Day 14

Friday, May 12
Ste Enimie to St Hippolyte-du-Fort
111km

Another wonderful day.  Mediocre weather and tough climbs, but good scenery and wonderful decents.

I started the day with another flat tire.  The front one this time.  As far as flats go, I have been lucky to have both of mine (thus far) while at the hotel...as they are more convenient to repair there than at the side of the road.  My front tire itself was very old and worn, so I put on the spare tire that I had brought while replacing the tube.

The day started out along the canyon, and there was. a steep 6km climb up switchbacks to get to the top of the gorge.  From there, we had a steep decent down the otherside of the mountain.  It was very quick and long, but the sharp switchbacks (180 degree turns) made it hard to get any real speed or rythum going.

At the bottom of the mountain I found a lovely boulangerie in the town of Florac.  I picked up a big pizza for lunch, which was retangular and fit perfectly into the trunk bag on the back of my bike.  I also got some berry-tarts.

After Florac, the scenery changed from gorge to tree covered mountains. Not quite as "stunning" as some of the valleys earlier in the trip, but very nice.  Reminded me of Canada's evergreen covered areas...only with lots of big mountains.

There were three more cols today, which made for a lot of slow and steady climbing, with some occasional steep sections and headwinds as well.  Definitely the toughest climbing of the trip.  Some really entertaining decents too.  My skill and confidence with decending has improved dramatically on this trip.  I can lean the bike significantly into the corners and really enjoy carving back and forth down the hills without braking very much.  With the speed above 50km/h for a few minutes of decending, it starts to feel a lot like skiing.  The few times that I've encountered cars, I've been able to brake very rapidly (or just steer around them) so it feels pretty safe.

There were lots of nice vistas from the top of the climbs, with many other mountain peaks as far as the eye could see.  Unfortunately, it was pretty cool for most of the day, and it even spat with rain a few times.  Not exactly the way I pictured southern France, but not bad cycling weather really.  (Big John is very much out of his element in cooler, overcast weather.  He comes alive in the baking oht sun though.  That's the difference between Canadians and Australians.)

Around the 80km mark, one of our climbs took us through a very lush, humid forest.  There were so many overgrown plants and birds chirping tha it felt like a tropical aviary at a zoo.

Tomorrow is the last day of cycling before I travel back to the UK and then home to Canada.  It is advertised as an easy ride.  Hopefully we will get some nice weather.