Trevor and Thea's 2001 Tour de Provence
(Apologies for lousy quality of scanned images.)
Some friend's weather horrors of last year prompted us to 1) go somewhere with good weather and 2) hire a car to introduce more off-bike possibilities. Provence fitted the weather bill and Europcar were much cheaper than anyone at Nice airport, although their theft and damage excesses are higher, and obliged with an air-conned diesel Megane for two hundred and fifty quid for the two weeks. So: Just drive carefully, and expect every blind corner to have someone in a battered 106 coming too fast the other way in the middle of the road, and you won't go far wrong.
First three days were in the Haut Var, around St Pierre de Tourtour, which turned out to be quite posh, I suppose an average room rate of 500FFr should have tipped me off. We did a couple of rides: one up the south side of the Verdon Gorge ("Europe's answer to the Grand Canyon" (tm) Rough Guides) which is indeed an impressively large and beautiful gorge, if not up to the standards of Colorado's finest; and then down to the Verdon below the **impossibly** blue Lac St Croix and back round the south of the lake. Not too much climbing I'd thought for the second one, only to find we'd done 1300 metres, never more than 200 at a time.
View down the gorge
Cycling in the Haut Var
Lac st Croix. See, it is very blue
We then drove round the north side of the gorges to Forcalquier, at the end of the Luberon valley, a hotel having been recommended. Five days here. Biggest single climb we did was up the Signal de Lure (~1750m), which was rather boring and fly-ridden until right at the top when there is a huge Ventoux-style view of the mountains to the North which makes it all worthwhile.
Signal de la Lure vista
On Sunday, we entered the Randonnee de la Roche Amere, organised by CC Villeneuve, just down the road from Forcalquier. We picked the 85km 'pas trop desnivelation' route, and were overwhelmed with multiple ravitaillement stops, freebies and winning an enormous and tacky cup for being the furthest-flung entrants. They seemed genuinely pleased to have us there, and much speech-making and aperitif guzzling occurred afterwards, I think in the finest French tradition. Afterwards, we drove to Greoux les Bains and saw the end of the last stage of the Tour des Alpes de Haut Provence, a 3 day Espoirs race. It was a nasty uphill sprint, which ex-junior world champ Mark Scanlon just failed to win from some french lad. Britain's Andrew Jackson (who he?) was also in the leading break.
Randonee prizegiving
We did climb Ventoux, but only with the assistance of Monsieur Renault. It was a very hot and hazy day, with almost no wind, but we didn't pass anyone who looked like they were enjoying it... It's an amazing mountain. We took a photo on the southern approach with the whole thing visible behind, and a sign saying "Mont Ventoux 24km", when it looked more like 100. The Simpson memorial is really nicely done, but would be improved IMHO without the crap and debris that people leave round it.
View from top of Mt Ventoux
A transition day in St Andre les Alpes, where we climbed the col des Champs (2087m). We met a strong American guy at the top who was doing the Allos/Champs/Cayolle loop from Barcelonette, and who said he'd done all three main ascents of Ventoux in one day (nutter!). The hotel (La Monge, which sounds more like a disease) provided a full-on breakfast buffet for 40F: rolls, croissants, pain-au-choc, cheese, ham, eggs, cereal, fresh fruit, yoghurt, toast... Room was 260F, so strongly recommended.
Col des Champs
Col des Champs
The last five days were in the Alpes Maritimes in a small hotel at le Suquet in the Vesubie valley. I'd chosen this area because it looked like there were lots of possible loops on the Michelin map, but IGN gave the true horror of the situation, and a lot of them proved to be too ambitious, so we had a couple of out and back rides.
Col St Roch on a cold day
We enjoyed going up the col de Turini from the Vesubie side - quite a steady, easy climb on an excellent road (the other side is a worse surface). Our biggest and hardest ride was a loop over into the next valley (Levens, Col de Chateauneuf, Contes, Col de St Roch, Lantosque) which came out at 85km/1950m which is hard work when it had got up to 37C. The Col de St Roch was deserted as it's blocked for cars further up by a landslide, and it's a pretty spectacular road, so we enjoyed it despite the heat.
Col St Roch on a hot day
In general, there was very little traffic around anywhere, and not all that many cyclists about. All the places were gearing up for the start of the high season in July, and we got a wide choice of hotels/restaurants, most of which were not busy. So a good time to go if circumstances permit.
Bikes survived Easyjet intact again, the pipe-insulation and plastic bag packaging receiving incredulous looks from some Americans at Nice airport, who were trundling around enormous overweight bike boxes that must have cost several hundred quid each. I used my decent Sidi Tecno shoes instead of ultra-flexy SPD touring shoes this year, and I'm convinced they're worth at least 1km/h on any climb.
Lance Armstrong being trundled around the depart at Calais. That bloke is not going to get his autograph with this approach...
Thea at Cap Blanc-nez. Or is it Evel Knievel ?
Thea at the Triathlon World's