April 30, 2025
Vaison-la-Romaine to Bedoin
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Today was about as perfect a day of cycle touring as we can ever remember.
Because I had not learned my lesson from yesterday, I had tinkered with our original route to add some more climbing. The originally planned route was very short — we were heading to Bédoin— but given Dave’s knee was feeling okay and great weather was predicted, I cooked up a longer route including two climbs, the Col de Chain outside the village of Suzette, and the Col de Madeline (of Tour de France fame). It was still a shortish ride but with 750 m of elevation which was the most we had yet done this year.
We slept well, and enjoyed a modest but well-presented breakfast at Villa Regina where we visited a bit with an older French couple from the Haut-Savoie region. We didn’t have enough of a conversation to ask for a photo however. We had a pleasant half hour in the sitting room of the Villa while I worked on the journal. Due to the short riding day we had time to dawdle.
We stopped at a bakery to pick up a vegetarian sandwich (4 euros) on the way out of Vaison-la-Romaine and then had a glorious ride.
There was minimal traffic, many tiny country lanes and wonderful views. Right after Maluacène we began the climb up to the Col de Chain. There were many many cyclists, mostly on road bikes, all of whom wizzed by us even through we were on e-bikes. That population built as we headed towards Bédoin. At the Col de Chain we had a signature view of the Dentelles of Montmirail and Dave suddenly had a flashback. He correctly noted that we had ridden this way (coming from the opposite direction) in October 2021 when we rode through Provence. I had forgotten this since we had no cycling journal and it was before we had discovered Komoot, but once he mentioned it, it all came back to me too. It was the day we rode from Mazan to Buisson (outside of Vaison-la-Romaine) to meet our friends Jeff and Allyson.
Just after Col de Chain we reached the village of Suzette and had a very nice descent.
We lunched outside a deserted sports field under a convenient pergula and admired the view of Mt. Ventoux, one of many we know we will have in the next few days. (Mt. Ventoux dominates the landscape of Provence; no matter where you are in the region it is there looming over everything). Our veggie sandwich was perfect in keeping with our observation that French sandwiches are almost always superior to others, we guess due to the bread quality.
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We then climbed tiny country roads with no traffic up to the Col de Madeleine after which we had a killer pleasant descent into Bedoin. We were too early to check in so we rode into Bedoin which is bike central. If you want to hang out with road cyclists, this is the place. It was fun to notice all the cool bikes and the latest in cycling apparel (particularly since we are SO NOT fashion forward!) We enjoyed a beer and Perrier at a cafe and basked in the bike -centric nature of the town.
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Our digs that evening was a b and b I found on booking.com (Jacuzzi Ventoux) located on a hill outside Bedoin. We went to the wrong house originally (signage was super small) but then found our place next door.
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Highly recommended for 138$ (with breakfast). It was a house with two purpose-built small rooms adjacent to it. It was new and the space seemed bigger because the bathroom and WC was off a hall, plus there was a wonderful patio with a jacuzzi and beautiful views looking out over the town of Bedoin. The host had a shed for the bikes. Dave liked it because there was excellent A/C.
We unpacked in a super happy mood about our day. After last year’s historically bad spring weather we feel like we deserved some awesome weather to ride in - and we got it this week. We had a beautiful sense of well-being that got dented a bit as Dave unpacked and couldn't find his green jacket, which is a staple of his (admittedly minimal) cycling wardrobe. This resulted in us both tearing the room apart looking for the lost item to no avail. As we walked into town for dinner we did a deductive analysis of the loss and ultimately determined he likely left it at the Villa Regina in Vaison-la-Romaine. It was such a nice day it hadn’t been necessary to use it on today’s ride, and he knew he had it on last night walking back from dinner because it was cool out.
I know I have shared that Dave really beats himself up over an issue like this and losing stuff is a common occurrence for us. We work hard to maintain a process of keeping track of the important stuff (passports, credit cards, tablets, phones), but the other stuff - not so much. Unfortunately the jacket was a favorite. We saw it in a window of an Odlo store last year in Strasbourg. We misread the price and thought it was 90 euros so he tried it on, liked it and bought it, and it was only later we noticed that he paid 180 euros, as it was some other item on the mannequin that was 90 euros. The good news is that he wore the jacket all the time so the price was worth it. So, its loss was a bummer and over pizza that night in Bedoin we strategized how and when to replace it. I checked Odlo stores in France - no go on any Odlo store anywhere where we are going. We even popped into a cycling shop before dinner and looked unenthusiastically at windbreakers, jerseys etc. We thought about ordering it back in the US and asking friends whom we are meeting later in the spring to bring it over but we were not sure of the sizing. Yes, the options were endless and not perfect and that discussion dominated our very good pizza dinner at Pizzamilla. We finally settled on the need to go into Avignon next week to shop and I found the location of a Decathlon and an Intersport. We will have to prevail on our friends whom we are meeting - several whom will have motor vehicles - to drive into Avignon. Shopping is never anything we look forward to.
The good news: we think based on later developments this minor drama will have a happy ending….Stay tuned…
Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 368 km (229 miles)
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