Wow wow wow. It’s been a long time since we had this kind of triple
wow moment! But yes, it happened several times over the past days, in the Ardeche décor! The last days have been
wonderful; read on. Warning: many pictures included!
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| Leaving in the morning, gently downhill, blue sky, impressive view. A great start of the day! |
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| Classic... Does this qualify as a selfie? |
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| OK, a bit of sustainability talk here. In France, farmers wrap straw/hay in such plastic sheets. Meters and meters of plastic, which will be thrown away afterwards. There is so much going on about plastic drinking straws, plates, cutlery and bags, but I wonder how much such small items we need to save in order to make up for this. There must be more sustainable options, other materials or reusable wraps? |
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| On the other hand, France is very clean, there is almost no litter on the side of the roads - or anywhere for that matter - better than anywhere we've cycled so far. You can see there is a lot of awareness too: this is a signboard at a roadside picnic stop. |
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| The smallest villages has garbage sorting facilities, again this is an example from the same roadside stop. While the first priority is to reduce garbage, next is to recycle properly... |
Our departure from Le-Bouchet-Saint-Nicolas was already
really nice. It went downhill for a while, through beautiful landscapes with
mountain views. After 5km or so the road went a bit up and down, until we came
to an unsealed road. It happens, when using Google Maps or maps.me to plan the route, and usually
we avoid these unsealed roads as they often lead to trails that are not
suitable for loaded tourbikes. This time we decided to go for it, it looked like
a big enough unsealed road, and it went slightly downhill as well – meaning that
it’s easier to ride than if you have to push up on a technical surface. The unsealed
road became a grassy road. The grassy road became a grassy single track. The
grassy single track became overgrown; all the while going down – but we knew it
could only be a few 100m until we reached the road again. At some point, we
came to an impressive viewpoint, from where we saw the Allier gorge below us. What
we also saw: the one and only bridge across the gorge - which we were supposed to cross - was under renovation, definitely no
passing through! So we had 2 options: backtracking on this difficult trail, or
continuing a few more 100m downhill until we reached the road and then riding up
again from there. We did the latter, continued the few 100m – the overgrown
grassy single track became rocky too, to the extent we had to walk our bikes
down. Once at the road, we enjoyed the scenery for a while, and then started
cycling up – 350m total uphill to the town of Pradelles. By the time we got there, we
had done 30km – it should have been only 20km to Pradelles if we had chosen a direct way (we weren't planning to pass that way, instead should have had a direct route to Langogne)… BUT: it had been incredibly beautiful and fun riding!!!
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| Just grassy road here, still passable. |
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| The Allier gorge down below |
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| The part where cycling became impossible... |
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| Once back on the road below, we enjoyed the scenery for a while, before starting the climb... |
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| A view over the town of Pradelles |
Pradelles was a surpisingly beautiful little town, we
enjoyed riding through it, and then went downhill again towards Langogne from
where we rode further on the D906. Oh wow, this was already so beautiful! At
some point, at La Bastide, we enjoyed a cold drink and then went on the D4
direction Saint-Laurent-Les-Bains. We climbed a bit, up to 1150m again (we have probably climbed 700-800m in total this day), passed
the “Our Lady of the Snow” pass, and then rolled down to 720m where we stayed at
a beautiful, very natural campground, Le Ceytrou.
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| Once at the "Our Lady of the Snow" pass, our descent started. Luckily no snow, thank you lady... |
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| The road below, where we'd fly down later on. |
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| Campground Le Ceytrou, not bad; not bad at all! |
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| And the long, challenging but incredibly beautiful climb |
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| Oh yes |
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| Arrival at the pass (Chap Del Bosc), at 1169m |
The descent towards the campground the first day was fun, but there was a catch: Le Ceytrou is at
the lowest point of the road, from there we had to climb back to 1170m – and most
of that was at a percentage of at least 7-8%! So we started the day with a long and
steep climb, which went really fine – better than expected even. Once we
reached the mountain pass at 1170m, it was an incredible ride down to Les Vans:
28km of mostly gently and magnificent downhill!!! OK, we had a few more short climbs and in
total actually crossed 3 passes, but these climbs were just bumps… The entire
ride on the D4, from La Bastide until Les Vans (on the D10 at then end), was just incredibly wow!!!
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| Impossible not to be impressed with this scenery - especially on a bicycle |
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| More of the good stuff! |
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| Anyone interested? |
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| Yes, we both loved this ride! |
In Les Vans we stopped for a cold drink, and the moment we
stopped our bicycles, out of the blue Dirk and Linda – from the stay at La
Chaise Dieu – appeared! They had taken another route to Les Vans, and arrived exactly at the same time. Nice surprise, and we obviously had a drink together.
They stayed in Les Vans, we continued to “Mazet Plage”, a place at the edge of
the Chassezac river, close to the canyon. Ellen had been here with her parents
and siblings almost 40 years ago (at the very campground we’re staying now), so
it was good fun to visit again! Even the arrival at this place, on the D252 – just
a few kms – was incredibly magnificent.
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| View into the Chassezac canyon from close to where we stay, at Mazet Plage |
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| Incredible scenery on our hike |
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| And wow, what a view over the canyon! For reference: the yellow dots below are canoes! |
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| Just to enjoy |
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| And one more... |
We took a day off from cycling today;
from here, we only have about 100km to go until our destination this Friday,
near Avignon, where we will meet up with Jan and Christine. So the real big
riding is over (after almost 1300km), and we’ll be enjoying some easy days for the rest of the week,
visiting some nice places in this region.
