August 25, 2019
Aix en Provence
We take the hard way
We anticipated a fairly easy day today and that is what it was like as far a Pourcieux. A major road that on Sunday was fairly quiet, had a good hard shoulder and although up hill it wasn’t too bad. Having had only a banana before we left we stopped for a coffee. There were two choices at this point- we could go through Trets or up towards the mountains to Pourrieres and beyond. When we had done a similar trip about 4 years ago we went through Trets and remembered it as an easy fairly flat ride.
| Heart | 3 | Comment | 0 | Link |
We decided to do the other way. We were riding through amazingly productive looking vineyards. They are meticulously cared for and there isn’t any evidence of any type of disease at all. There were olives as well and these trees were absolutely dripping with fruit, I can just imagine the hive of activity there must be at harvest time. The roads were wonderfully quiet D roads, it was always up hill but it wasn’t until we got to Puyloubier that things really began to kick up steeply. We were climbing to St Antonin-sur-Bayon where there is the Maison de la Ste-Victoire the centre for climbers of Mount St Victoire. The shape of it is so familiar to me and then I realised why, it is the subject of a very well known Cezanne painting. There was a restaurant there so we stopped and had coffee and a good long drink of water. Then off down, in the next just over 6km we descended 300metres so it was very steep. Much to Ken’s delight what looked like an outing of an Alfa Romeo Club was burning up the hill. There were about 20 and actually I found it a bit scary as they didn’t seem to have much awareness of cyclists as we and they whipped around the hairpins.
At the bottom was a dear little town and all returned to normal. It was an easy ride into Aix but it was after this that the fun started. The streets were packed with people so it was impossible to ride and the GPS gave us an extraordinarily complicated route with no option but to walk it and my knee sure didn’t like it. The Hotel du Globe had a charming man in reception and we were able to check in straight away and find a restaurant for lunch, which Ken says is his favourite part of the day. It is 34 degrees
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 1,421 km (882 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 9 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |