Dieppe to Nice - Part Three

Tuesday 17th August

Today was my first full day in the Alps - in the mountains. It was also my first day where I cycled the whole time non stop. The stage began at Aix les bains and finished in Grenoble. The total ride was about 57 miles. It was slightly longer than I’d expected. I’d calculated it at around 51 miles so was abit longer than planned, buy I didn’t mind. It was fine. Good news. The weather was fine. We had wall-to-wall sunshine. It even got rather hot at times. So I started at Aix les Bains. The youth hostel was basically in a complex known as the Grand Port near the Lac du Bourget and basically the ride started by using the cycle path that has been specially built around the lake. It’s a really good cycle path that I’d recommend. It goes all around the Lac du Bourget and in fact I didn’t go all the way round as I was going to Chambery. There’s a special cycle path from Aix les Bains to Chambery and there were lots of cyclists out. Lots of people out just doing sport in general. It seems a very sporty part of the world. In the town of Aix les Bains I didn’t take any photos of the town. It’s not because there was nothing to photograph. It is actually a very pretty town. There’s definitely a spa feeling about it. It reminded me a little bit of Bath. There are lots of regal buildings and various buildings offering cures and thermal treatments of all types. There’s also quite a lot of reference to Queen Victoria who I believe came to Aix les Bains a lot in her later years.

The ride from Aix les Bains to Chambery was very straight forward. It was along a specially made cycle path that is signposted. You can’t get lost on it. It’s very pleasant and there are lots of people are out using it. I then arrived in Chambery which is an old picturesque town. I spent quite a lot of time taking photos there. Shortly after Chambery I took the uphill road to get me up to Belle vue which took me up to La Massif de la Chartreuse. That was my first trip into the mountains. I went over the first col – the col du Granier at 1034m. I thought this would be easy enough. It was still quite a shock to the system. I also did the col du Cucheron (1139m) and the last climb of the day was col de Porte at 1326m. All were one after the other. There wasn’t any long flat section in between. I literally went up one, down the other side and then straight up into the next climb, and passing a village which would also be on a hill. There were a lot of villages called Entremont or entremont le vieux, st Pierre Entremont, St Filibert Entremont, then St Pierre de Chartreuse. They all seemed to roll into one! The one thing I remember was that all of them required a very fast descent to get into these villages and a very steep climb to get out of them. My brakes were really tested today. I’m using the cantilever brakes on the cyclo cross bike and so they are not quite as powerful as the brakes I normally use and also given I’ve got this extra load I don’t want to pick up too much speed when going round corners. Luckily the road surfaces are dry so there’s no real problem with braking, but in the wet it could be treacherous and I’d probably need to be careful about the way that I brake. The rear pads are probably quite worn, especially from the really fast descent from col de Porte right into the heart of Grenoble. That was one of the best descents I’ve ever done. Basically the last 18km of the ride was just down a fast twisty descent and it was brilliant because I could see Grenoble right below me and I could see the town getting nearer and nearer to me.

Grenoble town centre is quite spread out and the central area has lots of old squares. I must admit I still couldn’t get my bearings in Grenoble so I don’t really know where I was most of the time. I was just in lots of little squares, then I found myself in one quite big square with lots of restaurants and churches. I think it’s a very nice town. It has a good feel about it. It is also a university town so there are lots of young people around. The area that the youth hostel is, is in a suburban area called Echirolles, which has a lot of out-of-town shopping centres and hypermarkets. There’s a bowling alley and multiplex cinemas, so it’s a bit like Purley Way in Croydon, or Brent Cross in North London. The youth hostel itself is one of the best hostels you could stay in. It was nicer than the one in Paris and the one in Aix les Bains. There are a lot of facilities. There’s a tram system in Grenoble, which I used abit. That was all fairly straightforward, and there was an integrated bus service.

In terms of how I feel, my legs are feeling the miles now – especially my thighs, which are slightly sore. In fact my back is aching, which is slightly worrying. I have had back ache before when riding the cyclo cross bike before, but I thought it was because it’s cyclocross and I wasn’t used to it. But I think now that perhaps it was all the climbing – just going from one climb to the next without any real break in terms in riding through a valley or flat section. Some of the gradients were quite steep, especially the last two climbs and maybe I should have got out of the saddle more. One thing I have to say is no matter how hard I try to keep my luggage to a minimum thinking “oh this weight is ok, this doesn’t weigh much,” invariably I arrive abroad and I begin to wish I didn’t have this much to carry. I certainly was thinking that today. The one thing I am looking forward to is this weekend when we ride to the Gorges du Verdon I will definitely get rid of some of the stuff and leave it somewhere – be it the hotel or a left luggage place. It would be nice to get the feeling again of doing long ride without all this baggage!

What have I got for tomorrow? Effectively a main road! Ok it’s a pretty main road – the one that goes from Grenoble, passing Vizille through the Bourg d’Oisan ( a haunt from my Marmotte days), all the way through to Briancon.

Recap on mileages

Day 1 – Dieppe to Gisors (65 miles)
Day 2 – Laumiere to Dijon (42 miles)
Day 3 – Chalon sur Saone to Bourg en Bresse (53 miles)
Day 4 – Bourg en Bresse to Amberieu en Buguey (20 miles)
Day 5 – Aix les Bains to Grenoble (57 miles)


Wednesday 18th August

The stage today was to ride from Grenoble to Briancon (or to near Briancon) so I’d now reached my destination which is at La Salle les Alpes, aka Serre Chevalier 1400. At the youth hostel the ride involved basically sticking to one road, which was the D1091 from south of Grenoble all the way to Serre Chevalier. The road was fairly busy at the start with trucks and with holiday makers but as I progressed there was less traffic and towards the end it subsided quite a lot apart from people who had gone up to admire the views on the col du Lautaret and also a number of motorbikers. The N91 seems to be quite a popular with motor cyclists and possibly people riding the Route des Grandes Alpes. There are also a lot of Italians that come over as this road takes people straight over the col du Montgenevre to Sestriere in Italy. The actual profile of the road was quite tough, although it was a main road. I think I spent most of the ride going uphill! So riding from Grenoble uphill to reach the summit around Sechilienne and Gavet and Livet, then a small descent into Bourg d’Oisans. The road flattened a bit at Le Bourg d’Oisans but then shortly after it began to climb and in fact from the turn off to La Berarde and St Christophe en Oisans I was just going constantly uphill – sometimes quite steeply, especially around the area of le Freney en Oisans and the Barrage du Chambon and it just went uphill all the way to La Grave. Just when I was beginning to think, ok things are levelling off here I can have a breather, then I had to tackle the col du Lautaret!

I had to ride up the col du Lautaret. For some reason I thought, oh this climb is not that difficult – it’s just a false flat. It probably was a false flat, but it felt very much like hard work for me because I had already, by then, ridden about 40 miles mostly uphill. It was towards the end of the day, I was tired, and it was the first time during the trip that I was riding up to any significant altitude so I was really feeling it. I’m not sure what my average speed was but I don’t think it was much more than 3 or 4 miles an hour! I was riding very slowly. Also my back was aching. In fact my back has been aching since yesterday when I did the first few cols, which is abit of a shame. I’m not sure of the reason why. Maybe it was the bike set-up, maybe the panniers. I don’t recall having a bad bike like this at all apart from once when I had to carry a rucksack. I wasn’t carrying any rucksack today so I’m not sure of the reason, so this is putting a bit of a downer on the trip.

Tomorrow I’m meant to go up the col d’Izoard and the col du Vars to get towards Barcelonnette, but I’ll see how I feel. One alternative might be to take the main road, which will be less hilly – at least it won’t involve riding up a col, or another alternative may be to catch a bus for part of the route and then do the last bit by bicycle and also end my day abit earlier. One of the annoying things about this trip is that my days have been ending quite late. Today I probably won’t go to bed before midnight and then I’ll be up early. I’ve been spending long days in the saddle and not getting as much rest as I should. So the aim for tomorrow will be to try and finish the day early. So I’ll probably just wake up and leave very early. Get dressed and leave straight after breakfast and be out of the door by 9am and see how far I get. I really would like to ride those cols though, so if I can do that then I will. But it’s true to say that in terms of the actual ride and the schedule the rides are getting more serious because I’ve got the col du Vars and the col d’Izoard tomorrow and the day after that I’ve got the col de la Bonnette if it’s open and the day after that, and the day after that I have a number of other cols to get me to Saint Sauveur, so I do need to just be careful of how I go.

Particularly memorable things about this trip:

The peaks – there’s definitely a difference between today’s peaks and the peaks yesterday over the Chartreuse valley. The peaks yesterday looked impressive. They were green peaks and you could still see trees at the top as the altitude was not so high. Whereas South of Grenoble you hit onto the area known as the Parc National des Ecrins and certainly you see rocky peaks that are very eroded and it was quite impressive. Now I’m seeing peaks that have permanent snow on them. Some peaks are very jagged and look majestic and imposing around the Briancon area. I imagine when riding tomorrow I’ll get a closer view of them. Hopefully the weather will be better. So far the weather has been fairly hit and miss. Yesterday was probably the nicest day weatherwise. We had wall to wall sunshine and in Grenoble town centre it was very warm. But today although the forecast said it would be sunny and dry they only got half of that right. It was dry but it wasn’t sunny. It wasn’t that warm either and towards the end of the day it even began to rain quite heavily in the Briancon area. So if the weather is fine tomorrow it would be a really nice ride. However if the weather is not good that will give me more of a reason to catch a bus and not go over the col d’Izoard.