic) was a good addition.
Thierry (the owner) was very voluble and chatty (albeit entirely in French), and spent quite some time bending Amy's ear. I picked up some of what he said; sounds like this summer has been terrible for the BnB businesses catering to bike touring, a lot of folks have stayed away because of the heat.
We also shared the BnB with an older English couple, they seemed nice enough (we saw them again a couple of times in the next few days).
Sunday Sep 13
Fourth riding day from Villebois to Perouges. Short day mileage wise, so we were able to get a leisurely start and not worry about covering lots of ground.
We stopped to look at a castle in Chazay; it was locked up since it was Sunday, but it was interesting to prowl around the grounds.
The final ride up to Perouges was very steep, we really had to work for that. Perouges was (as advertised) a very well-preserved Medieval hill town, with cobblestone streets and truly ancient buildings. Our hotel was the "Hostellaire", which featured what amounted to period pieces in terms of furniture and decoration, so it felt as though we were staying overnight in a super-antique spot. A bit buggy unfortunately; it was hard to stay outside in the garden without getting visited by the mosquitoes. Very glad that the weather was mild, since if it had been hot we could have been in big trouble (no AC). Legions of tourists wandering around the streets in the afternoon, I was impressed by the numbers (including quite a few people who had brought their dogs, interestingly).
Shot of the castle in Chazay on the way:
Bonjour, Monsieur Chat !
Dinner at a local restaurant; I had chicken fricassée with morels (yum), very tasty indeed:
We had a short walk around the town after dinner, which was great -- all of the tourists had evaporated and the town was almost entirely silent, without any streetlights or other modern accoutrement, so you could imagine what it might have been like a hundred or two hundred years ago. Not too much light pollution either, so you could see the stars pretty well looking up from the town square.
Monday Sep 14
Fifth riding day, Perouges to Lyon.
Today we had both a "long" and a "short" option, long 40 miles and short 30 miles, so we split in half for the ride. Pete, Reinhard and I did the long route, which involved a loop up into the countryside past the town of Pizay, which was really very nice riding. We put on a bit of speed and zoomed along, with the hope that we could catch up with the other riders before too long.
In Beligneux we passed an older guy riding a slightly antique bike; he sped up and drafted with us for a kilometer or two before passing us again (just to show he could do it!) before he turned off. We rode past another big hydro dam in Jonage, we eventually hit the Grand Parc Mirabel Jonage, where we had a swim (shared with ducks in a pond, but still refreshing). We then caught up with the other members of our gang just a bit after that. Lunch at a restaurant in the parc ("Les Saveurs de Grand Parc"), tasty and not too expensive.
The ride in from there to the main part of Lyon was fine, hardly felt like city riding due to the nice bike paths. Finally at the center of Lyon we turned to the west and crossed first the Rhone and then the Saône river, and then at Gare St Paul we turned south and up the hill -- very steep climb to the hotel.
Hotel ("Villa Florentine") was super nice, very "5-star" ish with elaborate rooms and decor, not something I ever would have booked myself. They did indeed take their time getting our rooms ready, but on the plus side we had access to the pool for the afternoon. Amy and I grabbed a bunch of our dirty clothes and zoomed down to a local laundromat to kick off a load, as well.
We split up for dinner; Amy and I walked into town to eat at Bloom Sushi, a vegan restaurant. The vegan sushi was quite tasty, I would definitely go back there again.
Lunch at Les Saveurs de Grand Parc while midway to Lyon -- salmon and couscous:
Tuesday Sep 15
Rest day in Lyon today.
In the morning Amy had arranged for a walking tour; it was a small group (just our seven) and our guide was Yannick, a very gregarious/garrulous fellow, highly animated and replete with jokes and gestures (I think I would have preferred someone a bit more dry, but everyone else seemed to enjoy his performance). The tour didn't involve any real walking to speak of, it was just meandering around the old town, exploring the traboules and the various older buildings there.
We learned about the Calvinist iconoclast attacks in Lyon of 1562 (the scars of which were still very much evident on the local churches and streets), as well as a tiny bit of history of the Roman city of Lugdunum that would eventually become Lyon.
The traboules and the interiors of the old buildings used by the silk weavers ("canuts") were interesting to look at; lots of Italian and Venetian influence, way more than I would have expected.
Photo -- getting ready to follow our tour guide into a traboule:
Lunch at Agastache, a Michelin Bib Gourmand place that I had reserved ahead of time (right at the 1-month window allowable). I was a little puzzled when we approached it on the street, since it didn't really look like anything at all on the outside, but once we got inside it was a real restaurant (with every table taken I might add). Small place, maybe 20-30 people seated? Not large at all.
Food was truly excellent, especially the first course (a composed salad with broccoli, pickled grapes, and artichoke), and the dessert (chocolate base, some sort of thin pastry, dueling sauces and then a dollop of bright green ice cream made with dill and mint. A delightful meal all around. The interior of the restaurant was rather warm, weirdly (I think if I had been working there I would have wanted to turn down the temp a bit). Photos -- first the salad, then the fish, and finally the dessert:
We made some attempts at shopping for sunblock on the way home, didn't really find exactly what I wanted. Nice nap in the afternoon. We had thought about making a run over the Lumiere museum in the afternoon, but it was quite warm out and we just didn't have the energy.
In the evening the hotel was throwing a party for itself interestingly enough, and the staff invited us to turn up, so we did. The initial stages of the party were entertaining enough -- champagne on the veranda next to the pool... then things eventually morphed into a more general reception with a great deal of lengthy "blah-blah": speeches by the the hotel owner and a couple of local politicians, then some music and dance performances.
Around nine Amy + I were fairly tired, so we headed back to the room... at which point Reinhard messaged that they had finally brought out some food. I went back to graze (Amy was done for the night); they actually had some fairly tasty dishes to sample.
Knock-down drag-out pool game a bit later with Reinhard, Pete, Greg, Mary, and myself. Pete tried to bend the rules a bit with his weird "Texas variation" rule (won't bother to explain, too bizarre) but we all had a good time nonetheless.
Wednesday Sep 16
Sixth riding day, Lyon to Condrieu.
The section coming out of Lyon was not too bad, urban riding certainly but plenty of bike paths, etc. The Musee de Confluence looked pretty cool (too bad we didn't get a crack at that) as well as a bunch of other interesting looking buildings. Large mural on the side of a building depicting "water jousting", which is apparently a thing around these parts.
Mural:
Eventually the route started to get crappier and less well maintained however, and in the middle section of the ride we had long stretches of gravel (some of it nasty gravel) and a couple of mile-ish sections on roads that had fairly heavy and fast traffic, ugh. This was probably the least pleasant section of the whole Via Rhona / EuroVelo 17.
We did finally stop in Irigny for a cup of coffee and/or pastry, that was nice. Big chunks along the east side of the river looked like chemical plants, and on the west side (where we spent the most time) there were some very large metal recycling operations (including one that looked like it took railway cars or something like that).
Huge Gallo-Roman museum in the town of Vienne, which is about 19 miles south of the main part of the city -- kind of sorry that we could not stop there. Also in that area we saw two enormous Viking-style cruise boats maneuvering around; they looked a lot larger than I had expected.
In the approach to Condrieu we went through a cool agricultural area where we saw field after field (small ones) of vegetables of all kinds, herbs, onions, tomatoes, artichokes, cabbages, cauliflowers, fruit trees, fennel, just a huge variety. Then right in the center of town for Condrieu there were a lot of folks out on the river rowing (single, double, quad skulls). The have a rowing club apparently.
Wine tasting at the Domaine Niero cave, which was tasty. Vigonier, Marsanne, and Syrah. Dinner was a few slices of pizza from the local joint --it was actually good to skip the lengthy sit-down thing for a change.
Thursday Sep 17
Longer than usual ride yesterday for me, 80k or 50 miles, from Condrieu to Lamastre (up in the hills) and then a train ride down to Tournon-sur-Rhône. The train was something that I had picked out ahead of time and for which I had already bought tickets.
The first part of the ride was superb, separated bike paths carving through the river valley lowlands, glimpses of the river with lots of greenery. We biked together until Sablons, where there was a bakery stop -- an especially good one, it had all sorts of cool stuff, including little gâteau ardéchois (Reinhard ordered one, it looked awesome). I picked up a small quiche for lunch later on.
Amy + Rosana + Greg + Mary meanwhile were off visiting the Valhrona chocolate factory ("Cite de la Chocolat") just north of Tournon-sur-Rhône, they picked up all sorts of tasty stuff there.
Reinhard and Pete and I made a lunch stop at a small town park in Saint-Jean-de-Muzols, just a few kilometers short of Tournon-sur-Rhône, then turned up into the hills on a road following the Le Doux river, then started our climb towards Lamastre. That was a really nice ride, gradual but very lengthy ascent but leading to lovely mountain road with great views into the valley. We could also see the rail line down below, and eventually at a higher point we could make out the exit of the tunnel the train went through, next to an old hydro power plant.
The hydro plant was fed (on the other side of the tunnel) by an big stone aqueduct, very odd to see that there, since it was clearly built to look like an old-style pseudo-Roman thing. Turns out that it was built by convict labor (?) back in the 1910's and 1920's to bring water to the hydro plant, super strange.
Anyhow, the Gorge du Doux is lovely, lots of nice scenes to take in both on the way up and the way down. At the top of the ride we made it to the tiny town of Saint-Barthelemy-le-Plain, then had a mostly level ride for the last ten miles with a nice downhill at the end into Lamastre. I had a slightly scary encounter with a taxi at one Y-shaped intersection, I hadn't seen his turn signal (or maybe he didn't use one) so I wound up zooming past him on the wrong side of the road, ouch (he honked at me of course).
The scene at the train station in Lamastre was very lively, big group of people crowding around the train cars and the steam engine, which was taking on water (enormous quantities) when we arrived. We got our bikes loaded onto the train; I had worried that there would not be space for them (as is the case for many train rides) but in fact they had an entire car devoted to bike storage, it could have accommodated another 30 or 40 from what I could see. Pete staked out some seats for us while Reinhard and I made a mad dash into town to pick up something to drink (Reinhard of course unerringly located a place to pick up a six-pack of fairly decent beer).
The interior of the train car was very basic, wooden benches and a set of cast-iron rack-like things above where you could hang your coat or put your smaller bags. The other riders for I think were all French, we did not hear any other English, and the demographic was a bit older (hard to believe, but I think we were the youngest people in our car). Couple of dogs as well :-).
The ride was quite leisurely, these older trains don't go very fast, but we got some nice views of the scenery and the gorge. There was an intermediate stop in Boucle-le-Roi, and then we finally rolled into the end of the line a bit past five, so we didn't make it to the hotel until a bit after 5:30 (long day).
Lunch!
The first part of the ride, before Reinhard and Pete and I peeled off:
The restaurant Amy picked out for dinner was lovely, "Le Tournesol", which turned out to be a sort of French-Thai fusion place; we ordered mostly small plates but a few larger mains added on at the end (I had a green curry with rice and shrimp). Quite tasty.
Friday Sep 18
Super-short ride today from Tournon-sur-Rhône to Valence, maybe 16 miles or so. Very flat, bike paths by the river, with a mild tailwind, so ridiculously easy.
Reinhard discovered that the reason the regular Train-de-Ardeche wasn't running that day was that they have a velo-train feature, little pedal driven cars that you can ride on the track from Bocieu-le-roi to the Tournon station (then you get to ride the steam train back), so the rest of the gang opted for that. Amy wasn't in the mood, and I had already done the train thing, so we proceeded independently on to the next town.
The river along this part seems incredibly regulated/controlled, they have big banks and dykes that look like they are all man-made, and there is a big hydro-station-cum-lock thing just a few kilometers north of Valence.
The riverbank. Here the cycling trail is running along a huge man-made barrier or dike:
Once in the city we decided to first visit the museum and have lunch before heading to the hotel, and that worked out just fine.
The museum was actually pretty decent, although it was truly a weird melange of items. Half fine art and half archeological, the art was a tiny bit of old stuff and then mostly 19th century and modern. A good chunk was Hubert Robert, a 19th century guy from this area who was a big hit back in the day, he did a lot of paintings in the neo-classical style (seems like a large proportion of the works I see from that time were in that vein). The archeology was a mix of prehistoric/neolithic and Roman pieces, including from really amazing Roman mosaics from the period where Valence was a real Roman city -- it was found during the 60's at the site of an old villa outside the main city. One of the mosaics showed the twelve labors of Hercules (very easily recognizable, with a big beefy guy in each panel wrangling away against some sort of creature).
The building had been renovated back in 2014, and it was actually a really nice space, kind of a mix of very old-looking stone-work and new modern construction. Five floors, with the fifth floor a sort of lookout or crows-nest where you could see lovely views of the river to the west and the city roofs to the east.
Museum courtyard:
Lunch at an Asian place with the odd name of "My Little Warung" (?), but the food was good, we got vegan tofu rice bowls, which suited us just fine after many previous bread/cheese/ham meals.
Easy bike ride to the Best Western hotel, and as luck would have it our room was ready for us. We did our best to use the hotel laundry machine, but there was a bit too much competition for it, and I finally decided to walk down the street and use the auto-laverie there. I started the load, then when I went back to get it I was accosted by an older guy (about my demographic) who asked me in French how to use the machine payment system (eek); I hope I gave him the right mumbled/mangled response.
Dinner at "L'Arte Terre" picked out by Mary. We rode the bus due south from our hotel, got off at an anonymous stop, but the place was definitely popular, lots of locals. I had fish (John Dory), salad, and courgettes, then a kind of interesting dessert, "Tiramisu ardechois" made with a chestnut cream thing. Tasty.
Reinhard asked for Café gourmand for his dessert -- it looked like he really hit the jackpot:
Saturday Sep 19
Valence to Montelimar; another 40 miler today, with excellent weather, can't complain.
Amy and I got up a little early and went to visit the Saturday marché down in the town center, that was fun. Lots of nice produce, fruit, and especially meat and cheese, those guys were really turning out. Amy bought an interesting potato turnover thing, I bought plums, I got some veggie spring rolls, and we enjoyed looking things over. Amy bought some truly amazing raspberries (super delicious); we devoured those with the group when we stopped for lunch in Baix later in the day.
At the market:
The bike paths for this ride were fairly good, not quite as perfect as day before yesterday but quite nice. More traffic (saturday). We stopped around 11:30 at a boulangerie in the small town of Blod-- we had to kind of wrangle with the traffic to get there, but they had all sorts of stuff (a good line at the entrance too). Selection of pizzas with very unusual toppings (tuna? smoked salmon? dumplings with bacon? who ever heard of that), Amy and I both bought a slice and then a pastry. I got a canelé pastry, which I had never had.
We had a weird long detour to avoid a busy bridge near Beauchastel -- Pete took the busy bridge and we all did the detour. Several additional bridge crossings; the Via Rhona seems to like to do that a lot in this area. Couple more hydro stations with big locks.
Some cool graffiti on one of the bridges we cycled past:
Stopped for lunch in Baix at a cafe that I think had previously been the local school (you could still see "Ecole" at the top carved into the stonework), Amy ordered "citronnade" for the two of us and we were given bottles of this stuff:
Clearly the work of a marketing genius... it was hard to restrain myself ("What is this Pschitt we're drinking" and "Hey, this is pretty good Pschitt" etc).
Reinhard and I were desperate for another good swim since it was warm towards the last third of the ride, we spent a lot of time scanning the banks of the river for good spots without much success (too many "Bagnant Interdit" signs), but then near the small town of Cruas we found a little pond that looked good, so we took a detour and had a nice swim. Pond water was nice, quite cool.
Cruas also has a really giant nuclear reactor complex with four absolutely enormous cooling towers, real monsters -- the bike path went right by them, I think that's the closest I have ever been to an active nuke plant.
Just a few clicks to the south we turned off the via rhona and headed east into Montelimar, kind of busy road but we made it eventually. The hotel ("originals") is pretty basic (no fridge, not very large) but it was good to shower and get cool in the AC. Amy had the energy to go visit the Montelimar castle, while I was a potted plant and napped for a half hour.
Dinner at Le Troquet, a Portugese/French place. Simple food but tasty. Dessert was also pretty awesome, a chocolate mousse/cake thingy (yum).
Sunday Sep 20
Montelimar to Saint Paul Trois Chateaux was our route today. Nice zippy ride, thirty miler, not too much work. Weird detour on the GPS route into nowhere (approximately at l'Ourse), that was very strange.
Pleasant stop in Bour-Saint-Andeol for a drink, there was an outdoor cafe there right by the river with other cyclists and various locals.
Riding with Rosana (not sure why we decided to show off our bike gloves, but we did):
Second stop at Plage du Lac de la Pignedoré, a man-made lake; Reinhard and Pete swam, while Amy and I had some lunch at the cafe there (Amy's dish was lovely, a Moroccan chicken tagine thing).
Saint-Paul-troix-Chateaux was a kind of interesting town, it had a bit of a sleepy feeling to it, and it was well off of the main Via Rhona bike route, so I suspect they don't get a lot of cyclists. The hotel was a bit more posh than the night before, rooms a bit larger and with a nice swimming pool.
We wandered around the town before dinner expecting to find everything closed up tight (a Sunday) but in fact the church was open (they were giving demonstrations of the organ) and the Truffle Museum was also open, that was fun. I think the extra hours were due to the Journées européennes du patrimoine weekend (??). I learned a lot more about truffles than I had known before...
Big pasta dinner at a local Italian place, I was glad that Amy had scoped it out and made a reservation, since people were lining up for tables the whole time we were there.
Monday Sep 21
Saint Paul Trois Chateaux to Orange (Mon)
Crazy windy today! A steady 20ish with gusts up to 30 mph blowing from north to south (thankfully not the other way around), so we were alternately whisked along (for the sections heading south) or blown to the side (for the detours) the whole way.
Rode past another big nuclear plant, the Tricastin, which apparently produces 6% of all power generated in France. Oddly there were fewer of the enormous cooling towers as the previous one we saw, even though it is a more modern reactor and generates at least as much power.
For the ride we looked carefully for bakeries and for places to swim, with limited success in both departments. We did a side trip to the small town of Mondragon where Google had told us there was an open bakery, but it was locked up tight (we had coffee at a hotel cafe instead). There were ponds later in the ride that looked swimmable but there were fences with big "no swimming, danger of drowning" signs.
Tricastin nuclear plant:
We rolled into Orange around 12:30, dumped out bikes, and got changed out of our biking clothes, then spent a while exploring. Definitely a bigger city with more history than the day before, and in addition the town boasts an enormous Roman theater built around 100 AD by Augustus, still mostly going strong. We visited there in the afternoon, it was definitely worth a look. The proportions of the theater were staggering, it was incredibly huge.
At the equally impressive Roman arch coming into the city:
Dinner at the Hotel Glacier restaurant last night. Started late (7:30) but mercifully the food arrived quickly. I had the chicken brochettes, which proved to be a good choice, mainly since the skewers appeared on top of a large pile of sauteed eggplant and peppers. Amy order the "gourmand" salad, which was loaded up with so much blue cheese (and bacon) that she had to parcel it out to the rest of the table to finish.
Tuesday Sep 22
Ride from Orange to Avignon was nice, wind slightly less ferocious than the previous day but still definitely a factor. First part of the ride was mildly urban, then the remainder almost entirely in the woods / fields. We turned off around halfway and made a detour into Chatauneuf-du-pape, which I enjoyed. We visited the Brott Wine Museum (Amy and Reinhard and I) while the others went for an expedition to the ruins of the pope's castle.
The Brott museum was very educational, we all learned a lot about the various grapes (primarily Grenache and Syrah), the region, the soils, the pruning, the staking, the ploughing, the watering, you name it. The Rhone region as it turns out is divided very distinctly into two parts, north and south with Montelimar in the middle (that city has almost no wine stuff happening, strangely). Mostly Syrah in the north, mostly Grenache in the south.
We tasted a wine with 100% clairette (first time I had tried that), then a 100% syrah then a 100% grenache, and as a treat an extra CNDP that was 13 years old (yowza), it was super tasty and with a price tag to match (~ 200 euros).
Early lunch thing in the center of CNFDP at a cafe, sort of tapas like. Then a warm ride through to Avignon. The approach to Avignon is fun, lots and lots of chateaux in the distance and then a big bridge over the river to the main city itself. The bike path then goes for another chunk following the old city walls, which was terrific.
On the way to Chaueau-neuf-du-Pape:
Hotel Le Cloître Saint-Louis which was a rather odd duck of a place -- most of it is an incredibly old stone building with very generous (huge) proportions and ancient stone, however our rooms were in a more modern annex stuck off to the side. The room was very bizarre, divided up in to a main bedroom (long and linear) and an anteroom, with a wooden door separating the two. The separating door had a very strong spring, and if you weren't extremely careful it would make a huge whamming noise when it closed. Toilet off the antechamber, so to get from the shower to the toilet you had to go through three doors (?). Regardless, it was nice to have a little more living area than the place in Orange, which was only slightly larger than the bed.
Dinner at Bibendum, a bib gourmand place picked out by Rosana. That was fun, the food was good and the atmosphere was stunning -- tables arranged in a big rectangular courtyard surrounded by ancient wall, lit very carefully. I ordered andouillette, which was tasty (although I am actually kind of glad that I couldn't see exactly what I was eating), a leek starter, and a spelt risotto.
Wednesday Sep 23
Off day in Avignon. Or at least "off" for some of us-- Reinhard and Pete and I somehow got it into our heads that that we would bike over to see the famous Pont Du Gard, which was about 20ish miles each way, so we had another strong dose of cycling. The ride there was fine, not too windy, cool in the morning, fairly little in the way of traffic (cars or bikes).
It took an hour and half or so, and when we arrived we had a nice bowl of ice cream, then a swim (water was delightful, quite cool / bordering on cold). The river is a little reedy and not especially deep, but it was still good swimming.
We got our clothes back on and then walked over the bridge and down to the museum -- I think Reinhard wanted to do the whole museum experience but Pete and I got cold feet (at least on my part I was kind of looking forward to getting back a little earlier in the day to allow for naps and such). We wandered around a bit more, then back to our bikes, and finally off for the ride back to Avignon.
On the way back we tried to retrace our steps and in the process of trying to locate the small bike path, we wound up biking over a field with some grass -- seemed pretty innocent at the time but about 10 minutes late I realized that my front tire was flat, so I pulled over and took a look at it -- I could see a goats head thorn sticking out of the side, ugh. A photo of the offender (these things are lethal):
We were all hoping to get back soon (myself included) so I kind of rushed the flat fixing, Pete gave me his spare tube, I slapped it in, and we took off again. Only about five minutes later I realized that my tire was flat again, ugh. We pulled off again (this time under the shelter of an overpass) and I took the wheel off to take another look. Sure enough, the front tire was covered with little thorn punctures, most of them had not penetrated but a bunch had made it through. It took a good ten minutes to go over the tire by hand with excruciating detail to locate all the punctures and take out the thorns. I patched Pete's tube and put it back in, and it seemed to be holding air. With trepidation we continued...
... only to pull up again a few minutes later, this time my rear tire was flat. Repeated the whole process all over again with the rear tire, finding another half dozen of the nasty little buggers sticking into the tire. When the tire finally looked good I used a patch to seal the one hole in the tube that I could see, got the patched tire on, inflated it, and sure enough it would not hold air (obviously there were other holes). At that point I used my spare tube, got it in place and pumped up. Meanwhile one of the tires on Pete's bike had gone, so he and Reinhard got that fixed up with Reinhard's spare tube. Whew! It was a veritable frenzy of flat-fixing. Reinhard somehow had come through without any issues, which is pretty puzzling given that he rode more or less along the same paths that we did.
We limped our way back to Avignon at that point, I was riding very slowly and conservatively since I was worried that there might be still thorns making their way back into my tires, and since our hand pumps weren't all that great for inflating all the way.
We did finally make it back a bit before 4, whew... there was some celebratory beer drinking at that point.
Amy and Rosana visited the Les Halles market in Avignon for lunch; from her description they had lots of good stuff to eat and it was a bit more lively than the one we'd visited in Lyon (more locals actually doing shopping for their produce and meat).
Dinner at L'Agape, another bib gourmand. Food was good but a little inconsistent, not quite as awesome as the meal at Agastache in Lyon. We both ordered the sea bass, and Amy had a bowl of cold soup billed as "vegetarian gazpacho". The fish was a lot more interesting than the soup, from my perspective.
Thursday Sep 24
Avignon to Arle today -- another nice weather day once again in southern France, perfect for riding.
We did have another hurdle to overcome in the morning when we opened up the bike room, Pete's rear tire was completely flat, the valve on Greg's rear tire was broken, and my rear tire was a bit soft, so we had another extended session of flat fixing and pumping. I was glad that I went to the bike store the previous afternoon to buy tubes. Photo:
The ride was fine, the first 9 miles or so retraced the route we had taken to get to Pont Du Gard. Lots of gravel, but good gravel. We eventually stopped for a drink in Beaucaire, at which point Pete had yet another flat (gah). I was able to patch his tube this time though, so in theory we have an out for that.
Last ten miles of the ride were interesting, we were up on a big berm or embankment with a paved path on top. I am assuming it was sort sort of flood control provision, since it was more or less paralleling the river, with more houses and civilization on the right and less on the left. Warm ride for the last hour.
We eventually rolled into Arles; lots of folks everywhere, especially around the area of our hotel, since it is right in the thick of the old part of the city. The checkin process left a good deal to be desired; Amy got stuck in a line of customers that included a pair of people who seemed to have questions on just about everything... it was probably 15 minutes before they even said a word to Amy, which left her a bit steamed. Even more waiting after that while they got things sorted out, but we eventually did make it to our room.
The hotel rooms we've been getting on this trip have been on the weird side, and this one was no exception. Steep flight of stairs up to the 3rd floor, and then within the room there was another flight of stairs up to the bathroom (?). The room was nice and cool but the bathroom was quite warm (no AC up there).
We showered and came back down; both of us were starving, so we sat at the hotel restaurant and had greek salads (not too bad). At that point we decided to just relax until our spa appointment -- jacuzzi and steam room on a lower level of the hotel, booked ahead by Amy, that was great (we spent almost the whole hour there). Jacuzzi was a little tepid but the steam room was hot enough for a good sweat.
At 5:30 we migrated over to the Luma Arles tower which was fun to poke around. This tower was designed by Frank Gehry, and I think it is one of his better works. Great views from the 9th floor; there were other exhibitions and such but most were in the process of shutting down, so we mainly just took in a couple of videos and saw the sights. There was also a tube/chute thing that you could take down from the 2nd floor to the ground floor, we definitely had some fun with that.
Dinner at a Thai place, O Pad Thai a bit to the north of the hotel. That was great, I was very happy to have something with veggies and with a bit of a kick to it hot pepper wise ... rich French food was getting a little old (also the 2.5 hour dinner process).
Photos: a scary sign encountered on the way. In fact "Danger Access Interdit" was a bit overblown, the bike path beyond was just fine.
Walking home from dinner we came around a corner next to the hotel and discovered that there is a window looking into the spa where we'd been splashing around in the afternoon. Weirdly from the inside it looks like a mirror (?!?) but you can definitely see in from the outside.
Friday Sep 25
Second to last riding day, from Arles to Aigues-Mortes. As always the weather was fantastic, albeit a bit on the warm side in the afternoon.
Our route took us away from the bike path this time and onto the back roads, with a few larger roads thrown in. The area south of Arle is known as the camargue, famous for swamps, marshes, white horses, black bulls, and rice. We did indeed see rice growing, that was kind of cool.
Steady wind out of the north (good), although our route was really more westerly than southerly for the most part. We crossed over the Petit Rhone, and also the Canal Du Rhone a Sete, which is more or less what it sounds like (Sete to Rhone connection).
Reinhard and I stopped at the "Centre de découverte du Scamandre" nature preserve for a snack around 11ish or so; Pete and Rosana joined us, while Amy and the others zoomed ahead. Reinhard was determined to find a swimming spot along the way, but this was a tricky thing to arrange, since most of the waterways were either very silty/marshy or not especially appealing looking (e.g. the canal).
Aigues-Mortes seems sleepy on the outskirts, then a bit touristy when you get to the old inner walled city part.
Photos: rice field along the way--
The dinner place that Amy picked out was great, it had a large menu and excellent food. A couple of us tried the "maxi" profiterole, which did not disappoint, it was huge and very tasty.
Strangely (in spite of the excellent food) I am kind of looking forward to returning to our more pedestrian daily dinner experience, which typically starts at 5:30 (no later than six) and lasts 15 or 20 minutes as opposed to multiple hours.
Saturday Sep 26th
Final riding day from Aigues-Mortes to Sete!
I had expected this to be a routine, "phone it in" type ride for the final segment, but there were all sorts of surprising and interesting things to see on this part of the tour.
Another "slightly warmer than before" day; we tried to get a slightly earlier start with limited success. There was a very nervous moment when Pete discovered that he had left his man-bag/purse at the restaurant the night before, but to our surprise they picked up the phone when Amy called them, and he was able to ride over and collect it without having to wait. Whew!
Super flat riding out among the marshes and waterlands -- we had a nice surprise early on in the ride where we went past a large collection of flamingos, that was neat. They are a lot of fun to observe, such interesting birds (and they don't seem to be especially scared of humans, as long as they are in the water and we're on dry land). Super long necks, it is entertaining just to watch them feeding and poking around with their beaks. Flying is even more astonishing -- the takeoff involves whacking away at the water with their feet for an extended interval, and then once they are airborne their very long necks and legs look especially bizarre extended out from their wings.
A bit later in the ride we also had another treat in the town of Le Grau-du-Roi, where we happened upon an actual live water jousting contest -- two boats (one red and one blue) lined up against each other, with a big crowd watching, a live band, and an announcer. Very entertaining! All of the murals we had seen previously now started to make sense.
Here is the boat with the "blue" team, loitering around getting ready for the first round. The guy standing up on the far left with the lance and the shield is the one who will actually be participating this round, all of the other random people on the boat seem to be there either to wait their turn or for moral support:
The ride then took us through the slightly-overbuilt beachside towns of Le Grande-Motte and Solignac -- that part of the ride was less fun since we had to deal with weird sidewalks and dodging pedestrians (not all of whom seemed happy about sharing their space with cyclists).
After that the riding was more fun, mostly along a big barrier-island thing. More encounters with the strange "Rhone a Sete" canal, which in this area more or less parallels the shore (more head scratching on my part -- why build a canal that runs a few hundred meters inland from the shoreline?).
The riding was a warm and sweaty experience. I hung back for the most part this time around and accompanied Amy, who was in turn riding with Rosana.
Riding up and over a bridge:
At one point a bit before Frontignan we came around a turn and saw a couple of young guys at the side of the rode poking at their bike tires -- we stopped and chatted with them, turned out they were on a ride to explore the Via Rhona for the first time and had come from Beziers. One of their bikes had a flat front tire, and but they had no repair equipment (just a pump); they were just sort of staring at it and wondering what to do.
We decided to take pity on them; I hopped off my bike and got out the patch kit and before long I had their tire off and had patched up the tube. They were very appreciative, and it was clear that they had never seen anyone fix a flat bike tire before :-).
We had some nice time on the beach before dinner as well, it is a nice coastline with plenty of lovely places to swim.
Final group dinner at Quai 17, a hotel restaurant towards the center of town in a nice old building (high ceilings, lots of space). Food was fairly good although not in the same league as the good places we tried in Lyon. My starter was pretty unique: octopus carpaccio (a first for me).
Sunday Sep 27th
A travel day for the group: with the exception of Pete and Rosana, we were all up super early in order to get to the train station or the airport. Amy and I shared a shuttle ride with Mary and Greg to the Montpelier airport, which went smoothly and without any surprises.
The flight back was uneventful; we had a long enough layover in Charles de Gaulle that we did not have to worry about delays at all, so that was a relief.
Super awesome bike tour! Really one of the nicest I can recall being on, it was a great experience in all the important dimensions. I am glad that everything worked out so well...
