The ALPES

Today we were up early and on the road by 7.30am - we rode a total of 2kms from the campsite to the train station. We are heading to Grenoble and then onto Bourg d'Oisans.

We dismantled the bikes at the station and packed them into our bike bags for the train trip. The train (still not a TGV) was really nice - we are pretty happy that we purchased the 1st class tickets as it is quiet and usually empty.

We travelled from Beaune to Lyon before changing to Grenoble.

Once we arrived in Grenoble we caught a local bus to the small town of Bourg d'Oisans about 47kms southeast of Grenoble. We put the bikes back together and rode to the campsite.

Bourg d'Oisans is at the base of Alpe D'Huez and Cam has somehow managed to talk me into riding it with him tomorrow. What was I thinking??

We set up camp and grabbed some supplies from the Casino (local supermarket). While cooking dinner we got chatting to a couple of English guys who had been here a week riding all the high cols (passes). Cam was given a map of some rides he could do besides Alpe D'Huez. We had a carb rich dinner and then went to bed early.

Sunday

We woke up pretty early and to my dismay the day was perfect. I think I was hoping for thunder, lightning, snow, hail - anything to put of climbing that big hill.

Anyays, that wasn't to be so we packed our windstoppers and a snack and hit the road.

OH MY GOD!!

The ride starts off flat and then turns a corner and goes straight up, 21 switchbacks, 13.5kms - your legs don't really get a chance to warm up. To cut a long story short the climb took us 1 hr 33 mins. The views were amazing, once at the top we took some pics and then had a coffee. We had our photos taken by a professional photographer 1 or 2 switchbacks from the top. If you want to have a look at the pics the website is www.photobreton.com and our reference number is FA5B1405.

I think the pics of us at the end - Cam is in yellow and Jay is in blue.

What took us 1.5 hours to come up only took us 20 mins to come down with about 10 mins of photo stops.

JAY climbed ALPE D'HUEZ - I still cant believe I did it!!!

We rode back to the campsite and opened a celebratory bottle of wine bought especially from Beaune for the occassion.

Monday

Cam had caught "Col fever" and decided that he was going to ride to Col du Lautaret and then onto Col du Galibier. I wished him well and went back to bed. There was no way I was going to be able to climb big ass mountains again today.

I spent the day being a good tentwife, I cleaned up the tent and did our washing before wondering into town and updated our blog site. Cam's day on the otherhand was for more relaxing and went something like this;

I headed back up the road to Alpe D'Huez to a small town called La Garde (1450m) where I turned off onto the D211A, this is a cliff huging road that we had seen from the campground. I am trying to think of how to describe this road and only 2 words come to mind HOLT SHIT!!

The road sits about 700m above the valley floor, the only thing stopping me from taking the quick way down is a 2 foot concrete block every few metres.

However, the views were more than spectacular.

I then decended into Barrage du Chembon(massive dam holding back the waters of the Lac du Chembon) where I joined the N91 freeway for a 16km uphill grind. I went through several tunnels and gained 700m in altitude to La Grave, where I had lunch.

After lunch the grind continued upto the Col du Lautaret (2058m) again lots of tunnels and spectacular views. Now the real climbing begins, 8kms and 600m in altitude gain later I arrived at Col du Galibier (2645m). What a view. I had my victory Mars bar as a treat for around 5 hours of uphill pedaling.

So now the fun begins - 50km 1900 metre decent back to Bourg d'Oisans. Gravity Rocks!

I averaged about 40kms an hour and arrived back at the campsite in just under an hour and a half. I arrived back to a somewhat concerned Jay wondering what took me so long......

I had a shower and something to eat before we wondered into town to get some info on our travel back to Grenoble. We arrived back at the campsite just as it started to rain.

Tuesday

We woke to the sounds of rain on the tent, we were plqnning on visiting the Chemin de fer de La Mure - which is a scenic narrow gauge train that runs through part of the Alpes.

Guess the weather had other plans for us. We packed up camp and loaded up our bikes for the long ride into Grenoble as we had missed the 11am bus. We headed out of town - already drenched as we passed the bus stop with the 11am bus still there... Meurrttd (shit in french)

I put my foot down and decided that I (jay) was staying in a dry hotel and if Cam wanted to camp in the soggy tent in the pouring rain then he shouldn't let me stop him. Surprisingly enough he joined me at the Royal Hotel. A no star establishment - a little classy for us....

The hotel is currently being renovated and is actually a lot better value than we paid for (€35 per night). So after carrying all our stuff up two flights of stairs I joined Cam in washing our bikes. We then pqcked them into their bike bags and carried them into our room. Damn those stairs. If only we had found the elevator sooner!

We then had a warm shower and headed over to the train station to book our TGV to Napleson thursday. We then grabbed some chinese for dinner and came bck to the Hotel - we watched a very old episode of ER (George Clooney was still part of the cast) dubbed over in french and went to sleep.

Wednesday

We woke up to a glorious day, the sun was out and the temp is forecast to be around 26 degrees. We are planning on using today to do our washing and update our blog site (as you can see), burn our photos to CD and anything else we need to do before heading to Italy tomorrow.