Saint-Désirat to Valence

April 26, 2025

We slept well in our country hotel. Breakfast was modest (our only mild criticism of the place) and we were on the road around 10:30 am. We try to judge our riding time (assuming we don’t have to time our ride to avoid predicted bad weather) to coincide with the inn’s checkin time. Today we were staying at a Mercure hotel outside of Valence and since checkin time was noon, we could ride as hard or easy as we wished.

The ride continued to be flat, well-marked and picturesque with nice river and forest views and lots of cyclists. About 20 km in, we stopped outside of Tournon to sit on the river bank and enjoy our “piq-niqe.”

A nice spot for the inevitable ham sandwich

It was Saturday so lots of people were out enjoying this touristy charming town and the river. There were also people out engaging in overnight camping and fishing. After a while river-riding can get a little monotonous: even if its pretty it doesn't require enough thinking to keep you alert. I put my ear buds in for about 15 km and listened to an audiobook, which is not something I typically do but did help the time fly by on a straight stretch.

Google tells me this is the European yellow-rattle and it was in full bloom along the river trail.

Once we reached the outskirts of Valence I paid attention though. It’s a fairly large place (132,000 pop) and even with the great cycling infrastructure we had to be alert. We wove our way around some serious roundabouts to arrive south of Valence to the Mercure, which proved to be quite a nice newly refurbished hotel in a nowhere suburb. In general, we prefer be right in town but sometimes there are just enough other considerations to outweigh that preference. The room had a very nice bathroom and tub which we embraced and a small sitting area for a little extra space. We were staying here for two nights so we could do a laundry stop - plus I thought after three days on the road we would be ready for a day off the bike.

Local denizens of Valence playing spirited games of pétanque.

Easily the best bath tub we've had on this trip.

The suburb angle played itself out negatively for dinner: we were too far from town to walk and too tired to get our bikes out of the storage room to ride so we opted for eating at the “French steakhouse” right next door — which had the ambience of an American Denney’s. (Pretty weird since the French typically do dining so well). We split a pretty serviceable burger and a small carafe of red wine and embraced the fact it was by far and away the cheapest dinner we have had since our arrival, and I reminded Dave we can’t eat crazy rich delicious French meals every night.

After dinner Dave managed to connect up the tv with Dave’s tablet to watch something on Prime or Netflix . We watched the first half hour of a pretty bad action movie and fortunately both concluded it wasn't worth our time. So we shut it down for the day.

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 189 km (117 miles)

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