France Adventure Days 12 to 13

One of many.

Another of many more.

Day 12 is a challenging day in many respects. We have woken ready to tackle the challenge of Alp du Huez with Lee very nervous and anxious and worried and fearful and not wanting to go, such is her fear of the steep and winding roads (stemming from an errant friend who nearly took Lee and her friends over the railings on Gorge Road in the hills of Adelaide) that make Alp du Huez the Mecca for cyclists in the summer and skiers in the winter for the slopes above the roads.

However, to calm the nerves and get a good carbo loading for the days' exertions we have ordered croissants and a baguette that are to be available after 8 am. On the dot of 8 I am out of the van and walking to the reception office and notice for the first time (as this is the earliest I have been out of the van) that many of my fellow Camper Vaners are awake already. Some are taking in the early morning sun by sitting in their camp chairs reading their electronic news and quoffing their coffee even though the temperature is just above 10 degrees C (seems that the spring sun is welcome at any time of the day); some are sitting in their vans having breakfast, others are cleaning up their vans and readying them for the days' travels.

I note with envy one of the vans has stabilisier jacks that are operated by a battery electric drill attached to the appropriate interface to rotate the screw jack mechanism and many of the camper vans have bikes at the ready and some are electric bikes (that would encourage Lee onto the bike). I am sure all of 'us' Camper Vaners look at what is the latest and some wish they had this or that device for our van.

I also note that some of the vans have satellite dishes to allow the occupants to watch television but I am very glad we do not have that feature as we are too busy for such a distraction.

Getting out of Lyon was going to be tricky as we did not want to get caught up in the traffic of the city so we relied on the vehicle GPS and it worked in a fashion with some cajoling and deft destination selection and some tricky van driving when we got confused with the the directions and ended up in a car repairers front yard and no-where forward to go.

We are off to Alp du Huez and the main reason we are going there is that in 2012 I was fortunate to travel to France with a group from Adelaide (some of them being bike riding buddies of mine) and follow the Tour de France (TdF) and ride some small portions of the route and some challenging Cols (mountains) in France and I was eager for Lee to see the spectacular scenery that I experienced during that trip.

It is some 180 kms from where we start so we follow the GPS instructions and before Lee knows it we are on the climb to Huez. The road starts at a modest 5 or 6% slope and soon we are at the first of 23 very sharp bends but once we have navigated that at 5 kph she is well aware we are on the mountain and ultra-vigilant of her surroundings. Thankfully the next two bends are tame but she is worried even about the slightest movement of the van towards her side of the road, her breathing becomes halting, and her expression is strained and as we verge upon the next bend which places her next to the precipice of the mountain a primal scream erupts from her, she grabs my right arm (not really a good thing when I am driving) and then she begins to cry. It is impossible to turn back, it is impossible to back up, it is just what it is and I return my concentration to the changing road and significantly slow the van down to less than walking pace as we navigate the next bend but with, what I hope is a soothing tone, reassure her that we are safe and moving along nicely upwards towards great views and stunning memories.

To keep herself busy she begins to take pictures, lots and lots of them, as she knows that I scaled Alp du Huez twice without stopping for pictures and that keeps her busy. However, she says her heart to going 10 to a million. She is doing well as we make our way up the mountain and every one of those 23 bends becomes a little more manageable. It takes us longer than the professional TdF riders to scale the heights but we are both stunned by the vistas which Lee and I both fleetingly view as we get higher and higher and then we reach the top and the extensive array of hotels and chalets which define end of the road.

We both need a break, Lee from her anxiety and me from the stress of putting Lee through the ordeal. Coffee and a lunch of cheese and ham on a baguette provide a much needed break and Lee jokes that a helicopter ride down would likely be better than the drive down. I can see that Lee is coping well and the ride down will be an equally slow one but possible.

Well we get down fine and decide to head off to a piggery. Yes you read correctly, a piggery, which is one of many France Passion destinations. It is some 150 kms away so we need to get our skates on, so to speak.

The quickest route seems to be to go through Grenoble rather around Grenoble the way we came. Well our intentions were good but the city of Grenoble did not assist in anyway what-so-ever. It took one hour to traverse 1.5 kilometers of city roads in what I would say is the worst experience of bad road design that I have ever encountered anywhere. Hence our planned dinner with the pigs was dashed as we would to arrive after the preferred time for accepting visitors. Lee expertly assessed there were Aries in and very near Grenoble, but I was having none of that, since Grenoble did not deserve our custom and I was willing to drive for a hour to get as far away from Grenoble as possible.

Well Lee did the impossible and found a camping site in the general direction towards Provence that was close enough to be drivable in a decent time. The camping ground is almost empty and very pretty all at the same time. Well, at the end of a day like that we deserve some wine and lovely food and that is what we had.

I did not do this when I did the rides in 2012.

A calmer Lee on the way down took some more excellent pictures.

We made it. See Lee's hand is not shaking any more.

Part way up this is but one of many pictures taken which kept Lee busy.

A map of France. Showing the provenance of the different Cheeses.

The mountains become overpowering.

Almost to our over night destination.

Mussels to the left and snails to the right. Yum what will we have tonight.

Home

The lens makes it seem those mountains are far away when you could yell across the valley.

As you would expect rivers aplenty.

A flatter roadway respite for cyclist at this collection of houses about half way up.

Day 13 is a day of not much traveling and shopping of the necessary kind. Very late start this Saturday but with full intentions of doing some shopping as on Sunday the shops of France are closed. The day begins raining and dour so a shopping day seems appropriate anyway. We cannot traipse about in cities and country towns every day.

Our first stop is a shopping outlet near Roman not far from Valenace and the first shop we enter is devoted to vegetables, fruit, meat and cheese. We spent a lot of time looking at what was on offer and buy lots of nibbles (three types of cheese) and staples (meat, fish and vegetables). Seems that l'epinard translates to l'epiard but looks like spinach and that you can buy snails and muscles by the packet, and that the French take their cheese very seriously.

I also like the way they kept the appearance that the vegetables were fresh by spraying cold mist over them.

Next shop is a more traditional supermarket - seems we have visited more supermarkets than wine tasting rooms. I have noticed a number of differences to Australian supermarkets which I record as a matter of interest.

We could not find any Chocolate powder for making your own hot chocolate but almost half of the breakfast cereals had chocolate in them, even some of the muesli had chocolate included and of course many of their pastries have a chocolate centre.

There are almost always wine and spirits on offer (and we took them up) but I couldn't find any tonic water to have with the Gin. I also notice that all the vegetable goods on sale indicated where they were sourced from and the list that follows is necessarily incomplete, as it is from memory: Mexico; Egypt; Lebanon; Greece; Italy; Morocco; Spain; and Thailand and of course France.

There seemed to be no dry biscuits to have with the cheese - I presume that bread is the go. Oh and while mentioning bread I note that there is little or no sliced bread or bread with fruit but there is loads of bread with chocolate. It seems to be a French thing to buy your bread fresh, typically a baguette. Of course there are different baguettes: the thin one and a restaurant one which is wider, which we prefer as it suits us to cut diagonally and use the slices for our cheese and other spreads. We also notice that if there is sliced bread it is provided in air tight plastic wrap and seems to me, must have lots of preservatives, since it is not in the fresh food area of the supermarket, which confirms to me that daily fresh bread is the norm in France.

As I use the word 'fresh' - milk comes to mind. We are yet to find fresh milk in any store. It is what we know as UHT (long life milk). You buy it in 1 litre and 750 ml plastic containers that are stacked like bulk products. I presume the milk producers are happy since production can be supply independent but I yearn for some fresh milk.

However, I do like the emphasis on passticeries. They tend to have a vast array of yummy delicacies and the pictures following are just a 'taste' of the variety.

Just to show that we are not hitting the heights everyday one of our pictures shows that we had lunch in our van in the carpark of a shopping center right next to a highway. However, the lunch of baguette slices, cheese, ham and chorizo slices along with foie gras, followed by pomme tatin (apple tart) and apricot beignets was compensation enough.

We had to make some kilometers before we settled for the night so we took a tollway towards Orange but then the vehicle GPS took us via some very Country Roads of France including some very narrow roadways and we have ended up at an Aires in Ludon-L-Ardoise about 20 kms South East of Orange. It may be our base for some exploration of Provence and is very near Uzes.