May 25, 2023
Day 3 - Sault to Vaison-la-Romaine
Rain-challenged, but we rode between the raindrops!
We woke up this morning with worried minds. The weather forecast last night was not optimistic, and there had been rain all night. A quick look out the window confirmed the worst: It was pouring out there. Ugh.
We checked the weather report, using our usual method of averaging the predictions of Meteo France and YR. It didn’t look good, but we saw a glimmer of hope when we brought up our back-up forecast on Windy.
The weather radar map on Windy showed a small hole in the storm, so we kicked into gear to synchronize our schedule. This involved a maximum amount of time-wasting. We paid a detailed visit to the bike museum downstairs in the hotel, then lazed around the room until a couple of minutes before the 1100 checkout, and finally hung out in the downstairs lounge until Windy showed the rain hole right over us.
We hit the road to the head-shakes of the hotel desk clerk. And to be honest, it didn’t feel that great to us either. We were definitely getting rained on, despite the optimism of Windy. We had about a 6k flat-to-uphill run to Aurel, where we stopped and added layers. Then began 20k of beautiful but cold downhill. But miraculously, somewhere in the middle of that downhill, the rain stopped!
As we wound down the valley toward Vaison-la-Romaine, we had a few drips but were largely rain-free. Even with the low clouds, the valley was a gorgeous place.
A sharp climb after Saint-Leger-de-Ventoux focused our attention, but then we had another long toboggan down to a converted railway that took us almost into Vaison-la-Romaine. A mapping error took us over a ridiculously steep climb (20% - we walked), and before we knew it we were standing in front of our lodging, the Villa Regina.
We were an hour early and hungry, so we floated down to the town square and luckily managed to get a late pizza. The skies looked threatening but we ate outside. A quick walk back to the B&B and we were checked in and enjoying warm (no, hot) showers. We felt like we had cheated Mother Nature, but we weren’t in the mood to apologize for it.
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11 months ago
After getting cleaned up, we headed out with our raincoats to visit the Roman site. As we hit the street, we suddenly realized that the sun was shining! Vaison-la-Romaine was full of people like us, walking around in the sunshine wit their arms full of rain jackets and umbrellas.
The Roman site was OK, but we’ve seen much better. If you’ve been to the Roman Villa in Casale, Sicily, this just doesn’t compare. The museum did have some nice pieces in it, though.
We walked down to the Roman Bridge and Robin saw signs for the Medieval Village. Rich was lukewarm but agreed to go check it out.
Wow, what a revelation! Probably the prettiest and most interesting old towns we’ve ever walked through. Robin took hundreds of pictures!
After geeking out on old stones, we were almost at the dinner hour. We ended up at “Salles Gosses”, where we split a pizza and an Italian salad. The food was great! Much better than it had to be in this tourist town.
Oh, and I should mention that we walked back to our lodging under a perfect blue Provençal sky. :)
Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 100 km (62 miles)
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