Cycling along the Rhône to Valence is something I did, in the opposite direction, only 5 months ago and it was just as good the second time around. And the bits I hadn’t done before, along the Luberon Trail in Haut Provence, were even better.
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Thursday 01 September 2022. Lyon to Charmes-sur-Rhône |154 km|
I was glad to finally be on my way after having to wait in Lyon for 6 days for my broken drive belt to be replaced. Actually, it never was completely broken – I was still using it when I had it replaced – but the layers were separating, the ridges were all cracked and nearly breaking off, and the innermost blue layer had almost disappeared, so it looked like it was about to fail catastrophically at any moment. Preventative maintenance, that was all 😊.
[I got 25,500 km out of that belt, which at the time I thought was great going since chains on a similar eBike only used to last. only 6,000 km on average. But now I know others who’se Gates belt is still going strong at 60,000 km (for example, Marc at An eBike Journey – a lovely site, by the way, with beautiful photos). Maybe it’s the massive extra load I’m toting or maybe its because Marc is just more attentive to proper belt tension and good maintenance generally].
Just out of Lyon I was hit with a “Provisional Route” around the Deviation Canal, and it had some steep rubbly slopes that were precarious to steer down, but apart from that, the going was easy enough on the now-familiar and well-marked Via Rhona trail. At 66 km, I stopped for lunch at a great Maison Jury boulangerie in Serrières. Highly recommended. Along here, Vienne and Valence were also especially pretty towns worth checking out.
If you ever get the chance to stay at Camping Les Deux Rives in Charmes-sur-Rhône don’t bother – it’s pretty crappy.
Friday 02 September 2022. Charmes-sur-Rhône to Avignon (Sorges) |151 km|
Early on the ride this morning I came across a young female Scandinavian cyclist sprawled across the bike path just around a blind corner in the maize fields. Lucky I didn’t run her over. When she stopped blubbering long enough, she explained she’d been attacked by a bee. Ok, I know some people are particularly allergic to bee stings and I’ve even heard you can get aphylactic shock and die from it. But she was still very much alive and had no shock symptoms, so I wasn’t too worried on that score.
I shifted her bike and all her scattered possessions off the bike track and I told her I had a first aid kit with tweezers and pain spray and I’d be able to get rid of the sting for her – she looked at me horrified – didn’t want me going anywhere near her – and said, no, the bee hadn’t actually stung her, just frightened her and she fell off the bike trying to wave it away. Good one, honey. I struggle understanding apiophobia myself.
Another long day in the saddle brought me to about 15 km past Valence. I probably should have stayed somewhere in Valence, but I really wanted the extra kilometres behind me after that long enforced stay in Lyon, and it was ideal for cycling today after all, being in the low 20s tempertures, flat, no wind and not too much rain.
Those grapes, by the way, go into making the world-famous and expensive Chateau Neuf du Pape wine. The grapes themselves didn’t taste so good. But then again, according to the website 2022 wasn’t a vintage year, so maybe I’m a connoisseur? Nope? Didn’t think so.
The last 20 km from Orange were along single-lane paved roads among the gently-undulating vinyards. Perfect!
Another not-so-terrific camping experience awaited me at Camping le Grand Bois in Sorges/ Le Pontet/ Vedène – whatever – the locality seems to go by a lots of names. It’s a suburb of Avignon basically.
This campground is situated in an out-of-the-way place down a lane and behind an imposing closed metal gate inside the grounds of a large chateau. This looks promising, I thought, except I couldn’t rustle up anyone on the intercom to let me through. Luckily a returning caravaner (sans caravan, but I know he did have one) arrived just then to let us both in with his fob.
The irrascible old coot who grudging ambled over to open up the accueil (reception) to book me in absolutely insisted I pay later upon leaving, and I had to lodge my credit card with him in the meantime. He said that’s because of the fob, and I said I didn’t need a fob as I wouldn’t be going anywhere, but as I did want to get away very early, please accept payment now. He won. No compromise.
The pitch I selected was actually very nice. And I had the pool all to myself, which I felt obliged to use since I’d made a big fuss about the gate to it not being open at first. There was no food at all – just wine and beer – but that was okay, I still had some provisions left over from my sortie to the day’s boulangerie, and one of his bottles of Côte du Rhône complemented it nicely.
Oops – I noticed my rear tyre was flat once more. I couldn’t find the leak (or what caused it) and so had to replace the tube.
Saturday 03 September 2022.
I was all packed up and ready to go at the agreed time of 8.00 am but the owner didn’t get out of bed until nearly 9 so I had to make small talk with a couple of brain-dead bogans for 40 minutes. And that’s when he ripped me off for €20, telling me the overnight stay cost €35 and not €15 as I had ‘thought’ – “You must have been mistaken about that, sorry you couldn’t understand my poor English”. I just tried to check on TripAdvisor to see if anyone else reports the same problem, but it seems they’re not listed, and their own shitty website just redirects you to other commercial links (in Melbourne!) if you don’t accept all the cookies.
It was a not-so-pleasant ride for 30 km on the busy D973 road to Cavaillon. The rear tyre kept going flat every 5 km or so, so I knew I had another piece of wire lodged in the tread somewhere. I stopped at AB Cycles in Cavaillon where Gerald replaced the tyre (a Schwalbe ‘Racing Ralph’ that was all he had on offer, but that’s okay) and sold me 2 new tubes, for €62.
I came across the Luberon trail quite by accident – I’d been looking for it long enough and just happened to notice the sign where I least expected it.
I had lunch in the hill fort town of Lauris at a little outdoor cafe while I charged up the batteries for an hour. Their take on a ‘hamburger’ is a complete meal on a plate. The only thing it had in common with a real hamburger, as we know it, was the ‘steak haché’ (meat patty). Yummo!
It was then a beautiful hilly ride on super-quiet country backroads following the “Luberon” signs (the orange ones, not the blue ones, or you’d be going back in the other direction!)
After that really great day of pedalling I ended up staying at a B&B in the mountain village of La-Bastide-des-Jordans that belongs to a lovely and engaging couple, Nicole and Maurice, both 88 and still going strong!
I had hoped to find a campground in or near La Bastide, as had the young British cycling couple I fell in with going in my direction at the hamburger cafe in Lauris, but there was nothing of the sort within a 30 km radius.
After checking-in with Nicole and getting the grand tour of their beautiful home, I went up to the main square for a meal. I found my young cyclist friends there (I’d left them way back as soon as the going got hilly, my advantage of having motor-assist wonout over their advantage of being at least 40 years younger). They were sharing one beer between the two of them and waiting for nightfall so they could sneak off somewhere for a crafty wild-camp but didn’t seem overly concerned about it.
I thought of asking Nicole and Maurice if they could camp out in their cute little garden but that would have been too much of an imposition, especially since they were expecting a cycling Dutch couple in later (though they never did arrive) and also because they need to run their home as a business, so I just let it go with buying them another beer (each, this time) and setting off to the local take-away while they waited for that quiet moment to go and pitch their tent somewhere. They’d gone by the time I returned to the square. See the empty barrel below.
The photos below are all of Nicole and Maurice’s lovely B&B home in La Bastide des Jourdans, and the church cloisters next door. My room was the one on the left with the balcony in the last photo.
Sunday 4 September 2022. La-Bastide-des-Jourdans to Les Arcs |144 km|
My hosts set me down for a continental breakfast in their breakfast garden and since it was a perfect day for cycling, 15°C to the mid-20s, and sunny with no wind , I made sure to set off early at 08.00 am.
It all started out well enough, but then I got misdirected by a local at the first village I came to, towards Beaumont-de-Partuis and Mirabeau on a trail that deteriorated quickly into a rutted goat track, and then I further compounded the error by taking an even worse track on to Saint-Paul-lez-Durance.
In two places along there I had to unload the bike and portage everything across a creek bed and up a short, steep, rocky slope. The whole while I could hear the occasional traffic zipping by on the main road about 50 m away (mostly upwards), so I wasn’t exactly lost, but had no chance of getting up on to the tarmac.
It’s all my own fault. I think what the local was trying to say was “well, yes, you could possibly go that way, but wouldn’t you be better off taking the main road?” It was a case of me leading instead of listening and hearing what I wanted to hear. My bad. Sorry I doubted you bud.
I stopped for an hour at 1.00 pm at the improbably-named Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume to ‘refresh’ the batteries.
Then I stopped for a short break in L’Issole to watch a boules game and have a bite to eat from my daily boulangerie hoarde…
…before trecking off to the more-settled parts heading towards the coast.
The last 20 kilometres for the day on the flat, busy and fast DN7 main road were a bit of a nightmare. And with 15 km still to go, I ran over a 2″ self-tapping screw that went straight through the brand new tyre.
It only took 20 minutes to replace the tube, but then for the rest of the way the bike started behaving in a very strange way, kangaroo-hopping every revolution of the wheel, so I had to go extra slowly.
I tried for both campgrounds that came up on my navigation app. The first one sent me away with one-word <fermé> (“Closed!). The French can appear quite rude sometimes.
The second one was twice as rude, since the youngish daughter of the owner sent out to deal with me just screamed <fermé! fermé> into my face, as in <can’t you understand plain French, now f*off>. They had permanents living there by the look of it, but had just closed that day to travellers “for the season” as their sign out front clearly said. Yes, I know, but can’t you listen to my sob story and make an exception just for me. Nup. ‘Sad face’ doesn’t always work, it seems.
It was late, and there was absolutely nowhere else showing in the campground department on the Bosch app or on Google nearby, so I called ahead to book a room at Hotel Les Pins Blancs en Provence . This is a businessman’s hotel serving the wider Saint Tropez – Fréjus region (it’s halfway between the two), but being a Sunday, it was virtually empty. I never saw another guest anyway, although I did see one or two cars in the car park.
They had a beautiful-looking restaurant and an even more beautiful-looking bar right opposite reception, but with no kitchen staff on duty and no bartender either I couldn’t even order a beer! Aren’t French receptionists allowed to serve drink, I wondered aloud. Their rules forbade it, because they “can’t do the money transaction”, is what the young female receptionist told me. She was trying to be helpful, but had her rules so I wasn’t upset with her, even though I was exasperated by….well, by Frenchness, I suppose.
They had a beautiful swimming pool too, which I did jump into and we had a relaxing swim; that’s me and the creepy-crawly.
All my gear was soaking wet, so I spread it out and turned the room heaters up full blast to dry it off a bit. The tent and a few bigger articles I hung over a make-shift clothes line under my verandah. All-in-all a good find, Hotel ‘White Pines in Provence’.
– ends –
Day 55: 2022 in Europe so far: 5,234 km in 48 days of cycling
Nights in hotels 27
Night on ferry 1
Night in B&B 1
Nights in tent 26
Bike maintenance:
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- Rohloff oil change (Toulouse): km 0 (20,505 km on bike)
- Repairs to rear kickstand (Toulouse)
- 12 punctures:
- 2 punctures rear (Toulouse to Agde): km 250
- 4 punctures front (Toulouse to Agde): km 300
- 2 punctures rear (Hull to Birtley): km 2,730
- 4 punctures rear (Alnwick to Berwick): km 2,940
- 4 punctures rear (Sorges): km 5,016
- 1 puncture rear (Les Arcs): km 5,268
- 2 new tubes (Montelimar) km 780
- Two new Ortlieb Front Roller panniers (€140 Koblenz): km 1,870
- 2 sets new brake pads (£8 Boston): km 2,710
- Rear pannier rack broken; temp fix with cable ties (Bamburgh):km 3, 020
- 2 new tubes (Scremerston, UK): km 3,050
- 1 new tyre (Scremerston, UK) km 2,030
- New Gates CDX Carbon Belt (€87 Lyon): km 5,045. (25, 550 total for the belt)
- New Goretex rain jacket (€220 Lyon)
- 1 new tyre, Schwalbe Racing Ralph, (€62, incl. tubes, Cavaillon) km 5,167
- 2 new tubes Cavaillon km 5,167
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