Today it gets real. Loaded bikes, 67 days of travelling in front of us and our first major decision. Do we head straight into the Team Anderson / Gaudet-full-metal-cover route and take the TDF climb up Semnoz and then down to Col de Leschaux, or do we do the garage band knock off and take the scenic road straight to Col de Leschaux avoiding an additional 650 m of climbing?
Well, we considered the following: this would be our fist day of loaded touring in a looong time, with a grand total of 40 km of training, i.e yesterday; the weather forecast had a limited window of decent conditions before wind and rain was projected to hit in mid afternoon; our WS host said the ‘garage band’ route straight up to Col de Leschaux was much more scenic.
Items 2 and 3 sealed the deal. Semnoz was out and a straight shot to Leschaux was in. Item 1 didn’t figure in our decision 🤥.
Anyway, before we set off on any climb, we spent a good portion of the morning exploring Annecy. As it was a Sunday, and the weather was actually remarkably good, no, make that ‘an ideal spring morning’, we had lots of company.
This is a remarkably beautiful town, as a lot of people have discovered. However, we’re lucky that it is still April and we were out fairly early in the morning. Even with that there were still a lot of people out and about, but most them seemed local. As this wasSunday there was a market taking place in the heart of the old town. The streets where this was happening were choc-a-bloc, however the rest of the old town streets were quite quiet. You’ll see pic’s of the quiet streets later, but none of the market, for which I’ll explain.
We made the rookie mistake of thinking we could wheel our fully loaded bike through the main market streets. Yes, we were ‘those people’. I wasn’t going to compound the issue by stopping and (trying) to take pictures.
With our ‘old town tour’ done we set off on the first real leg of this tour, and did that ever feel good.
The first 5 km’s or so was a rehash of yesterday’s west shore ride in reverse and then we set off for an 11 km uphill to Col de Leschaux the D912 where we then had a more or less 30 km’s of downhill on the D911 to Aix les Bains. Beautiful quiet, winding mountain roads where the bikers outnumbers the cars by at least 20:1.
We were the only ‘loaded’ bikers, but we had lots of encouragement and conversations with the ‘roadies’ as they slowed down to chat.
We rolled into our hotel in Aix les Bains (booked last night as out original plan was to camp here) just as the rain started … right on cue with the weather forecast.
So, a great day to start the actual bike touring part of this adventure. We were both smiling inwardly and outwardly the entire time. It’s great to be back on the road and in many ways we saw today as a ‘wee encapsulation’ of what lies before us; although modest, our first of many Cols, a small gorge leading into Aix, and the very western edge of the Alps. All of these serve as a prelude to the next 67 days, hence the mini-me subtitle for today.
We’re pretty pumped!
And that’s a good set up for SOTD.
Pump it Up by Elvis Costello. Too late in the night for the full explanation, but we are pumped for the rest of the tour!
I still have vivid memories of seeing a grainy VHS video of this in ‘78 and thinking … this is strange, new … and oh so cool! I’m hoping this tour is the same.
Sunday morning in France … when only a few Boulangerie are open and the queue extends out the door. K’s queued up inside getting our lunch sandwiches
Young French man in training . Step 1 - master the casually tied neck scarf (walking without falling over can come later). I’m Canadian, so I’ll apologize now to anyone offended by this caption.
Off to master step 2 - fishing in the nearest river. I actually think this is a touching photo. Two young friends heading off for a day of adventure. However it does grow into what seems like a major national past time for a lot of men …. Standing by the edge of a river with a line in the water …. And not much else happening
Blue sky, chimney pots, faded shutters and the stages of spring. In a few weeks the bare tree will be in full leaf. Wonderful time to be travelling to see it all unfold
The fun begins. We’ll top out 11 km later at ~900 m. We’ll have lots of company with the likes of the two guys ahead of us for the entire journey. This is a very popular ride, and for good reason.
Our first Col …. And it doesn’t even rate its own sign. This is the summit of Col de Leschaux, but the big dogs keep climbing to Senmnoz, as this sign indicates. However, we’re happy with Leschaux it might be small but … from tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow … and we’ve got a lot more cols in front of us.
After the mini-Col … the mini-gorge. When Kirsten came up to this she remarked “That’s cool!” - our trademark remark during the planning / plagiarism for this trip
More of the mini-gorge as we approach Aix les Bains. The wind is picking up too … from the west right into our face … and the sky is dark and ominous too
Multi-purpose pic! Our first ‘multi-flower’ French village on the outskirts of Aix (across the country villages are rated on their ‘beauty’, with four flowers being the max). Secondly, we’ve been riding the D912 and this, the D911 all day. For all you P fans out there (there might be three of you) these are great roads. Note though that my my count, Caymans outnumbered 911’s by 4-2 today!
Rant of the day. We plan (or steal) our routes with RWGPS and then export the GPX files to Pocket Earth, and app we’ve been using for almost a decade that has wonderful map rendering for aging eyes. PE however does not have very good search ability, so when we get into a town or city, we often spark up google maps to search for the specific spot we’re going, and use this for our final landing. However, Google being Google, the landing often ends in a crash. This staircase was the right turn that Google was insisting we take to get to our hotel!!! A cross check on PE … it was clearly shown on PE as a staircase. How does Google continue to get away with this!!!!! Oh, yeah …. Billions in advertising per year so they really don’t give a toss about telling you to ride your bike up a staircase. OK, rant over.
It’s Sunday, but even in a larger place like Aix les Bains, open dining options were limited (especially if you’re on foot or bike … and it’s raining!) However the place we picked, Brasserie Augusta, hit the spot! Here’s the starter of Octopus, chorizo and potatoes that K and I shared. Very tasty and it hit the spot on a blustery night.
Today's ride: 51 km (32 miles) Total: 90 km (56 miles)
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Scott AndersonGreat to see you underway. Isn’t Annecy a lovely town though? At least in the off season, but I don’t know if we’d like it so much later in the year. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Rich FrasierThat’s a big ride for your first day on loaded bikes! Congratulations!! You must have some impressive residual fitness. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Kirsten KaarsooTo Rich FrasierYes but wait until you see what we rode yesterday! We were so tired no blog was written. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
