Dave and his Bike

Well it was going to happen sooner or later. Having waxed lyrical about my tyres, I clearly jinxed myself.

After a reasonably good night’s sleep and a sunny but chilly start, I wasn’t far behind my mental schedule when I set off. After a breakfast of coffee, bread and jam, and pain-au-chocolat (not chocolatine in these parts) I trundled off out of the campsite. For about 100m. My front tyre was very soft, but not completely flat. Back to the tent. I broke a couple of cheap s**t tyre levers and used a spoon to remove the tyre, finding the thorny culprit as I did.

Back on the road I climbed out of the valley a bit and kept off the main roads as I headed towards Grenoble. Mixed emotions on that. The roads were really quiet and pretty, and the views beautiful, but stopping what seemed like every few hundred metres to check the route and navigate un-signed junctions became a pain very quickly.

so much so, that I was quite grumpy by the time I picked up the old railway line vélo route. The first 30km had taken nearly two hours, and I lost count of the number of times I crossed the Isère river.

Lunch with Jane at Saint-Quentin-sur-Isère cheered me up, and I hit the vélo route again feeling rejuvenated. It was good tarmac, traffic free, and easy navigation all the way to Grenoble.

After a café stop with J for a full fat coke, I made the stupid mistake of route planning with google maps again. Idiot. It took me all over the place, ending up on some grass track where I lost the plot completely. I swore a bit then turned around and used old fashioned maps and road numbers to find my way back to a decent route.

As I have sneaked ahead of schedule a bit, despite this morning’s delay, we opted to carry on to a campsite in the hills. The obvious consequence for me was a 280m climb at the end of the day. It wasn’t bad, but timing could have been better as there was quite a bit of traffic on it – local rush hour at 5.30pm?

Fortunately for me, when I arrived just after 6pm my lovely wife had set up camp and poured me a beer. I think she quite likes me. She then went on to cook dinner – pork steak in a red wine sauce 😁

It’s getting dark and cold now (8pm), so the tent beckons. Hopefully another good day in the mountains tomorrow.