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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3688 |
23rd September 2014 Mt. Biking: Mt. Ventoux descent and circular route from Sault Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: sunny Max Speed: 36.50 (knots - unless stated otherwise) Distance Covered: Tuesday 23rd September – bike *****Mt. Ventoux descent and circular route from Sault to St. Cristol – sunny Another eventful night! Started when a huge camper arrived just as we were going to bed – how he got up there and negotiated the horrendously rocky entry to the car park in the dark at 11.30 we don’t know! Then the wind got up and blew a gale for several hours from 3 a.m. Luckily we were both awake so decided to make a cuppa and even had a Montilimar nougat! Read our books for a while and went back to sleep from 5.30 until nearly 9. The wind had dropped completely by the time we got up so we did our exercises outside and what a beautiful morning to do yoga on a mountain top:) There were lots of cyclists going up and down again and there were also several professional photographers taking photos of them and putting their card into the pockets at the back of their lycra suits to enable them to access the photos and buy them if they wanted. I heard one guy say that he had done it 4 times and didn’t need any photo to remind him!! I decided to have a go and cycle the 26km descent to Sault and after driving the van out of the terrible car park entrance for Mag – key support driver! – I set off. I biked the last steep few hundred metres up to the summit (with the photographer at the entrance to our car park dashing out to take my photo!) and then raced down the other side! Mag parked at the top (amazingly! As it was packed with American cyclists and their entourages and every other nationality too!) then followed me down to the Chateau Reynard where the route forks off so you can go down via Bedoin or on to Sault. Mag parked and took a photo here and then followed me closely down to Sault – this was my favourite part – apparently I was going faster than Mag would want to go on such bendy roads anyway and she didn’t want to overtake (in case I went in a ditch!) so it worked out really well and was good fun:) To get up to Sault was a big incline so Mag had to overtake as there were cars behind us. She was chuffed to parallel park in a fairly tight space at the top which with the bike rack on she felt was quite an achievement! She took my photo coming towards the van trying to raise my arms in the air – hilarious:) She texted both the boys saying ‘this will make you laugh, dad has just biked down the mountain getting respect from those going up thinking he has already done it!’ I felt a bit of a fraud but loved it and am loving my new bike – 26km in under an hour including photo stops! We will have to come back another time and try the ascent so I can legitimately buy the t-shirt! We had our lunch sitting on the promenade at the front of the village with very loud Americans loading their bikes up onto a mini bus behind us. Then we took Mag’s bike off the van and set out on a circular route along a plateau we had read about from Sault to St. Cristol D’Albion and back. Plateau somehow made us think flat but no it was a solid incline along a normal road nearly all the way to St. Cristol and not very pleasant scenery, even took you past a military base! Where were the lavender fields we were promised!??! We took a detour into the village and sat on the seat outside the church eating warm peaches which had fallen from a tree in the square:) We pinched a pear from a tree leaving the village and started an even steeper slope lasting 3.5km out of the village! Apart from some arses racing their sports cars we hardly saw any other traffic on this road:) At the top of the climb there was some lavender still out in the field so Mag pinched some to make the van smell nice:) Things were certainly looking up, not only did we have at least 10km of the 11 left freewheeling at speed – I probably made 40mph – the fastest I have ever been on a bike - but the scenery was excellent, Mt. Ventoux in the distance and lots of lavender fields and forest in between. We even found one field which was nearly all on flower! The last km return to Sault was another big uphill push but the whole bike ride was well worth it – 15 miles and out for 2 ˝ hours including our break:) I have done over 50km today – about 30 miles, 20 downhill and 10 up is my estimate. We packed up, visited the tourist information and filled up our water bottles outside their office then headed up back towards Mt. Ventoux to a picnic area we had seen in the woods to park up for the night. Hoping for more sleep as it is pretty sheltered and there is no sign of the wind yet! Top Day!! Wednesday 24 September Well, what a shame, after such a gorgeous day yesterday, it rained all night and pretty much carried on all day:( There was a brief break while we drove into Sault but by the time we had parked it was raining again. We mooched around the market and had a look in a few shops. Bought a hand painted mug with a single lavender flower painted on each side for 6 euros to replace the mug that got broken the other day. Visited the intermache for a few bits then headed for Monieux as our original plan had been to walk in the Gorges de Nesque which start here. Because of the rain we had a ride through the village and out to look at the view point for the gorges. We parked up at the Plan d’Eau (pond) just outside Monieux and had lunch, read, slept, drank coffee, ate cake, played cards, ate tea, read, played cards blah blah, until it was time for bed! Its still raining:( We have asked Rob for a forecast as don’t want to hang around here if it is going to last for days! Still we were lucky to have such a perfect day for what we did yesterday. |
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