Serendipitous stormy days
I'll be honest with you... I was unimpressed with Dijon: the streets were full of traffic, it was smelly, the cathedral was only marginally more inspiring than a flattened hedgehog and, to cap it all, the only mustard available to put in my junk food baguette (all that was available at that time) was English. I have a sneaking suspicion that Dijon's treasures, and indeed mustard, lie in spending a couple of days there and having time to penetrate the walls of the undoubtedly interesting buildings that exist there.
There was one thing which I really did like however, and this was the case throughout the local area: many of their public buildings and larger houses have colourful glazed tile roofs in the most extraordinarily fun patterns. It certainly makes a change from double roman tiles or slate which until now has been the standard.
We left Dijon without further ado on route for Dole. There was clearly a shift in the weather pattern in the air as an East wind was slicing its way across the wheat fields making it decidedly difficult to make much headway. The fields gave way to the suburbs of Auxonne, a delightful little town where we stopped for an invigorating drink boost - we have discovered grapefruit juice mixed with red orange to be an excellent energy drink (or you could stick with carrot, banana and extract of rubber band or whatever Dr. Atkins recommends these days).
Dole didn't commend itself to us terribly well in the evening as we hadn't been through the middle, but after his evening constitutional walk, James announced that it was quite pretty actually. Personally I was most interested in getting my washing done, but that would have to wait for the morning.
The laundry was, fortunately, not closed for the holidays (which is just as well as even the clean clothes were beginning to smell a little dubious!). Rain had been forecast, and as we got to the laundry it arrived. Most of the town had been caught unawares and were hurrying back to their cars in an attempt to keep their freshly baked baguettes from going floppy: it seems the French, like the English, take just as little notice of what their forecasters say and prefer to chance it.
Just as we were leaving, Dole showed us its handsome face in the form of some lovely public buildings along the hill from where we were staying. The road out from Dole was delightful and passed through poplar plantations containing more mistletoe per square foot (sorry, metre) than I've ever seen. After passing the official scouts 'pétanque' centre, we stopped at a 'brasserie' for lunch. We were astounded to find a 4 course meal plus coffee and wine for the equivalent of £8. It seemed to good to be true. It was: but on the bright side what a fantastic way to use up appalling cuts of beef and any stale bread or cheese left over from last nights customers!
Poligny was a charming little town, with more Dijonnaise glazed roofs and a lot of tourists. Perhaps they correllate? We were by now nearing lake Geneva, and with this rise in tourism, there was an anticipated rise in prices. We were required to rise, also, to the challenge of a 350m climb in altitude, our biggest yet. It was quite tough but we made it in the end (just as well - the alpine climb would be over 2000m). There is a delightful hotel at the top of this hill which I recommend anyone with a spare £150 knocking around to consider visiting. We didn't, but we took the opportunity to fill up on water and I tried to explain to the proprietress the rather problematic differences between anglicanism, catholocism, anglo-catholicism, low-church...
Champagnole looked nice, but we shot through as we wanted to get a little further and complete the 500m climb to St. Laurent. It was all going very well until, arriving at the top of the steep bit of the climb, the storm looked like it was about to break. Ominous signs stared to appear such as drivers, in really very wet cars, with their lights on, frantically gesturing or us to turn back. No way! There was bound to be a hotel along the road. There was.
We pulled up to find it full. Or rather, they were waiting for the last people to arrive in a couple of minutes, so we could wait to see if they came or not. They did. The hotel receptionist tried the other hotel within 6 km, but it was full. Then something rather unexpected happened. The couple who were to have the last room came downstairs and, after asking the price of the room, decided to leave. We took the room, which turned out to be enormous, with elaborate french furniture, chintz and a 1970's television and I fixed my second bathroom of the trip (again, plug problems), always a recurring theme on these trips.
The storm broke.
Over supper, we watched a vicious thunder storm mercilessly lash the mountain and thought how different things could have been if we'd been left out in the cold that night. It was by far the best meal of the trip, my lamb cooked to perfection, James' trout a real dream (apparently).
After a rather un-pilgrimesque sleep-bonanza owing to some jolly comfy beds, we set off in the morning for St. Laurent, where we stopped for some breakfast. We had, before leaving, taken a coffee on the sunny hotel terrace, as we watched fishermen cast their lines into the little mountain stream. The route towards Lake Geneva took us over our first mountain. At 1250m it was only a baby really, but the climb was still tough, since our legs were still adapting from the endless corn plains of the north. The ascent started in earnest at Morez, which appeared to be the international home of ophthalmic clinicians in case you wanted to know.
Within a kilometre of the summit it became more and more evident that we were in fact being chased by a thunder storm. The first spatters of rain appeared. We pedalled faster trying to outrun the beast. Finally we got to Les Rousses, where we found a restaurant to hole up for the storm. Again, we had miraculously escaped a drenching by seconds, since as our salads appeared, the thunder rain arrived.
We bade farewell briefly to France and crossed into Switzerland where we reached the summit and began the rapid descent to Nyon on Lake Geneva. The view from the top was slightly disappointing as we should have been able to see all the way from Geneva to Lausanne. Sadly the area was heavily forested, but the views across the lake were amazing when they appeared.
Descending the 700m to the lake, we found the ferry to Yvoire, and after a bit of persuading got them to let us on with our bikes. We chatted merrily about beer cafes with the captain, who disconcertingly looked out at where he was going rather infrequently as he steered the boat nonchalently across 'Le Leman'.
Back in France again, and we found it almost impossible to push our bikes through the throng of tourists that were justiiably in Yvoire, a fabulously well preserved, but hence now utterly spoilt, traditional little fishing village. The road along the lake was busy and rather dangerous. Eventually we found a hotel (after chasing a few phantom ones first) on the main road through an industrial estate between Thonon and Evian (where they bottle the local tap water). It was back to reality tonight - lumpy beds, a tiny room and a loo/shower on the floor below. Kindly, the hotel had thought to put a bidet in the middle of the room.
It would be a complete lie to say that Day 13 was anything remotely close to difficult. Starting out fairly early with the intention of visiting the tourist office in Evian we cycled the 3km that were necessary to achieve this. James went in search of breakfast whilst I went to book a hotel somewhere up the Great St. Bernard pass in the alps. Being French the tourist office wasn't really allowed to help me ind accommodation in Switzerland but they were kind enough to give me some numbers and let me buy a phone card. After a pain au chocolat I felt prepared to talk to the Swiss on the phone. Procurement of a hotel turned out to be unexpectedly easy - whereas the pass I had used in Spain 2 years ago had had no hotels at all here there appeared to be loads. I booked one, fairly arbitrarily.
After using up the remaining credit on the phone card, we set off along the lake, past the evian bottling plant which looked like it was leaking as the lawn sprinklers were on, and eventually came to the Swiss border. Stopping for our last French coffee we took a final look at France and then skipped into Switerland for the second time in the same number of days.
The novelty of Swiss Francs suddenly dawned on us (we hadn't needed to buy anything Swiss yesterday) and so I visited the bank. It was at this point that I realised I had absolutely no idea what the exchange rate was. The bank was shut for lunch but the cash machine allowed me to take out various values between 50 and 500 francs. Out of sheer curiousity we opted for 200 and decided to see how far it would take us. I still don't know what the exchange rate was, but I have a suspicion that Switerland lived up to its reputation as a rather expensive place.
We followed the surprisingly industrial but nonetheless stunning Haute-Rhone valley south towards Italy. Stopping in a little village called Vionnaz because we liked the church tower, James discovered that he had lost a screw from his cleat (the metal thing that attaches your shoe to the pedal). I had fallen to talking to a young boy who was, I suspect at the instigation of his mother, helping Dad clear out the garage. He was, like all 12 year olds, fascinated by the bikes.
Ever the optimist, James suggested I ask the father whether he might happen to have an appropriate screw. Ever the pessimist, against my suspicions, I did (bear in mind that this screw is a specialist piece of equipment, allen key controlled, only a centimetre long, bevilled... this was a longshot in the extreme). About 5 minutes later the father returned with an older gentleman and a new screw. We reattached James' foot. I will probably never know if there is someone giving us a helping hand on this trip or not but serendipitous occurrences like this, and finding hotel rooms miraculously vacated etc. certainly give one hope. But on this occasion it didn't stop there. We wanted to visit the church. Was it open, the old man asked? But of course, the father's wife was the person who held the key!
In fact the church was pleasant, but of no great architectural or design value. Nonetheless the tower was really fun and the view spectacular back towards the lake, with the sun lighting the hills. We promised to write a postcard to them when we arrived. It was after all the least we could do.
The route to Martigny was pleasant enough with a tail wind and we avoided any storms that were forecast. We stopped at a 'tea house' in which the waitress, when asked what types of tea she sold was genuinely puzzled and answered 'hot and peach', and then commenced the first part of the climb to Orsières where our hotel would be for the night. This looked quite tough on the map and we were expecting a tricky climb at the end of the day. However in reality the climb would truly begin the next day. We were glad however to get 400m of the climb to the summit out of the way and slept passably in our rickety hotel run by a man who appeared not to be a fluent speaker of either Italian German or French but maintained he was infact Swiss French... hmm an accentual issue perhaps?
It was judgement day, so to speak. Had we picked up enough latent fitness to get to the top of the Col du Grand Saint Bernard. Equipped with the cuddly St. Bernard dog (called Bernie obviously) which the hotelier had kindly given us to help us out, we set off after talking to 2 german motorcycling couples who were also heading to Aosta today. It was 10am. The sun was trying valiently to push out of the way the clouds capping the steep sides of the valley, and as predicted by the flurry of arrows pointing up the road on my map, it was fairly tough going.
We acheived the first 400m of altitude without stopping, and took our first break (other than for photos etc.) at Rive Haute. The views were stunning and James in particular was excited by them, being very much a mountain person - much photo snapping occurred. There was little sign of the rain storms we had last night on arrival (close escape yet again!) and so we continued. The road flattened out somewhat (to just 1 in 20(!)) between Liddes and the entrance to the tunnel which takes the main road through the mountain. Just above the reservoir, with the valley sides narrowing rapidly, we left the main road and started the extremely steep 6.5km climb to the pass. It was tiring work. Up till now we had both been surprised at how easy the climb had been. This was Tough (with a big 'T').
Passing cars and motorcycles shouted encouraging remarks and cyclists passed on helpful comments like 'only 2 kilometres to go...' James turned out to have great ability when it came to cycling up the steep bits, sticking in a low gear at a slow speed and just plugging on. I was I confess having the odd problem with the really steep bits. In fact my knee decided it was time to pack it in about two kilometres from the summit. Even James was reduced to walking though for a fair share of the last section - it was, put simply, uncyclable.
We scored the ascent 3-1 to us: the mountain had definitely scored a point at the end where we had to walk but it wasn't enough to stop us getting there. We had done it. I can't tell you how happy we were. Americans might have yelped, high fived, who knows what. We British pilgrims, at 2473m up, took a photo and forced a conversation on an English family who were trying to leave.
Panoramic views from the top forced James back into overexcited camera mode. We went up to the tourist centre, and got a few postcards. Our search for lunch was interrupted by the news that storms were imminently forecast. I popped my head into the delightful church at the hermitage at the pass to find that James had set off down the hill looking for the church. I caught him up 2 miles into Italy and we rushed off down the mountainside. It really was astonishingly steep, if not to mention the act that it was rather fun too!
We were both genuinely surprised at how much we had climbed - the road just kept on descending. We stopped or a brief coffee as a storm passed overhead and then we were chased all the way to Aosta by another fat grey cloud. We could see the sheets of rain behind us.
Aosta turned out to be quite a nice place: the sort of place that all of Italy comes to on holiday at least. We found a hotel outside the city walls and after a brief shower went in search of an internet cafe: we are currently sat in a smoky Pool/snooker bar. James is researching hotels. I am hungry.
There was one thing which I really did like however, and this was the case throughout the local area: many of their public buildings and larger houses have colourful glazed tile roofs in the most extraordinarily fun patterns. It certainly makes a change from double roman tiles or slate which until now has been the standard.
We left Dijon without further ado on route for Dole. There was clearly a shift in the weather pattern in the air as an East wind was slicing its way across the wheat fields making it decidedly difficult to make much headway. The fields gave way to the suburbs of Auxonne, a delightful little town where we stopped for an invigorating drink boost - we have discovered grapefruit juice mixed with red orange to be an excellent energy drink (or you could stick with carrot, banana and extract of rubber band or whatever Dr. Atkins recommends these days).
Dole didn't commend itself to us terribly well in the evening as we hadn't been through the middle, but after his evening constitutional walk, James announced that it was quite pretty actually. Personally I was most interested in getting my washing done, but that would have to wait for the morning.
The laundry was, fortunately, not closed for the holidays (which is just as well as even the clean clothes were beginning to smell a little dubious!). Rain had been forecast, and as we got to the laundry it arrived. Most of the town had been caught unawares and were hurrying back to their cars in an attempt to keep their freshly baked baguettes from going floppy: it seems the French, like the English, take just as little notice of what their forecasters say and prefer to chance it.
Just as we were leaving, Dole showed us its handsome face in the form of some lovely public buildings along the hill from where we were staying. The road out from Dole was delightful and passed through poplar plantations containing more mistletoe per square foot (sorry, metre) than I've ever seen. After passing the official scouts 'pétanque' centre, we stopped at a 'brasserie' for lunch. We were astounded to find a 4 course meal plus coffee and wine for the equivalent of £8. It seemed to good to be true. It was: but on the bright side what a fantastic way to use up appalling cuts of beef and any stale bread or cheese left over from last nights customers!
Poligny was a charming little town, with more Dijonnaise glazed roofs and a lot of tourists. Perhaps they correllate? We were by now nearing lake Geneva, and with this rise in tourism, there was an anticipated rise in prices. We were required to rise, also, to the challenge of a 350m climb in altitude, our biggest yet. It was quite tough but we made it in the end (just as well - the alpine climb would be over 2000m). There is a delightful hotel at the top of this hill which I recommend anyone with a spare £150 knocking around to consider visiting. We didn't, but we took the opportunity to fill up on water and I tried to explain to the proprietress the rather problematic differences between anglicanism, catholocism, anglo-catholicism, low-church...
Champagnole looked nice, but we shot through as we wanted to get a little further and complete the 500m climb to St. Laurent. It was all going very well until, arriving at the top of the steep bit of the climb, the storm looked like it was about to break. Ominous signs stared to appear such as drivers, in really very wet cars, with their lights on, frantically gesturing or us to turn back. No way! There was bound to be a hotel along the road. There was.
We pulled up to find it full. Or rather, they were waiting for the last people to arrive in a couple of minutes, so we could wait to see if they came or not. They did. The hotel receptionist tried the other hotel within 6 km, but it was full. Then something rather unexpected happened. The couple who were to have the last room came downstairs and, after asking the price of the room, decided to leave. We took the room, which turned out to be enormous, with elaborate french furniture, chintz and a 1970's television and I fixed my second bathroom of the trip (again, plug problems), always a recurring theme on these trips.
The storm broke.
Over supper, we watched a vicious thunder storm mercilessly lash the mountain and thought how different things could have been if we'd been left out in the cold that night. It was by far the best meal of the trip, my lamb cooked to perfection, James' trout a real dream (apparently).
After a rather un-pilgrimesque sleep-bonanza owing to some jolly comfy beds, we set off in the morning for St. Laurent, where we stopped for some breakfast. We had, before leaving, taken a coffee on the sunny hotel terrace, as we watched fishermen cast their lines into the little mountain stream. The route towards Lake Geneva took us over our first mountain. At 1250m it was only a baby really, but the climb was still tough, since our legs were still adapting from the endless corn plains of the north. The ascent started in earnest at Morez, which appeared to be the international home of ophthalmic clinicians in case you wanted to know.
Within a kilometre of the summit it became more and more evident that we were in fact being chased by a thunder storm. The first spatters of rain appeared. We pedalled faster trying to outrun the beast. Finally we got to Les Rousses, where we found a restaurant to hole up for the storm. Again, we had miraculously escaped a drenching by seconds, since as our salads appeared, the thunder rain arrived.
We bade farewell briefly to France and crossed into Switzerland where we reached the summit and began the rapid descent to Nyon on Lake Geneva. The view from the top was slightly disappointing as we should have been able to see all the way from Geneva to Lausanne. Sadly the area was heavily forested, but the views across the lake were amazing when they appeared.
Descending the 700m to the lake, we found the ferry to Yvoire, and after a bit of persuading got them to let us on with our bikes. We chatted merrily about beer cafes with the captain, who disconcertingly looked out at where he was going rather infrequently as he steered the boat nonchalently across 'Le Leman'.
Back in France again, and we found it almost impossible to push our bikes through the throng of tourists that were justiiably in Yvoire, a fabulously well preserved, but hence now utterly spoilt, traditional little fishing village. The road along the lake was busy and rather dangerous. Eventually we found a hotel (after chasing a few phantom ones first) on the main road through an industrial estate between Thonon and Evian (where they bottle the local tap water). It was back to reality tonight - lumpy beds, a tiny room and a loo/shower on the floor below. Kindly, the hotel had thought to put a bidet in the middle of the room.
It would be a complete lie to say that Day 13 was anything remotely close to difficult. Starting out fairly early with the intention of visiting the tourist office in Evian we cycled the 3km that were necessary to achieve this. James went in search of breakfast whilst I went to book a hotel somewhere up the Great St. Bernard pass in the alps. Being French the tourist office wasn't really allowed to help me ind accommodation in Switzerland but they were kind enough to give me some numbers and let me buy a phone card. After a pain au chocolat I felt prepared to talk to the Swiss on the phone. Procurement of a hotel turned out to be unexpectedly easy - whereas the pass I had used in Spain 2 years ago had had no hotels at all here there appeared to be loads. I booked one, fairly arbitrarily.
After using up the remaining credit on the phone card, we set off along the lake, past the evian bottling plant which looked like it was leaking as the lawn sprinklers were on, and eventually came to the Swiss border. Stopping for our last French coffee we took a final look at France and then skipped into Switerland for the second time in the same number of days.
The novelty of Swiss Francs suddenly dawned on us (we hadn't needed to buy anything Swiss yesterday) and so I visited the bank. It was at this point that I realised I had absolutely no idea what the exchange rate was. The bank was shut for lunch but the cash machine allowed me to take out various values between 50 and 500 francs. Out of sheer curiousity we opted for 200 and decided to see how far it would take us. I still don't know what the exchange rate was, but I have a suspicion that Switerland lived up to its reputation as a rather expensive place.
We followed the surprisingly industrial but nonetheless stunning Haute-Rhone valley south towards Italy. Stopping in a little village called Vionnaz because we liked the church tower, James discovered that he had lost a screw from his cleat (the metal thing that attaches your shoe to the pedal). I had fallen to talking to a young boy who was, I suspect at the instigation of his mother, helping Dad clear out the garage. He was, like all 12 year olds, fascinated by the bikes.
Ever the optimist, James suggested I ask the father whether he might happen to have an appropriate screw. Ever the pessimist, against my suspicions, I did (bear in mind that this screw is a specialist piece of equipment, allen key controlled, only a centimetre long, bevilled... this was a longshot in the extreme). About 5 minutes later the father returned with an older gentleman and a new screw. We reattached James' foot. I will probably never know if there is someone giving us a helping hand on this trip or not but serendipitous occurrences like this, and finding hotel rooms miraculously vacated etc. certainly give one hope. But on this occasion it didn't stop there. We wanted to visit the church. Was it open, the old man asked? But of course, the father's wife was the person who held the key!
In fact the church was pleasant, but of no great architectural or design value. Nonetheless the tower was really fun and the view spectacular back towards the lake, with the sun lighting the hills. We promised to write a postcard to them when we arrived. It was after all the least we could do.
The route to Martigny was pleasant enough with a tail wind and we avoided any storms that were forecast. We stopped at a 'tea house' in which the waitress, when asked what types of tea she sold was genuinely puzzled and answered 'hot and peach', and then commenced the first part of the climb to Orsières where our hotel would be for the night. This looked quite tough on the map and we were expecting a tricky climb at the end of the day. However in reality the climb would truly begin the next day. We were glad however to get 400m of the climb to the summit out of the way and slept passably in our rickety hotel run by a man who appeared not to be a fluent speaker of either Italian German or French but maintained he was infact Swiss French... hmm an accentual issue perhaps?
It was judgement day, so to speak. Had we picked up enough latent fitness to get to the top of the Col du Grand Saint Bernard. Equipped with the cuddly St. Bernard dog (called Bernie obviously) which the hotelier had kindly given us to help us out, we set off after talking to 2 german motorcycling couples who were also heading to Aosta today. It was 10am. The sun was trying valiently to push out of the way the clouds capping the steep sides of the valley, and as predicted by the flurry of arrows pointing up the road on my map, it was fairly tough going.
We acheived the first 400m of altitude without stopping, and took our first break (other than for photos etc.) at Rive Haute. The views were stunning and James in particular was excited by them, being very much a mountain person - much photo snapping occurred. There was little sign of the rain storms we had last night on arrival (close escape yet again!) and so we continued. The road flattened out somewhat (to just 1 in 20(!)) between Liddes and the entrance to the tunnel which takes the main road through the mountain. Just above the reservoir, with the valley sides narrowing rapidly, we left the main road and started the extremely steep 6.5km climb to the pass. It was tiring work. Up till now we had both been surprised at how easy the climb had been. This was Tough (with a big 'T').
Passing cars and motorcycles shouted encouraging remarks and cyclists passed on helpful comments like 'only 2 kilometres to go...' James turned out to have great ability when it came to cycling up the steep bits, sticking in a low gear at a slow speed and just plugging on. I was I confess having the odd problem with the really steep bits. In fact my knee decided it was time to pack it in about two kilometres from the summit. Even James was reduced to walking though for a fair share of the last section - it was, put simply, uncyclable.
We scored the ascent 3-1 to us: the mountain had definitely scored a point at the end where we had to walk but it wasn't enough to stop us getting there. We had done it. I can't tell you how happy we were. Americans might have yelped, high fived, who knows what. We British pilgrims, at 2473m up, took a photo and forced a conversation on an English family who were trying to leave.
Panoramic views from the top forced James back into overexcited camera mode. We went up to the tourist centre, and got a few postcards. Our search for lunch was interrupted by the news that storms were imminently forecast. I popped my head into the delightful church at the hermitage at the pass to find that James had set off down the hill looking for the church. I caught him up 2 miles into Italy and we rushed off down the mountainside. It really was astonishingly steep, if not to mention the act that it was rather fun too!
We were both genuinely surprised at how much we had climbed - the road just kept on descending. We stopped or a brief coffee as a storm passed overhead and then we were chased all the way to Aosta by another fat grey cloud. We could see the sheets of rain behind us.
Aosta turned out to be quite a nice place: the sort of place that all of Italy comes to on holiday at least. We found a hotel outside the city walls and after a brief shower went in search of an internet cafe: we are currently sat in a smoky Pool/snooker bar. James is researching hotels. I am hungry.
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