St Raphael

August 21, 2019

The wisdom of the Cannes cyclists tell us that the road to take to St Raphael is ‘sur le bord de mer’ They say that all the serious traffic takes the high road and that the tourists don’t come out in their cars until about 10am, so that is what we did.

Once we had left the Cannes waterfront it was really amazing, there was really little traffic but there were lots of cyclists far far more than there were cars. This ride from Cannes to nearly St Raphael and back is clearly ‘the’ training ride to do. The cyclists were all so encouraging to us greeting us warmly as they sped past on their unloaded carbon fibre machines. Yes naturally as we were going around a rocky coast with steep headlands the route was up and down all day. There was one very long hill but the gradient was manageable so all in all a throughly enjoyable ride. The only problem was that Ken’s gears began to play up and it became very difficult to change smoothly up and down. This put a bit of a dampener on things and in particular it meant that he missed taking photos of the spectacular red rocks that are in the interior. The colour is gorgeous but you will just have to take my word for it.

Arriving in St Raphael we found the Tourist Information as we were seeking out bike shops. Dropped off our luggage at the hotel and went off looking. We weren’t terribly successful though as the only shop we could find really was dealing only in ebikes. Ken has though the problem is probably that after about 4000km his chain is stretched so he has persuaded the man to change it and to change mine at the same time. We are just off to pick them up now and have our fingers crossed.

On the carousel, he must be a racing driver

The old town of St Raphael where out hotel is

So far so good - Ken has had a bit of a ride on his and they are now stowed away for the night

St Raphael like all these other places along the coast is very busy. Tomorrow we head away from the coast so things will quieten down.

Today's ride: 42 km (26 miles)
Total: 1,258 km (781 miles)

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