June 19, 2011

The day dawns with clear blue skies – Mont Ventoux looks magnificent on the skyline – how annoying is that? 

We turn our backs and set off towards Avignon. Today´s ride should be a nice easy run on the flat lands south-west of Mont Ventoux. The road starts out along the foot of the mountain but what we hadn’t realised was that we would actually start off by climbing part way up before dropping down to the flatter area.   The climb is 11 km long and ends at 996 metres with what looks like a launching ramp (see photo) – so much for our idea of a nice easy run today.

We do benefit from a really long (25 km) downhill stretch into Carpentas before we reach the anticipated flat roads – a welcome relief after the past few days.  It doesn’t last long though before we are bored – mountains really are our thing – we love them and hate them at the same time.

We spend a frustrating few hours, firstly, trying to find our way around some very small back roads which lack any sign-posts at all and then trying to find our way across the river Rhône in Avignon – yes, I know all about ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon’ but the trouble is that ´pont´ only goes part-way across the river after half of it was swept away in a flood in 1668.  There are two other more modern bridges but they are definitely designed with cars in mind and not bikes.  As always is the case in big cities, we spend ages walking the bikes around complicated roundabouts and slip-roads to try to avoid getting killed in the rush of heavy traffic and eventually make our way across the river and onwards to a camp-site in Montfrin.