At Beaufort sur Duron: Loop ride to Albertville and Ugine

June 19, 2015

Some biking days are better than others. This one ranks pretty low on our list for the tour, perhaps even at the bottom of the heap. We went back and forth with how to spend today, and considered either using it for a hike or a loop ride somewhere. In retrospect we might have been happier with a walk in the woods.

We modeled out a lot of alternative routes for our loop, looking for one that felt like the right length and difficulty for our energy level. We finally settled on the loop mapped below, that drops down the Duron toward Albertville and then makes a horseshoe up one side of the Arly River before heading back upriver to Beaufort again. It's pretty lumpy country, with a lot of ups and downs. Describing it in 1000' elevation units, the ride looked roughly like this: up; down; up; down; up; down,down; up; down, down; up, up. Very little flat in today's ride.

The ride actually had a lot of attractive features, including great views down into and across the valleys. The main problems were road quality (more rough-surfaced and jarring than we've gotten accustomed to) and especially the traffic. 20 miles on it was on the highway to/from Alberville - not too quiet, and mostly unshouldered; and in particular D109, a balcony road above the river from Flons to Ugine, paralleling the main road along the river, D1212. D109 follows a lovely and scenic path and I suspect most of the time would be a great cycling route. At the moment though, this stretch of D1212 is completely closed because it's missing a sizable chunk that was swept into the river by a massive landslide. Until the road can be reopened, all of the substantial traffic is forced onto narrow, windy D109. It made for a pretty uncomfortable and stressful ride.

Also, we were under some time pressure to get back to the hotel for another dinner date with our new friend Szolt, who decided he was overdue for a rest day. It was raining in the morning though, so we didn't start biking until about 1 and had to keep on top of our pace all afternoon.

That's OK - not every day can be one of the best ever, and we've certainly seen more than our share of those on this trip. No complaints.