2011-08-17T04:07:00.001-07:00

Cycling The Cevennes and Mt Ventoux

This summer’s trip has been inspired by R. L. Stevenson’s ‘Travels With A Donkey’, a romantic thriller in which the hero elopes with his pet and has to hideout in the bleak harshness of the Cevennes in Southern France. During their adventures, R. L. Stevenson accidentally invents the sleeping bag, one of many of his great but unheralded inventions such as curtains, the broom, nails and underpants.
The Pyrenean escapade last year suffered from my choice of Glorious June and its dampness. This year we are putting our money on the odds-on favourite for good weather, late July in a notably arid region. The route up the Tarn, through Lozere and down to the Rhone will climax at the top, I hope, of Mont Ventoux before we skedaddle down to Marseilles.

Travel Arrangements

As always, prior to booking the plane I spend hours poring over train, bike bus, ferry and balloons routes in an attempt to avoid taking the plane and as always we end up taking the plane. In accordance with the Big Bag Convention following the Malaga catastrophic bottling out of 2009, we fly to Toulouse and escape via Marseilles and thus allowing no room for heading back to the airport early. Thoroughly reliable and obliging British Airways cost £188.00 each for the pleasure though we will end up paying 30 or so each way for an extra bag with the panniers in.

New Kit...

Bike

Well, I decided to upgrade my bicycle this summer. Buying a bike is like buying anything where there are options. Computers, cameras and bicycles all have the same quandaries of opportunity cost. If you have one thing you like on one bike you like it probably won’t have that other thing that you like which is on that other bike you like but is on that other bike you like, the one that doesn’t have the other thing you like. I liked the frame shape on the Voyage. I liked the legend of the Galaxy. I didn’t like the rear block on the Voyage. I liked the racks and cages on the Panorama. I liked the steel alloy of the Galaxy and Panorama. I did like the brake/gear doodah on the Panorama and not the bar end shifters on the Galaxy or the ones on the Voyage and so on....
After many hours googling and calling and haggling I opted for the World Panorama by Ridgeback 2011 model.. This was purchased from Evans Cycles after taking advantage of their price promise which reduced the price from1249 to 1079. I had chosen this bike over the Dawes Galaxy because of the better gears and, very importantly, because it was a nice colour.

lots and lots of extra bits

Handlebar bag

There is a very fine line – barely visible – which you cannot wander across back and forth. The very barely visible fine line is that point of no return between a healthy, normal interest in cycling to one of nerdy geekiness where the accumulation of gadgets and fancy kit is an interest in itself. The bike is no longer a means of transport as it is transformed into a carrier of your hopes, dreams and other weird stuff. Just take a look at bike with just a couple of panniers on the back – could be someone just nipping down the shops, or out for a day ride, or off to a picnic with friends. Then look at a bike with front panniers. The bike is now a house with everything – all comforts – hanging off it in polyurethane protection. And then, conducting matters as it were, there is the handlebar bag – the focal point, the nerve centre, the ship’s bridge – full of more gadgets and kit – maps, compasses (the compass-bell by Dunlop at 2.49 from Field and Trek has been dumped for a Silva or a Garmin) computers, gels etc etc. Only problem is, you have to remove your fancy dan lighting show to fit the darn thing, and, you are left with the daft fixing device that you can’t get off in a hurry and clogs up your handle bars. There are many to choose from – Ortleib, Altura, Topeak - all with difficult fixing arrangement involving piano wire.

actual size

In addition, the Ortleib was very rigid and was weird to open while the Altura was fine as long as you removed your very handy brake cables. It was a very humble Bikehut bag from Halfords that got my vote at 24.99 and has a very easy to fix fixing thing that doesn’t take an hour and a bundle of tools to remove when you are done with the touring or the nerd convention.

I’d also plumbed for cleats and shoes – on the basis that the flash new bike came with Shimano SPD pedals and that such an arrangement improved one’s cycling efficiency. I’d heard that it takes a couple months to get used to being attached to your bike. That is it is generally meant that the nifty twist of the feet to free yourself becomes second nature so that you NEVER forget to get your feet out. Falling over at traffic lights and roundabouts etc is very dangerous.
I switched my fancy new pedals over to my old bike and went to a park, found some grass and cycled around for a while without falling off. I then graduated onto a quiet road with only my right foot in the cleat (the pedals had both normal and cleated sides.) From there I moved onto both feet – stopping all the time to practice the move and eventually I took to traffic, only using both feet away from junctions etc. Even so, once I put the pedals back on the new bike and practiced it had only been two weeks by the time we flew to Toulouse.

Barkage

This term describes the level of general noise of a campsite and can include a variety of incidental noises such as crickets, children, TGVs, low flying attack helicopters, constant road traffic, farmyard animals, spooky rustling noises and, of course, dogs.

The noises clearly relate to the location of the specific campsite whereas snoring cannot be blamed on place. The presence of children, however, is included as they accepted by most camping facilities these days although, of course, for many years there weren’t and had to be left outside.

Toulouse to Ambialet 66.9 miles

Always a barrel of laughs, waiting for the bikes to reach the baggage area in one piece. They did so in no time at all and in no time at all we were out onto the streets of Toulouse. We crossed the peripherique at one O'am hundred clock hours then got over two ridges before picking up the stationary Tarn at Saint Sulpice by two. The weather was fine and the gradient slight as we hurtled along the D888 towards Albi. The scenery wasn’t breathtakingly stunning and the road was busy but the 60 miles stint was a good way to warm up the legs for the stuff to come. Once we’d got hold of the right gas from Go Sports having been shown the way through a hairy busy junction by a kind old timer who’d once cycled Bolivia we turned east and headed to Ambialet. The scenery closed in as the gorge developed. Sort out some lights and adult nappies as there are at least two tunnels, one of which that has no lighting at all.
Ambialet is a village on a horseshoe shaped meander of the Tarn. The river has eroded so much of the bend that it will soon, in geological terms, cut through leaving an island, its hotel spectacularly stranded.

The rains had just left the area and the campsite, with its very basic amenities, was very damp, its red clay soil getting everywhere. Many men were fishing for small gudgeon, roach and barbel to fry up for breakfast. We had the usual rice and curry surprise – the surprise being that it was pasta and tuna, as per every meal we have ever had on these jaunts. 5.50 euros each at campsite.

Ambialet to Millau 59.7 miles

Millau is pronounced me-o and not Mill-ow. No-one knew where Mill-ow was.
More tunnels through the narrowing gorge and, again, a particularly scary one that had no lighting and went uphill and left and right. Boy, was that one a thriller. Lots of bridges as the road cut corners and bends but all beneath a grey drizzle filled sky. The D700 is a ‘white’ road according to IGN and this ran on the north bank with the busier D77 on the south. It makes a difference in summer not being chased down by trucks and caravans although truckers tend to be the most considerate of all the drivers on French roads. But the road number would change around every bend and eventually it became the D902 and crossing the river at La Vayssiere it enters that tunnel.

The gorge narrowed enough just past Verdalie to have to send the road, by now the D200, upwards. After a brief downhill to the reservoir at Pinet it rises up again to give a fuller view of the stunning scenery that the Tarn cuts through. After another hill and a few twists and turns the valley broadens out, the plateau above, a thousand metres up, cut in two by the Tarn leaving escarpments glowing in the afternoon sun. Around another bend the enormous and incredible Millau Viaduct, the world’s tallest bridge at 1000 feet and over 8000 feet long, looked as if it had been photo-shopped onto the valley.

We stopped at one of the several campsites on the east bank of the Tarn and paid a bundle which, it turned out included complimentary eurodisco beamed directly into everyone’s tents at 2.30am. A few miles north we would have found something a little quieter. We’d knocked off 120 miles in two days with both the weather and roads being easy going. 11 euros each at campshite.

Millau to Bedoues 47.5 miles

The road, the D187, on the eastern side of the valley was very quiet, as we trundled coffee-less northwards up to La Cresse through more beautiful scenery. We crossed the river to Riviere –sur- Tarn for cwaffee and pastries. We continued up the Tarn valley until Le Rozier where we jumped ship and took the D996 east up the much narrower and steeper gorge of La Jonte.

An alternative would have been to take on the huge vertical escarpment on our left to get on to the plateau but following these rivers provided more interest that the relatively featureless uplands. Having said that, it was getting a bit boring constantly going uphill – by now 150 miles.

I’d bought my telescopic rod to have a dabble but the river was never near enough or full enough and I’d been unable to find a 30 euro two week vacation permit.

But one thing with all this hill stuff was the rhythm, the riddim took through the pain and the gradient and any kind of stopping for more than a minute meant a spate of muscle burn and a good while trying to regain the cadence – lots of screaming, wobbling about and dreaming of comfy seats, chicken and chips, egg and chips, fresh underwear etc.

Dogs

Dogs are always barking when you pass them. They run to the barbed-wire/electric fenced gate salivating with their lips curled back over their glistening fangs and dripping, hungry, virulently pink chops well before you actually pass. How do they know you are coming? What can they hear? What does a cyclist smell of?

After a feeding stop at the 8 a huit on the way into Meyruis, we hit the inevitable pass - La Jonte being merely an underling of the Tarn - on which the D996 rose nearly 300 metres in 6km to the Col de Perjuret at 1028m and 6394th in climbybike.com’s difficulty rankings, just above Park Lane.

Cadel waiting to catch La Poste

If you were at this height in the UK you’d be on top of a ‘peak’ in a howling gale in a cagoule looking down on creation as if on top of the world. Here, we’d done all that just to get to a car park and some rubbish bins. This leg work however was required to build up the muscles for the big one – and get the head straight about big hills. Big ones go on and on and on so this little col was merely a trifling irritation.

And down the other side...All went well for the first five or six km but then there was an unusual experience. Being four in the afternoon, we were both a bit cream crackered and a wee bit hot and bothered. The road, now the D907, began to level out as the valley developed but with no points of reference the road ahead looked as if it was downhill went in fact it was going uphill and if you looked behind it also looked as if we were coming downhill but the legs and gears told the truth. Eventually we made it to Florac and stocked up at a Carrefour – (Carry foo) before punishing ourselves with a further 3 k uphill on the D998 to Bedoues and the very nice and cheap campsite just over the bridge.
In the early evening sun the stretch of river adjacent to the site was like some impressionist painting – people paddling while others lay across rocks as they basked in the warm late afternoon sun;

a man waded thigh deep as he followed fish about the clear, calm pools; kids fished with bamboo poles and string while couples walked hand in hand along the rough path on the far bank.

We had a couple of beers at a neighbouring site and discussed Ventoux. After the hills and cols of the last two days, the purpose of cycling Ventoux seemed nebulous – was it to endure pain? was it to show off? The first was bankable, the second was deemed vacuous. We could do another big hill tomorrow to take us up to the plateau and we would have had our fill of pain. So we decided to head to the Carmargue instead and take it from there, passing Avignon on the way. We then returned to the tents and the two bottles of Ardeche July 2011 to discuss our excuses some more. What did pain prove? We’ve been up big hills – we’ve been up the biggest. Why do it again? The child, from the tent next door, began crying with the sheer pressure of the questions. Yes. Why bother? 7 euros each at campiste.

Florac to Corbes 40 miles

Florac sounds like some tablet for bowl dysfunction. Or, more obviously, a carpet cleaner or floor treatment but it is in fact a cutesy Cevennes town. We passed through it again – something unheard of in our previous tours - on our way back to pick up the hill to the plateau. We left the 907 at Le Mazel for the 983 which rose 380m in 6k to the col de Rey. There was plenty of traffic on this road that was ideal for showing off: motorbikes leaning into tight bends, Italian job minis, boy racers. The Cevennes is home to several quarries and cementieres – a word I made up – so there are lorries about and the sides of the roads often have a trail of lumpy and hazardous hardened spilled mortar.

The Col des Faisses at 1018 was the high point as the road flattened out across the plateau with spectacular views across valleys. We hurtled down hair pins to Pompidou, a small picturesque village of patchy stucco, friendly foliage and a postcard cafe. It also possessed a ghostly ex-campsite. The road descended rapidly towards St Jean du Gard and soon the Cevennes were beginning to dwindle but for one last hurrah with a steep one up to the charming campsite in Corbes. Camping a la Ferme was Corbes. The grassy pitches, split in two by a small vineyard, were one side of the road while the toilets were on the other.

Corbes

Smatterings of wild mint gave the site a herbidacious aroma but thanks to a kiddies trampoline the barkage was high, the last of the wee brats putting a sock in it around 10pm.

We had tried a campsite further towards Anduz: one with an entrance befitting Graceland. There were bars, shops, restaurants boule pitches and it probably had its own football league, radio station and cemetary. It had the feel of an alien planet as featured in an early Star Trek where everyone smiled all the time whilst hiding a gruesome secret. 7.50 each for ampsitec

Corbes to Villeneuve les Avignon 61 miles

After indulging on one of the many cafes in Anduz we headed east towards the Rhone. In no time at all the Cevennes had receded to be replaced by a flat, hot landscape with farms either side of the road – Renault dealerships and other nefarious warehousing allowing – often with a battery of polytunnels.

flat

We headed over to a ridge via the 982 that passing through Maruejols des Gardon and under the motorway to head south east on the 936 before cutting over to Moussac and another 982 then taking some proper bonefide back roads to get us to Saint Chaptes.

dry

This little town had a thing going down with bulls running around and a big soapy pool event somewhat similar to a wet t shirt competition in the main square – a little bit incestuous by the looks of it. The next village was also running the bulls.

bull

dry

Cycling the flat in the heat with no particoolar kind of view was beginning to get boring. There is nothing to look at except, more often than not, acres of vineyards, fields of dead sunflowers, or the occasional chateau. The days ride was really just a filler to get us to the south but it got so boring I was beginning to miss the hills and their challenges and views. A ridge developed along the 112 to Collias which gave good views across the Rhone valley, and, right in the distance, was Mont Ventoux. Covered with dark green vegetation for most part the top seemed to be snow covered with its notorious sun bleached moonscape summit. Our new plans were vague and mission-less and so before long we began to think about the original plan.
After dropping down from the ridge through Cabrieres we headed east through Bezouce to Meynes coinciding with that time of day when everything starts to be hard work – energy, staying awake, staying interested. The road became straight and boring and the respite of Montfrin was only brief as we got to the Rhone and the dull busy road to Aramon. We’d timed our expectancy to evaporate at Aramon as we expected there to be a campsite but a patrol car gendarme said we’d have to get much nearer Avignon. Water was running out and so that shrewdly saved banana saved the day as we crawled up the Rhone to Villeneuve les Avignon and its very tidy municipal campsite and its very welcome snack bar that did a huge plate of frites for 2 evros.
Over a couple of beers and couple of boot ales de vin we reverted back to plan A.
D and I washed our shorts each day and if they hadn’t dried by the morning they were tied to a bungee to dry on the rack but down in the valley it was roasting and the gear was dry by the morning. 10.50 each for camptise

Villneuve les Avignon to Bedoin 33 miles

We started the day with some faffing. I had left a key piece of kit by the sink somewhere – the handle for the pans and I was sure Decathlon sold them separately. The woman at the campsite told me there was a store in Les Angles which, after a three mile uphill ride, turned out to be untrue. We backtracked then crossed the Rhone on the non-roman pont du Avignon for a brief session of pointing at things before getting directions from the tourist office for a Decathlon that was on our way to Sault. After a scary dual carriage way and a number of very helpful locals we found the cathedral of our sporting dreams but no handle. I asked if we could buy the one on display and was told, very helpfully, no. So we had to buy the kit in which the handle came – all of 7.99 evros – which meant that D could improve his cooking options and that we no longer burned our fingers.
It was already one and we’d covered about 20 miles 6 of which didn’t count. We were going to Sault as that was the starting point of the easiest of the routes up the Mt. Malaucene was the second easiest/hardest of the three but was the furthest to get to. We stopped for an anchovy pizza then sped off in the midday heat through more tame scenery until we caught sight of the big one again,

lurking in the distance and showing more its detail. A trouble with Sault was that it had one campsite and it we’d not get there before 6. After a brief discussion involving all kinds of showy bravado we changed course for Bedoin and the hardest and most notorious route – ‘unrelenting’, ‘11%’, etc etc and its difficulty ranking of 141 and 5-star ratings at cimbbybike. Bedoin reputedly had a vibe about it and had at least six campsites.

one of D's many tour 'poses'

We stocked up at Mazan.

Bedoin
It was four O’clock. You could fry an egg in the air. Two campsites were already full. We looked further afield. Way out on the outskirts of town was a large fenced off site – we couldn’t see in but we could hear the joyful screams and laughter. We suspected it was some kind of center parc affair. D entered the reception just as I noticed the word ‘naturiste’ on a hoarding. As D innocently asked the reception staff dressed in powder blue blouse/skirt combos if they were a campsite we both caught a glimpse of naked bodies wobbling about. The receptionist said it was a naturist camp. D looked around at me and just said: ‘Yeah, OK. You alright with that, Pat?’ She didn’t fall for that one and merely asked us for our Naturiste cards and so we sidled off. Eventually we found a site way out on the other outskirts of town.
The plan was an early night and up at six for a seven O’hundred hours am clock start after an early evening beer just to be polite and to get the vibe. We sat in the sun outside the main event and watched lycra clad road bikers cruising about.

After a while a man, incongruous in his non lycra shorts, ran down the hill and came to a weary stop in front of us. He bent over, gulped some air and looked at his watch while his wife came to him with a towel. They came and sat at the adjacent table. Turns out he had just run 60km over 10 hours and the summit of Ventoux. 7 euros each at catsimpe

Bedoin to Robion 55 miles

Thanks to the Tour de France this Mt has been bigged up and especially because of Tom Simpson it is a legend. There are three acts in the 22 km on the D974. The first stretch, and that is all it does, is a red herring of 5.6km to the little hamlet of Saint Esteve. An easy gradient and nice views – very pleasant. Then, just out of Saint Esteve is a hairpin and that is it – bend after bend averaging over 10% through a featureless forest – rising 1000m in 9.4 km - until reaching the Chalet Reynard. Through the forest I fell in fifty metres behind a young un and focusing on his back wheel kept my mind off stopping for a bun. Once you stop for a bun then you have a precedent for stopping again and before you know it you’ll be setting up camp. So just keep going. The remaining 500m takes over 6km but in a barren landscape of fist sized rocks bleached by the sun. Words of encouragement and the names of Tour riders often cover the road particularly on short steep rises.

Once out of the forest I caught glimpses of the summit and the TV tower but around the next bend it was shrouded in cloud.

D and his weight advantage were way ahead of me. We’d left the signpost in the town at 7.25 and it was nine and so I was beginning to wane. I stopped for a minute just before the Chalet Reynard, which was just opening for business, to ram in two pain au chocolate. The easy route from Sault joins the road at the cafe. Until then there had been few cyclists and cars but now I was getting passed as if I was on a Brompton with stabilizers.

I caught up with a pair of anglos. One had ridiculously low gears and his feet were flying around for each yard he covered. The other guy had already reached to the top and had come back down to go back up with his buddy. I stopped at Tom Simpson’s memorial – very much near the top but further on there is a much smaller plaque for another cyclist who died in1984 while another British cyclist died after a crash while descending in 2003.

I made it to the top and souvenir stalls at 10.10 – taking about 2 hours 40.

D had already made himself at home at the lower coffee bar having arrived 20 minutes before.

The views are amazing as the mountain stands by itself, estranged from the Alps. The wind was not the fearsome force that the Ventoux is notorious for. The summit is understandably a tourist trap so you have to keep an eye open for all manner of motorised stuff.
The way down. No as spectacularly fast as some as there a fewer hairpins. By now it was 11am and all and sundry were on the 974 – walkers, loaed up tourers, roller skaters (going up), runners, nutters on BMX style bikes in sandals.

There were people nearer the bottom already wlaking with a pined expression – the heat was building so anyone leaving after 10 was going to be on the receiving end when they eventually left the forest. I got down in 45 minutes as I was stopping for photo opps and there were a fair number of idiot drivers taking bends to widely or overtaking as they careered up.

If you are a complete idiot you can attempt to join Les Cinglés du Mont Ventoux. To be accepted you have to do all three ascents in one day – a total of 4500m climbing and 136km in distance. You are allowed to start early and use lights but you must get a card stamped by the various cafes and the like on the routes that double as control points. Duh.
I got back to the campsite to pack up the tent. D had been there 20 minutes already. Then omelette and chips at a cafe in the town. We had one and a half days left and decided on a wee bit of Provence and headed towards Robion for some more hill work in the Luberon, a ridge in Provence and a cyclist magnet.
The campsite was boiling but had a cool pool though barkage was high with shrieking and splashing. We signed up for the communal meal of moules et frites special, did a few beers and a bottle of wine and the big day was over. 10.50 each for the capstime.

Robion to Marseilles 54 miles

We snuck out round about noon and took quiet roads towards Bonneaux going through well the preserved fancy dan villages of Maubec, Oppede and Menerbes.

This patch could easily be twinned with the Cotswolds. ‘Delightful’, ‘Charming’ etc. Bonneaux clings to a ridge with its castle dominating the valley. 7 euros for two cwaffees and Range rovers and BMW 4x4 jockeyed for parking space into the narrow streets.
From Bonneaux we headed directly south to Cadenet, crossed the Durance, a river we’d followed in the Alps through Briancon a few years back. Then south again, then west across to Lambesc before one final graveyard shift.

another pose: 'Mercx'

Once again we’d managed to find a long straight featureless ride, this time through a forest above Marseilles. I was trying to get to Marignane, the airport, without getting tangled up in an elaborate motorway system and the like. At Coudoux we went south to Velaux for the D20 and signposts to Rognac. The D20 managed to squeeze itself between the A7 and the etang and took us to Vitrolles in the Marseilles suburbs and lo and behold there were signposts to the aeroporto. Marseilles in France’s second city but possesses the airport of somewhere like Norwich as there were just a few people wondering about in the cavernous Hall 1 while waiting for an occasional plane. We packed up the bikes and bags, deciding again to pay for the extra bag, and waited a couple of hours for the midnight flight. We’d saved a bottle of wine from the night before and which had been up and down all the hills with us during the day. We knocked that back in the balmy evening air of the short-stay car park. And back to Gatwick which was experiencing its normal rush hour of charter flights and home to 24 hours supermarkets.

417 miles

Cycling Les Cevennes and Mt Ventoux