Day 12 - The Verdon Gorge

Thursday 10th September 2015


Our ride today takes us along the south side of the Verdon Gorge.

We ride down to the bridge at the east end of the Lac de Saint-Croix, where the Verdon River emerges and the gorge starts. Above us is the pretty town of Aiguines.
 
Lac de Saint-Croix (and Mick)

Me too!

We ride along the top of the gorge on a twisty road full of tourists cars and camper vans. Lots of bikes too. Occasionally a big tourist coach comes lumbering by leaving very little space to get by, so the going is slow.
 
Hire a boat in the gorge

The Verdon Gorge

That is good because the views are spectacular. We stop at a the Grand Canyon Hotel which has an excellent terrace viewing platform. The waitress is either prejudiced against bikers, or the English or just us, or maybe too stupid to realise that we arrived before the large group of cyclists and then some German tourists who join us on the terrace. So after she has served the other two parties and still ignores us we take the hint and leave. We got the pictures though, which was the main point of our stop.
 


The high road along the top of the gorge winds down to the Pont del'Artuby bridge, then across a plateau where we turn north east and soon arrive for lunch in Castellane.


The view from the Grand Canyon hotel terrace
I woz 'ere!

The weather is changing and some dark clouds are rolling in as we climb up a tight twisty road to the Col de Champs. I realise I know this road, I was here last year. The ride up from the west is very poorly surfaced but down the other side it is fantastic. A series of broad well-surfaced lacets (hairpins) sweep down the valley and our speed and our mood improves.



Pont del'Artuby


Bikers at Pont del'Artuby

The weather doesn't though, and after several more passes the thunder starts and huge raindrops begin to fall.

We are only 10 miles from our destination, a hotel in the tiny village of Rimplas perched high above a river valley on the Route des Grand Alpes.
 
In the gorge

 
Col du Champs



The Hostellerie du Randonneur

Stefan and his Guzzi


 The Hostellerie du Randonneur (hikers' hostel) is run by an ex Ducati Superbike racer called Stefan. Last year he helped me out with a puncture. This year he is equally charming and despite the raging thunderstorm we enjoy a good evening meal and, thoroughly knackered after eight hours of mostly pass riding, we are asleep by 9:30pm. 






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 3 - Twisties and Gran Reserva Ale in Asturias

Image
Tuesday 1st September 2015 We leave the campsite at Llanes and head west on the A8 motorway. It is a beautiful road, sweeping and swooping up and down the foothills of the Asturias mountains as they tumble down to the sea. It is a fairly new road, with the old road still visible in places. There are numerous viaducts bridging steep tree-clad gorges that carry the mountain streams and rivers down to the sea. There are plenty of tunnels too when the looming peaks reach all the way to the shoreline. The plan is to ride west along the coast then head off up into the mountains and spend three days wriggling through the Picos following country roads and heading in a general easterly direction.     |On the glorious back roads of the Picos We stop for fuel and food at a Repsol service station on the motorway. Petrol is €1.22 a litre, around 90p in English money. So why are we paying 20% more than that in the UK? We turn off in the sma...
Read more

Day 2 - Thunderstorms, Rioja and Mick Gets Lost

Image
Monday 31st August 2015 We arrive in Santander at 11:45. It is a lovely approach into the harbour. The town tumbles down the hills that surround the inlet. No sign of my bank though.   The channel into the harbour runs past sandbanks to the east. They seem far too close for a boat this big. The town climbs up the hillsides to the west.   Sailing into Santander Santander harbour There are around a hundred bikes queuing to disembark so it takes a while. We are at the back of the lowest deck so almost last to get off. Eventually our turn comes and we head off up onto the wharf. Passport check are perfunctory and we set off on the Spanish adventure. It should have been easy to get out of the town and onto the coast road leading west towards the Picos National Park. But a combination of traffic lights and my inattention means that within five minutes I have lost Mick. Because I took a wrong lane up to a roundabout I am not su...
Read more

Day 20 - Homeward Bound

Image
Friday 18th September 2015 One day I will find a nice rural route from Luxembourg across Belgium and northern France to the channel ports. The motorway route is pretty awful, but it is a long ride and at the end of the tour my thoughts are turned towards home and I just want to get it over with. To be fair the first section up the A4 is okay but then comes the boring Belgian motorway with its potholes and broken tarmac, clogged with huge lorries from all over Eastern Europe, and its featureless urbanised landscapes. The skies are grey and threatening and the weather has turned cold. It is with relief that we finally turn off the highway for the last few miles through the villages of the Pas de Calais to Les Ballastieres. This is an old farm house run by Sue and Paul from England as a bed and breakfast establishment. They have a bunkhouse upstairs in the old barn with a recreation room underneath equipped with cooking facilities, tv/DVD player a...
Read more