Day 9 - Les Ollières-sur-Eyrieux to Saint-Agrève - Schnooks Explores the Beaux Villages - Tandem Tour - June 2025

June 10, 2025

Day 9 - Les Ollières-sur-Eyrieux to Saint-Agrève

All day on the Dolce Via

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Les Ollières is a quiet town and the apartment was very comfortable. We slept well and woke up to a hazy, warm, and humid morning. Breakfast was the basic French offering: 1 croissant each, bread butter and jam, with a little bowl of fruit and some apple juice. The apartment had an espresso maker, so Rich indulged himself with 3 espressos this morning.

We were ready to go around 1015h and rode off into the hazy morning. At the bottom of the street from the Lodges de Praly, we turned right onto the Dolce Via and started our ride up-river.

The Dolce Via is amazing. So many kilometers of car-free riding, with rest stops thoughtfully placed along the path. Some of the stops even have bike tools available!

This morning, we were almost alone on the trail. The holiday weekend was over and most trail-side businesses were closed, sleeping off the madness of the 3-day vacation.

There’s a road that follows the same river, but by chance (or maybe design) the Dolce Via is almost always on the other side of the river from the road. It makes for very peaceful cycling.

Starting off from Les Ollières-sur-Eyrieux

The grade of the trail is very shallow until the final 15km into Saint-Agrève. We sailed along in the morning, enjoying the coolness of the shade as the trail wound along the Eyrieux river. There were great views out over the river.

At one time, rivers provided essential power for industry. We saw quite a few large buildings along the river that looked like they had been factories at some time in the past.

As railroads do, the Dolce Via crosses over the river a couple of times. The bridges look like masterpieces of engineering to us. So beautiful!

This gives an idea of what the surface looks like. Racing tires are probably not the best idea unless you’re a super-confident bike handler.

The Dolce Via wound its way up-river, using viaducts, bridges, tunnels, and cuts to sustain a workable grade for trains. This resulted in a lot of fun stuff to ride under, over, and through.

Through a tunnel. We think there were 6 in total

And the views out over the river were fantastic. We stopped a lot to gawk.

The river is getting narrower as we go upstream

We could see traffic on the road across the canyon. It didn’t look too bad, and an occasional cyclist made us think that it might be a good option for those who don’t like getting their bikes dusty. We saw one parade of Porsches come zooming up the road, though, and were glad to be on the other side of the river.

The road builders wisely left that big rock alone.

As we approached Le Cheylard, a large dam crossed the river, creating a lake that extended for quite a ways up the canyon.

We took a lunch break at Le Chaylard. There was a friendly open Proxi market right along the Dolce Via. Robin went in and got us lunch food, which we ate sitting at the picnic tables next to the old train station of Le Chaylard.

Back on the Dolce Via, we started climbing a bit more. The grades went from 1% to 3%. 3 percent is not a big climb, but when you climb 3 percent for 20km with no flat spots or downhills, it starts to take a toll. At least on us it did.

Luckily, there were lots of shaded sections and tunnels. That helped us escape the sticky heat of this quiet Tuesday afternoon.

There are numerous stopping points along the Dolce Via with toilets, water, tables, and bike racks. We stopped at one to reload our water bottles and rest for a bit. After a few minutes, a raucous group of French e-bike riders descended from the trail above and began pestering us with questions about the tandem. What a lively, friendly group of cyclists! It was a great energy boost for us to joke back and forth with them. A lovely moment.

It was getting warmer as the afternoon went on. Rich has issues with hydration when it’s warm, so he insisted on several stops to let his body cool off and to rehydrate. Along with the steeper trail, that meant that the last 10k into Saint-Agrève went a little slowly.

A viaduct as we get closer to Saint-Agrève

And another tunnel. This one had motion-activated lights.

We popped out of the forest and were surprised by how high up we had climbed. Shame about the hazy skies, though…

The flowers along the trail were beautiful, too.

This picture gives a good general picture of the trail as it gets closer to Saint-Agrève

As we neared the end of the trial, we decided that we should document the infrastructure that’s been created here. So a few pictures…

A sample picnic table, trash can, bike racks setup. There are maybe 10 or 15 of these along the trail

Signage to keep everyone going in the right direction

And easy-to-navigate gates. Thank you to whoever designed these!

After clearing the gate in the last picture, we were finished with the Dolce Via. We chugged up the hill into Saint-Agrève and stopped at the first (and only) bar we saw to celebrate our arrival. (We were also 30 minutes too early for our 1700h checkin time).

After Robin taught the bartender how to make a sort-of Aperol Spritz, we sat in the shade cooling down and started to think about dinner. Saint-Agrève appears to be a classic case of a dying French country town. There are mostly empty storefronts in the downtown area. Only a few restaurants showed on Google Maps.

Our advice: Don’t come to Saint-Agrève. And if you do, don’t come on a Tuesday. There is no restaurant open in this town on Tuesday night. Not one.

EXCEPT: If you’re staying at the Contact Le Bois Sauvage (like us). Then you can get dinner in the hotel.

Which is what we did. And then crashed. We were tired!!

Today's ride: 54 km (34 miles)
Total: 434 km (270 miles)

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