Sunday, Aug 31st – Wednesday, Sept 10th
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This entry, and all of the entries regarding this Europe trip are written in collaboration with Evelyn. They’ve been edited to my POV for consistency, since most of the original text was in that POV, and it seemed simpler to stick to it.
Sunday, Aug 31st
Evelyn and I arrived in Geneva around 8 AM Sunday the 31st. We woke up at about 2:30 AM on Saturday to get on the Shuttle to SEA-TAC. The flights were pretty uneventful, and we managed to get some sleep. In Geneva the bike boxes were promptly delivered to the oversize baggage area and we put everything on a baggage cart. The baggage cart had a well-designed deposit system. In order to use a cart, the customer inserts a 2-euro coin forcefully into a shallow slot, which forces a clip out the opposite side of the device which holds the carts together in a long line. The coin is held in place until the cart is clipped back onto a line of other carts. My uncle Jean-Pierre picked us up after a few minutes and we drove to a flea-market in a town near Dressy. My cousin Nicole and aunt Susan had just finished seeing the market and drove back to their house to drop off our bikes to make room in the car. We had coffee and a croissant and checked out antiques for a while. Later Susan picked us up and we drove up the hill to Dressy. There we toured the house, barn and grounds, had a nice lunch (salad, bread, wine, cheese, saucisson, ratatouille, fruit and cheese) and a short nap. Later we went for a hike up on a little mountain. It was grassy and nice. People were hang-gliding off the top of the mountain. The grass had colchicums growing in it, which Jean-Pierre called ‘colchic.’ Then we went to a cafe at La Chambotte on a precipitous overlook above Lac du Bourget. That evening we had a delightful dinner with a dense chocolate torte for dessert.
Monday, Sept. 1st
Un-boxed the bikes and put Evelyn’s bike together. My rear rim was out of true enough that I couldn’t loosen my brakes enough for it to spin. I spent most of the day trying to true it, but only made it worse. We visited a farm across the road from Susan & Jean Pierre’s where some calves had recently been born. One that had been born that morning was already larger than some of the older calves. Some calves were feeding greedily from big milk bottles. Many cows were being milked. Dinner included homemade olive bread baked in JP & Susan’s bread oven and pear sorbet.
Tuesday, Sept. 2nd.
Susan, Nicole and Jean-Pierre were driving to the Luberon. Evelyn and I got a ride with them to a bike shop in Aix-le-Bain where I bought a new rear wheel and a mechanic swapped my tire and cassette to the new wheel. I couldn’t understand the guy much, and Jean-Pierre mostly talked to him for me. After the new wheel was installed, we loaded up our panniers. I tried to adjust my brakes in front of the shop, but the mechanic came out and wanted to know if there was something wrong with the bike. We said no, and I ended up adjusting the brakes behind a Champion grocery store. Champion became one of my favorite large grocery store chains in France, mostly because their store PA system played a jingle composed of a moment of whistling from the Peter, Bjorn & John song “Young Folks.”
We ate lunch (which Susan packed for us, including an Opinel knife for slicing the cheese and saucisson) by a toll booth after taking a wrong turn onto what would have been a freeway, though since you pay for them I suppose they’d be called a payway or a tollway. I like that there are toll booths at the entrances so you can’t accidentally enter one of these big roads.
We rode to Annecy via some highways, and walked our bikes around the old narrow part of town. We got ice cream, or likely it was gelato. Then we got on a bike trail that Jean-Pierre told us about around the southwest side of Lac d’Annecy. We stayed at Camping l’Universe (an old orchard) near a lake access park. After setting up the tent we took our dinner to the park by the lake and ate a picnic dinner (avocado, bread, cheese, saucisson, sardines, leftover chocolate torte Susan packed for us) there. I found a 50 euro note in a cigarette pack that I picked up to throw in the trash. This conveniently paid for the replacement wheel I had purchased that morning.
Wednesday, Sept. 3rd
We headed southeast and tried to stop at a huge château by the lake, but it had a huge fence with a locked gate. We went through a dark tunnel on the bike path. The east end of Lac d’Annecy was quite open on the south side, and a headwind made this section seem long to me. The wind got better once we were more sheltered between the hills. The bike trail petered out in Faverges, I believe, and we took to the road. We were hoping to wait until Albertville to eat lunch, but we got hungry and almost stopped in Ugine. I think a navigational confusion or something, perhaps indecision as to where we should eat lunch, caused us to continue. We rode the rest of the way to Albertville and stopped at a sandwich shop to buy a picnic lunch. We rode to Conflans, an old fortified town, to eat lunch. We stopped half way up the circuitous road up the hill to eat in a parking lot with picnic benches and an old flywheel-assisted well. It was a really good lunch. I had a baguette with duck meat, cornichon, and doubtless some kind of cheese. Evelyn had a baguette with lox and creme fraiche and “salad” (romaine lettuce). I looked at the photos that Evelyn had taken so far, as she was tasked with photographic documentation.
We packed up, filled our water bottles, and got ready to crest the fortified hill. We asked each other if we’d packed the camera, and apparently neither of us had. We saw a parks worker emptying the trash nearby, and a picnic bench with three teenage boys smoking. We interrogated both the worker and the boys in poor French, but of course neither of them had seen our camera. We looked at the fortified town but were pretty distracted.
We stopped at a supermarket and bought a disposable camera and some juice. (Pago!) While we were unlocking our bikes to leave the market, some other American kids were locking up their bikes.
The ride toward our destination was through many small villages. There were lots of hills, sloping steeply up to our right, sloping more gradually and greenly and covered with vineyards to our left. At one point, to our right was an old fortified castle on the crest of the hill. There were lots of signs indicating caves where wine could be sampled and purchased. As we were riding through this hilly area, we started to look for food to take to our campsite for dinner. There wasn’t much by way of markets and bakeries to begin with, and ones we saw weren’t open–we didn’t realize yet that between 3 and 5 or 6, small shops are closed. Then there was a vending machine along the road. We pulled over. It had loaves of bread inside. For 2 euro we bought a loaf.
As we got closer to our campsite, it began sprinkling. It was pouring by the time we got to the campground (Escale, in Sainte Hélène du Lac). We ate dinner at a picnic table under a shelter at the camp cafe. There was lots of thunder and lightning. The family that owned the campground had their dinner at the same time as we did. We were a little jealous of what they had (warm food). We had a bottle of wine, some cheese, bread, chocolate. Then a very wet and chilly night.
Thursday, Sept. 4th
It was still pouring when we woke up, and it continued to rain, hard, as we biked.
We stopped at a street market as it was ending. The guy running a “agriculture biologique” (French “organic”) stand gave us organic vegetables free because we were wet. He threw in some shallots to keep us from catching cold and said “Welcome to France.” We also successfully bought un morcaeu du fromage Brebis from vendors who spoke no English and though we were German because of our Ortliebs (German brand of panniers).
It rained. We rode toward Grenoble. It cleared up as we neared the city. We stopped to use the internet outside of Grenoble to look for some place to spend the night. We also looked for the locations of sporting goods and camping stores so we could buy some white gas for our stove. (Our airline wouldn’t allow us to take our gas on the plane, and we hadn’t found a good camping store along the way yet, so we bought a bottle of kerosene at a Champion.) When we got into Grenoble, we checked out a couple of stores; no luck.
We stayed at a “Hostelling International” hostel south of Grenoble. It was good to have warm showers and a clothes dryer.
Friday, Sept. 5th
It was sunny Friday morning. What we didn’t get dry at the hostel dried as we did our morning ride, climbing toward the Col du Fau. Before we left Grenoble, we’d bought these cheese pastry things for lunch. They were rich, with about four kinds of cheese, and particularly good after several hours of climbing. We ate them on a little road off the highway near the top of the pass.
After lunch we descended from that pass and headed for the second pass of the day. We stopped for juice and ice cream bars at a little hotel’s poolside cafe.
The final push for the day was up the Col de la Croix Haute. After bombing wobbly down the top of the descent from the pass we stopped and had drinks at a cafe next to the road. I had un kir and Evelyn had a local sparkling wine.
We camped for the night beside a small town at a spot called Champ La Chèvre. We walked into town for makings of dinner, and we also bought a bottle of herby beer flavored mostly with thyme. The weather was dry, cool, and windy, and from where we pitched our tent we had a nice view across a small valley to some mountains. Behind us, at the top of a hill, was the town’s very old cemetery.
We discovered during the night that choosing the camping spot closest to town let us hear the town church’s bell ring at quarter-hour intervals ALL NIGHT.
Saturday, Sept 6th
For some reason, neither of us remember much of what happened this day. What is remembered: it rained occasionally, sometimes hard; we took a wrong turn at one point that led us down a quiet road through a forested area with occasional turn offs to houses or cabins. We rode through a lot of orchards growing pears and apples.
We camped for the night at a campground near Sisteron. We ate dinner beneath the awning of an unused cabin so we and our dinner wouldn’t get rained on.
Sunday, Sept 7th
Today was our last big climb in France, the Col de Léque
The weather was sunny and warm. We got a late start because we stopped at a small craft fair/farmer’s market, where we bought some delightful pastries–Evelyn had a savory pastry that’s like an onion pizza, flat bread with carmelized onions, herbs, olive oil, and I think this one had goat cheese on it too.
We spent the night at a campground just northwest of Castellane. Before setting up the tent, we went into Castellane and caught the end of a craft fair, which was held in the center of the town. Around the center were some bars and restaurants; we had a drink at a bar and rested for a while. Then we bought a bottle of wine to have with dinner.
It was windy while we were using our camping stove to cook dinner, and because we were cooking with kerosene, keeping the stove burning was difficult. We made plans to stop the next morning at a camping store we’d noticed in Castellane.
Monday, Sept 8th
In the morning, we rode into Castellane and bought pastries, large jambon cru sandwiches for later, and, finally, white gas, which was called essance “C”. The weather was nice, warm and sunny.
In Thorenc, we had a picnic lunch next to an abandoned cabin.
We stopped to see Gréolières and the waterfalls along the way to Nice. We contemplated camping before we got into Nice because we anticipated the city being big and confusing, but we rode into Nice anyway and got tired and crazy trying to navigate the roads and find some place to stay. So we rode back west to one of a large group of campsites we’d passed on the way into Nice. A few were full; one of them had a few sites left, so we stayed there. The thin blond woman in charge had good English and gave us a hammer. The ground was hard and we were glad to have the hammer to use.
Cooked a meal as it was getting dark, drank some wine, got sleepy and slept.
Tuesday, Sept 9th
We hung out in Saint-Laurent-du-Var (a few kilometers west of Nice) and Nice. We had salads Niçoise for lunch in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, visited a street market, and used the internet. Then we rode to the port on the other side of Nice to buy ferry tickets. I got a slow leak on the way back west. I filled the tire, then we had juice on the beach and swam for a while in the Mediterranean.
As the sun was going down, we stopped at a Champion for supplies for supper, then rode further north than we meant to to a strange camping place named Camping Magali. There were oddly-shaped topiary and lots of beetles.
We cooked dinner in the dark. While we were setting up the tent, some guy loaned Evelyn his tiny flashlight. It wasn’t really necessary or even helpful, but the guy was insistent. Then, sleep.
Wednesday, Sept 10th
We took our time getting back to Nice, meeting up with a bike path and riding slowly on the beach. We walked around, got lunch at a cafe (Caprese salad and omelet). Then we got down to looking for a hotel. Many of the places we tried were booked for the next week or longer. We got frustrated and went to the office for tourism and asked them to search for a hotel for us in our price range. They found one with one room remaining. We got the room, checked in, showered, then went out to walk around old Nice for the evening. We had Socca and pizza for dinner at a bar. We went to bed fairly early since our ferry to Corsica left early the next morning.
