You've got to love the French ! After having spent 3 days in our apartment and having upturned everything except the floorboards to find our apartments missing cutlery I kindly informed our B&B owner on departure that she should tell her incoming cleaning to replace the missing set ! "No" said the owner on the phone "the cutlery is there right next to the toaster" - "no it isn't" i said "the 4 of us have looked everywhere" - "no" said the owner "I was in 3 days ago and the cutlery was" ... this could have gone on forever so I simply said Au Revoir and hung up just so we could get the hell out of town !
We were finally about to get underway from Malaucene when I noticed that my rear wheel (the one on which the brake pads were replaced yesterday) was retarding i.e.when spun it was pulling up in one revolution indicating that my brake pads were catching because the bike shop mechanic had failed to reset the pistons !
Two things came immediately to mind 1) That I'd probably done 11 kms on Ventoux yesterday with a dodgy rear wheel - some here points coming my way I'm sure ! 2) That I was now faced with riding todays long distance with said wheel not working effectively unless somehow my disc pads wore down sufficiently on the way to free up movement !
Needing to get going and with France's unpredictable Sunday shop opening hours (read almost any day of the week!) we stocked up at the towns supermarket and finally hit the road.
We initially tracked back down the same route we'd ridden into Malaucene on a beautiful Sunday morning, before heading across country to Venosque where some real serious climbing started.
Climbing out of the steep river valley past the designated "Beautiful Town" we picked up a road that ran for 5kms through a steeply wooded gorge. Based on the gears we were in and Henley's level of groaning I'd suggest the gradient was a good 8-10%. To say it was steep here was an understatement and Rick soon powered away leaving the rest of us in his wake !
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| It's steep ! |
Exiting the gorge we took lunch making do with our supermarket supplies sitting down under the trees.
After lunch we headed further into the Luberon National Park with a bit of descending combined with lots more climbing ! We took in a round of cokes at some small village bumping into some touring cyclists from the Netherlands who'd conquered Ventoux the day before.
Descending again our route took us into Apt where we picked up the beautiful Luberon Rail trail going around the city itself and out into the countryside. At the end of the trail which finished strangely in the middle of a field H & self trailing behind turned right not seeing Rick and Noel hiding (I'm sure deliberately !) in the shade only 20 metres away proceeding to do 1/2 km more the wrong way before Noel chased us down !
Pulling off near Cereste, Rick consulting his map nearly became our first casualty on tour when he failed to notice a fast turning car coming his way. Luckily the car braked. Based on the amount of French words thrown out the window at Rick I'm sure the driver apologised and asked Rick about this weekends winning Tattslotto numbers before he sped off !
Climbing into Cereste was a bum buster where we collapsed in the main street until Noel noticed a nearby cafe selling ice cream and Rick raced off to order 4 cokes for the group !
Back on our main and unpleasant busy narrow main road we finally turned off to Manosque and went straight into a tough 5km climb before pulling up for our typical Col "shot" and then flying 10kms downhill on a winding road.
Manosque was not the greatest looking of towns and I was really beginning to sag having ridden the days 100km with my "wheel"!. Rick though guided us expertly through the industrial part of town to our unstaffed hotel on the outskirts where we sagged at the front door while we worked out how to use our acess codes to gain entry !
Finally inside and with bikes stored in our rooms, we lucked in when we found out that there was a Chinese all you can eat buffet restaurant within crawling distance from our hotel! After a tough day with this was a god send to 4 very hungry men. Not only did we have 2-3 plates each but gorged on the deserts with unlimited ice cream and mousse. We were well and truly stuffed but 4 very happy people after a really tough day with so much climbing (1550 metres) !
Our last action before retiring was to go back to our room to do some much needed surgery on my back wheel. Thanks to Rick and Noel i can report that the patient survived the operation and i now have a wheel that turns the way it should !
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