September 29, 2018
Where Should We Go For a Ride?
It's warm in Provence and they're harvesting grapes now - Sounds good, lets go!
We spent the summer kicking around home in Canmore. We did a little mountain biking, some road riding, a few hikes and a couple of longer back pack trips, but now the touring / travel virus has infected us and we need to hit the road for a little therapy.
Winter seems to have come early for us, and although we might get a nice 'Indian summer' in October, we thought we'd head somewhere where we would be more certain of some warmth. We have about three weeks to squeeze in a short tour before we have to be back home for a full winter of skiing related commitments, so we looked at our options. A Gaspe & Maritimes tour was high on our list, but we would be playing roulette with the weather. The average temps in Provence are about 5C higher than the Gaspe this time of year, and they make some decent wine there. As far as I know, the Gaspe is not known for their wine. Those two things pretty much sealed the deal. We'll spend a few more hours in a plane, deal with a different french dialect, and get our last hit of warm weather for a few months. Oh, and have a few sips of Syrah.
The basic plan is to fly from Calgary to Geneva, take the train to Andermatt, then jump on the bikes and head west & then south.
When we did our 2013 Rhine trip we also started in Andermatt but headed east to Oberalp pass, where the Rhine starts. This time we are going to head west from Andermatt to Furka pass, where the Rhone river starts. We'll continue west along the Rhone to Geneva and then head south and ride as far as we can before we have to head back to Geneva to catch our flight back home. We might make it all the way to the Mediterranean, but then again, we might not. We also might not ride the Rhone route (Euro-velo 17) all the way, as Annecy, Aix-les-Bains and Grenoble might be more interesting. As always, we'll kind of make it up day by day.
We have also made the executive decision not to bring our camping gear this trip - pensions, hotels and Warm Showers hosts it will be.
Bikes are packed up, panniers loaded and we fly on Monday!
This is a rough plan of where we think we'll go.
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