Day 56: St Vallier to Charmes

September 12, 2013

I seem prone in this blog to anticipating a quiet night, or that the next day the route will be flat or well marked, or some other fantasy. I guess I should know better. It turns out the great route that had me so optimistic yesterday was Drome's big effort and one shot. Today we spent two hours following vague signs up and down the town of St. Valliers, over the bridge and back, down to the closed Tourist Information, and so forth. Not only is there no developed Via Rhona from here, but it is unclear which side of the Rhone will be less deadly. Right now I am outside a grocery, aptly named Casino. We are gambling on not dying on or just off the National Route 7 on the left bank. If you don't know National 7, check this:

If we make it, though, there is a chocolate factory in it for us, at Tain l'Hermitage.

Oh my, we stopped at a bike shop near Casino, and the man said the right way is on the other side, so back to and over the bridge. He said "I saw you on the bridge an hour ago" and we said "So why didn't you stop and put us right?" The reply: "You were going the right way, then"!

With a map like this for the immediate route, it should be easy. Not! The map contains a lot of wishful thinking from the route people. Actually, it won't really be finished until 2020.

Grrr. This is what you find over the bridge at St Vallier

The market in St Vallier has a lot of typical dry goods vendors

Getting out of St Vallier on the Via Rhona looks simple, hah!

The bike shop that put us on the "right " bank.

The other side did turn out to be quieter, though after a while we hopped onto an island, and finally back to the left bank (and N7). Soon though we were in Tain and had a nice talk with a postman about where is the post office, and the chocolate factory, and the continuation of the route. He knew it all, and correctly pointed out we would smell the chocolate and could guide ourselves that way too.

At the post office we went after the same type of prepaid box that had worked in Germany, only here they are at least twice as expensive. All we are really sending is paper maps and paper souvenirs, from the questionable activity of picking up all this junk.

The chocolate factory did not offer tours, but has a factory store. There, the company, Val Rhona, has abundant free choice sampling of each of the products. What a bunch of sadists! There should be a warning sign on the door! Boy do we feel sick.

Val Rhona seems to specialize in solid chocolate, though there were other types as well. The variety in the solid chocolate came from the country of origin and the cocoa percentage. We bought a small pile of it, with the plan to put it in our next (real soon) mail back. The lady at the cash threw in a few extra chocolates, maybe because we did not quite look sick enough! We struggled our way back onto the bikes, and were off along the river bank toward Valence.

These are just a few of the chocolate products and tasters inside!

Valence is a large city, and we began in the outskirts, looking for another post office for another (seccond of the day) box. We asked an Islamic looking older man, and were a little surprised to find his French excellent. We followed his directions, off into the otherwise uncharted urban jungle, and found the post office without too much trouble. 35 euros later we had sent 3 kilos of stuff home.

We returned the same way we had come, and the man was still there, so we exchanged hearty waves.

Valence itself has a mixture of narrow streets and wide open spaces. It even had some of those fancy apartment blocks characteristic of large European cities. The Via Rhona maps showed the route on the left bank, but when they are not talking about their finely developed bikeway but rather a shared with cars bit, we have learned to distrust their advice. We went with Google Maps, to the right bank. Besides, the nearest camping seemed to be at Charmes, on the right bank.

Valence wide area with apt buildings. Look at the different groups of people.

To reach the camping, unfortunately, required about 10 km on gravel, plus a small conference with a fisherman, and crossing some water on an unmarked bridge. Par for the course.

Municipal camping at Charmes is costing us 7.50 euros. Good deal. We were a little apprehensive about our neighbours, who are clearly "lifers" and quite messy, but we met our nearest one, and he is a very cute and friendly guy. We also seem to have attracted three cats, still fewer than our four at home. We find we are having no trouble understanding basically every word of people who speak to us here. It's strange, because in our "native" Quebec we can understand one word in three, or less, depending on the subject. People here just speak more slowly and more distinctly.

Looking at the maps, we are dismayed to see that objectives like Avignon, Bordeaux, Nantes, not to mention Paris or Amsterdam are not drawing closer with any particular speed. This despite reasonable daily kms on our computers. It didn't help today, for example, running back and forth for 15 km looking for the path, or running around to the chocolate factory or post offices. Oh well, it's all fun even if we are getting nowhere!

Our road on the bank opposite Vallier was ok

Typical unnamed ruin blending into a hill

Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 3,790 km (2,354 miles)

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