Hello everyone – I think I mentioned in the thread about my Audax delivered at the end of last year that we had a holiday planned in Provence in September. We returned a few days ago, here are some notes.
The holiday was unfortunately cut a bit short,as my wife Dilys wanted to return to the funeral of a close friend – so she flew home from Marseilles Provence Airport after about a week in Provence – airport about 1 hr 40 minutes from where we were based. I returned to Ventoux then visited Vercors and a friend in Limoges. But we managed some good day rides in the time we were together, which all went well. I used the Audax, and Dilys was on her £300 very upright Ridgeback – she is a light but powerful rider, a keen rower.
Our first base was a campsite in Villes sur Auzon – a very attractive town at the foot of the Gorge de la Nesque. From there we did two good rides plus a few days shorter sightseeing rides –
1) Ascent of Gorge de la Nesque from Villes sur Auzon to Sault. A beautiful ride, steady uphill gradient, very narrow in parts but very few vehicles, mostly cyclists on lightweight bikes. A steady ‘cyclists’ grade, middle chainring for me all the time – until the last quite steep ascent into Sault at the end of the ride! 30k each way, approx 650 m of ascent. Warm and sunny, lovely.
2) The next day, we again rode up the Gorge, but on another road the other side, from Methamis to Monieux. A harder ride – more ascent, steeper grades and variable road surface. But the same lovely descent back down the Gorge on the earlier route.
We then moved to a campsite at Sault for the big one – my ambition since I got the Audax
3) Sault to summit of Mt Ventoux. I guess many of you know that the ascent from Sault is the longest, but the most easily graded in the early stages. Another lovely day, gentle breeze. From the campsite, the round trip was around 55k, I reckon about 1250m of ascent.
This was a long, long plod, bottom chainring a fair bit of the time, lots of water stops – we took c 3 litres of water between us, temperature was mostly in the high 20s deg C. We got to Chalet Reynard in about 2 hours, and heard that the summit was very cloudy and cold – but we pressed on anyway, and it changed to scorching sunshine and clear weather with slightly hazy views. Very little wind, we were lucky.
We felt very chuffed to have made it to the summit, two 71 yr olds, keen but occasional cyclists rather than dedicated / daily. We both ended up walking / pushing some of the final ascent up from Chalet Reynard, but so what.
At least 80% of the other riders (and there were many of them) were on carbon fibre lightweights, many of the rest electrics, most of them supported. We were carrying all our own water and food, repair kit etc . . . . though I guess some of them were attempting all 3 ascents in the one day! We sailed down the grade back into Sault, the breeze helping to keep speed under control on the steepest bits.
We also did a day ride around some of the villages east of Sault, St Trinit and towards Forcalquier . . . maybe next year. I would also like next year to do the circuit of the Mt Ventoux foothills, probably a 2 – 3 day ride. Villes sur Auzon would make a good base for this. We parked our campervan at Les Verguettes campsite, excellent.
As expected, the Audax was comfortable and fault-free. The only ‘incident’ we had was when I reversed the van, with bikes on the towbar mounted carrier, into a tree stump which shouldn’t have been there . . . bent the carrier but no other damage.
I will try and post some photos in a separate post, they are on my phone at present.
Best wishes.
Lewis
