September 1, 2023
Onwards and Upwards: Annecy to Les Saisies
One day I'll learn the lesson that routes which look fairly harmless on paper rarely turn out that way in practice. Not today, though...
To be fair, the first 30 km or so were as gentle a holiday warmup as anyone could ask for: lovely flat, traffic-free riding along the lakeside, with only blue skies and beautiful views to cause distractions.
Obviously this was too good to last. First, the route swung east, away from the lake and through rather more suburban scenery; then, after Ugine (where I stopped to raid a friendly boulangerie), it started to head up through the forest. This wasn't a high climb, so I'd rather underplayed its seriousness -- forgetting to pay attention to the gradient, which quite often pitched up above 10%, and even more. About half-way up, a chap pruning some trees by the roadside suggested that it might have been a mistake to tackle this without an e-bike, and it was honestly hard to disagree...
Still: it was too late to go back to an Annecy bike shop now, so I pushed on, eventually emerging from the trees just above Cohennoz -- where I could at least look back and see how far (up) I'd come.
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Of course, the road then had to balance out this moment of happiness by losing a 100m or so of height, and then climbing cruelly straight back up again. But eventually I got to top of a(nother!) hill, and -- even better -- found it occupied by a small cafe. The lady in charge suggested that I should just have the menu of the day, and since that saved me the trouble of making any decisions I went for it -- though in hindsight, a plate of cheese and ham, followed by a lamb kebab, followed by chocolate pudding probably isn't what cycling nutritionists would recommend for a mid-ride snack. (It was all very tasty, though.)
Thankfully, there was a moderate descent after lunch, which took me down to the main road at Notre-Dame de Bellecombe. I arrived just as they were packing away the barriers from the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes, which had passed though in the morning, and got going on the day's 'proper' climb: up to the Col des Saisies.
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There was more traffic now, but the advantage of being on a bigger road was that the gradients were a bit more regular. Even so, it was quite hot and slow going, so when I got to the top I detoured straight into the first open cafe for a restorative ice-cream, then trundled slowly on to my hotel. Day one complete! It should get easier from now on, right...?
| Heart | 5 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 88 km (55 miles)
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