I depart Cap d’Agde and head off in the general direction of Germany along Eurovelo 17 , also marked Via Rhôna. I pick up the Via Rhôna/ Eurovelo 17 at the ancient and beautiful port city of Sète, cross the western delta of the Rhône River known as the Camargue and follow the Rhône up-river to Lyon.
(Zoom-in to see incredible detail down to 5m)
Sunday 17 April 2022. Cap d’Agde • Arles |141 km|
[Clear and cool to begin with, then hot and bothersome later on; hardly any head wind. All flat going: a mixture of 50% rough dirt and 50% tar that was either canal tow path or lightly-trafficed ‘D’ roads. The route took me alongside the Canal du Rhône á Sète across the Camargue, the marshlands of the Rhône River delta, and through the towns of Aigues-Mortes, Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone and Lattes. I bypassed the cities of Montpellier and Nîmes]
As much as I’d enjoyed my two days rest off the bike in a naturalist colony, it was good to get back on the road again.
I arrived in Sète just as the annual blessing of the fishing fleet ceremony was starting. Lots of food stalls, mainly involving fish, were setting up and the buskers were out doing their thing. Indeed, it was a lovely vibrant scene and made all the more so by the flotilla of tall ships in port.
But I soon tore myself away from all the festivities to begin the long trek across the Camargue. I had a lot of cycling to catch up on.
It was a bit irksome cycling across the Camargue, if I’m honest. Following dead straight canals on rough tracks on a slightly elevated bank, with nothing much to look at except swamp, saltbush and the occasional famous white horse or run-down homestead is kinda boring. Thirsty work. But I did get to see lots of pink flamingoes.
The first big town I came to was Aigues Mortes, which looked quite prosperous and had its own Easter festivities going on in full swing inside a medieval castle as I was coming through. I stopped for an icecream and some crowd-gazing before moving on and arrived at the main west arm of the Rhône proper in the delta, called the Petit Rhône.
The Rhône splits into the Petit Rhône and the Grand Rhône just downstream of the city of Arles that Vincent Van Gogh immortalised through cutting off his ear in 1888.
Arles is also famous for its well-preserved Roman amplitheatre, which I completely neglected to see, and its crazy new art space Frank Gehry’s Luma Tower which I did see and in fact rode right past, (although I didnt take the picture of it below).
I was knackered by this time and decided to stay overnight in Arles, whichwas an easy decision to make since I’d run out of battery power anyway. I had no trouble finding a campground after chancing it and riding about 5 km out of town into the suburbs, pedalling under my own steam without power assistance – not so easy, with an all-up weight of 160 kg/ 350 lb.
But I have to say that the campground, Camping La Bienheureuse wasn’t exactly an ideal choice though. No real complaints about the pich for €22, but the meal I got in their ‘restaurant’ was truly ghastly – 3 bony chops (lamb, so they said, but hard to tell) with a few measly ersatz chips for €20.
Trust me, their website photos look far better than the real thing.
Monday 18 April 2022. Arles • Bourg St. Andéol |118 km|
[Fine and cool. 50% rough dirt track and 50% paved road or bike trail, being Euro Velo 17, Euro Velo 8 and Via Rhôna (sometimes, all three at once!). The only town of note on the route was Avignon].
This was a very pleasant day’s ride. By afternoon the scenery had become more interesting as the Rhône became more the majestic river we’ve all read about as it meandered side-to-side in its relatively narrow valley.
Another new route sign look out for to add to the confusion. And that’s a “VR” for Via Rhona, by the way, and not the “V2” it looks like
Commemorating 4 victims of a flood in 1796
Lots of this type of track. The ‘snow’ consists of plane-tree trichomes. I googled that
Driven once again by a shortage of reserve battery power, and this time trying to be more conservative, unlike yesterday when I ran out, I pulled into Camping du Lión fairly early-on in the day, at around 4pm. It’s on the banks of the Rhône and right alongside the Via Rhôna cycle path, just north past the town of Bourg St. Andéol, and so ideally located.
The lady in charge was jovial and seemed quite nice: “Tent-site? – yes, we have”. “Electricity? – yes, but of course!” “Restaurant? – yes, it’s right here!” “Internet? – absolutely!”. Well, it turned out they actually had none of those things.
The tent site she allocated was fine, but the power didn’t work so I had to trudge back on over to reception to complain. She tootled back on her golf buggy and unlocked the power cabinet to turn it back on for me, and then proceeded to berate me as though it were all my fault. The internet was agonizingly slow and only worked sitting right outside reception, and not at all in the cosy comfort of my tent as promised.
The restaurant wasn’t even in service, so there was no food available, and when I started moaning about it she suddenly remembered she couldn’t speak English. Anyway, good humour was soon restored and she even offered me the family’s cold pasta-bake leftovers that she’d just taken out of the fridge, which I politely declined. So, only a piece of leftover baguette to eat tonight – ah well, such is life on the road. I bet the medieval pilgrims on the way to Santiago had it far worse.
As well as the usual campervan cohort there were several other cyclists overnighting in tents as well, including two families of five whose young kids were happily pitching in with all the chores and still had boundless energy left to play games and chase each other around. So good to see in this age of ‘personal devices’.
Tuesday 19 April 2022. Bourg St. Andéol • Valence |105 km|
[Very cold and clear; high cirrus cloud developing throughout the day, which usually denotes the rain will stay away. I passed through the delightful towns of Viviers, Châteauneuf-du-Rhône, Montélimar, Rochmaure, Cruas, Le Pouzin, Le Voulte-sur-Rhône, Beauchastel and Charmes-sur-Rhône along the way].
The riding was great. Not so great was dealing with punctures yet again. And the problem, once again, was another tiny and very fine filament of stainless steel wire only about 3 mm long that I’d picked up along the track somehow and had become lodged in the front tyre tread. Waaay too small for me to find, and it was down to young Robert at Culture Velo Bikeshop in the town of Montélimar, who did.
He managed to tweezer-out the offending article after a painstaking micro-inspection, long after I’d given up any hope of him ever finding it. Thanks mate. And it only cost me €21 for two new tubes (one that he fitted, plus a spare)!. Now that’s good value!
I got lost a few times between Bourg St. Andéol and Valence. Nothing serious, except that the locals turned out to be not much help putting me back on track. One thing I’ve learned about the French is that they tend to give out misinformation when it comes to giving directions if they think you won’t like the correct answer. Or maybe they’re just more vague than most about directions. Anyway, I headed off the wrong way more than once after stopping to check with locals whether I was on the right track or not.
I stopped for an hour or so for a late lunch and a power-up at La Fournil du Chateau, a lovely boulangerie in Rochemaure with a view over to the Château de Rochmaure and then, fully topped-up nutritionally if not electrically, powered on to the city of Valence. Here, I stayed the night in the charming, quaint, very agreeable and quite cheap Hotel St. Jaques right in the centre of town – at €49, the best value of the trip so far! I had dinner up the street at a fancy sidewalk burger joint that was so-so, but after my superb lunch in Rochemaure I didnt mind too much.
Wednesday 20 April 2022. Valence • Lyon |136 km|
[Cool, mostly overcast, not much wind. The entire day’s cycling was a pure delight – safe, dedicated cycle path, flat going, ever-changing scenary and interesting heritage towns including LaRoche de Glun, Tournon-sur-Rhône, Saint-Vallier, Andance and Vienne].
There’s a real problem with my style of navigating. A fancy Bosch Nyon bike computer/ GPS like mine doesn’t entirely obviate the need for a smart phone with SIM connection and plenty of data, or, alternatively, a laptop with internet access, and I had neither – just the Bosch Nyon, which is supposedly, so Bosch say, is all you do need.
So for example, this day in particular – but it’s the same for most days – I pass up on several ideal-looking campgrounds that I ride right past, on the basis that it’s too early in the day to stop for the night just yet. But as the day wears on, and the bike’s battery levels run down to 25-or-so % left, I go onto the Nyon function >Maps and Navigation> Points of Interest>Accommodation>Campgrounds>, which is then supposed to display, in order of radial distance from my present location, the list of campgrounds in the vicinity that it has in its database. For a start, this is by no means an exhaustive list, and secondly, just an address shows up so I’ve no idea whether it is back the way I just came or entirely off my route. You really do need a smart phone with data connection to be able to simply follow Google Maps to a campground. Truth be told, the eBike computer is superfluous for navigation provided you could get enough battery life out of your phone to run it for a full day (and enough data credit to run Google maps all day too). The Bosch Nyon system is really best-suited to recording trip routes and data after the event, and for that it is excellent.
On this day, only the one campground came up as being anywhere remotely near me when I searched on the Bosch computer. This was Camping des Barolles, and the route to get there was arduously MTB-ish too, which had me worrying about the rapidly-depleting batteries as I churned up steep hills on rough tracks in the outskirts of Lyon. The campground turned out to be actually quite fine for my needs but ignore the website, which gives a totally erroneous picture. It is stuck out in the middle of the suburbs and is part of a larger sporting complex. They had only a meagre offering of rations behind the counter in the accueil (reception/ office/ check-in desk ) and a couple of bottle of the local beer – anyway enough to settle my lingering apprehension that I’d wandered too far off-piste by blindly following the Nyon’s directions to Camping des Barolles, although I had no idea where I actually was in relation to the Via Rhôna path I was supposed to be on, and no way of finding out because I couldn’t access internet at the campground.
-ends-
The trip in Europe in 2022 so far
791 km cycled in 9 days (7 days of cycling).
Nights in hotel 5
Nights in tent 4
Bike defects/ repairs:
- 2 punctures rear, 4 punctures front.
- 2 new tubes bought (Montelimar).
- Rohloff oil change (Toulouse)
- Repairs to rear kickstand (Toulouse)