May 9, 2022
To Crémieu
Top to bottom, a completely wonderful day. We’ll, not exactly top to bottom - the top could have been improved with a more inspired breakfast (coffee, OJ, croissant, bread, yogurt and apple sauce) presented by a more inspired hostess, who never roused herself from the couch where she was lying watching television the entire time we were downstairs.
But after that, it really was truly wonderful. We left the hotel just after ten, with an easy ride ahead of us and a check-in at five at the other - seven hours to cover 44 generally flat miles and most of them on the Via Rhona, a route that just keeps surprising and impressing us more each time we come to a new section of it. We stopped in a park for our picnic lunch at midday and again earlier in the ride for an extended chat with an elderly Swiss couple on a giant two month tour of their own, but other than that we mostly just rode - slowly, because there was so much to savor.
We don’t make it in to our lodging in Cremieu until quarter to five. We are greeted by an engaging, appealing hostess who is surprised to see two of us - we apparently registered our booking for a single person somehow. No matter - she shows us to a wonderful, spacious room, orients us to the accommodations, and then let’s us know that she’ll call back the one restaurant in town open for the night to update the reservation she made at our request to add a second person to the table.
We settle in, shower, and then step out to look around Cremieu, a town we’d never heard of until we started looking for a reasonable route between Annecy and Lyon. We allowed ourselves an hour to explore the place before our dinner reservation, but it’s not nearly enough because amazing Cremieu is such an unexpectedly wonderful place to wander through.
Over an excellent meal (Caesar salad, salmon, pear and myrtille tatrts) sitting outdoors on a warm, summery evening, we do a bit of research to see if we can cancel or bump the next night’s booking so we can stay here a second night and possibly double up the next two shortish rides; but it’s not an option so we vow to make it back here again someday for a slower visit.
It’s still warm and light out after we finish our meal so we put in another hour walking around town, walking up above it for views down on the town and at the fortifications crowning the opposite ridge, and fall further in love with the exceptional place. We don’t make it back to our room until just past sundown (right about nine now), and before much longer the lights go out on one of the best days of the tour.
It starts out spectacularly with about a mile and a half on the highway, the road and river channeling through a narrow throat with cliffs soaring up on both sides. Just a bit scary, though the traffic is respectful and gives us plenty of room.
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2 years ago
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The traffic’s not bad, but it’s a relief when we leave it for the Via Rhona. We’re on it for the next 25 miles, until Morestel. They’re wonderful.
Video sound track: Once in a Lifetime, by Jacqui Naylor
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2 years ago
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At Morestel we finally leave the Via Rhona and pick up the new greenway up to Cremieu. Really, I’d never have considered Cremieu if I hadn’t seen this new bike path on the map. We’d probably have stayed in Morestel instead, and had a significantly longer ride to Lyon following another long bend in the river.
It’s an unpaved eleven mile trail, a packed dirt-rock surface that isn’t bad at all. We avoid unpaved surfaces, and so if we were fine with eleven miles of it you know it wasn’t bad at all. Quiet, pastoral, relaxed, and with incredible Cremieu waiting at the other end. Really, if you’re following the Via Rhona south you should come this way too.
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Video sound track: Maria La O, by Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban
Ride stats today: 44 miles, 1,200’; for the tour: 1,616 miles, 81,600’
Today's ride: 44 miles (71 km)
Total: 1,616 miles (2,601 km)
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