Some nice places in France

Date: 29/09/2013
City: Le Muy, France
Kilometres ridden: 101
Cumulative kilometre: 60840
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, warm, Torrential rain…cold! Warm…

The motorcycle park I’d occupied overnight was so small that I couldn’t get the panniers on. So I parked it on the footpath and packed it there.

We left Monaco late in the day and at the first petrol station we saw some really heavy clouds in the mountains and some bright lightening. Sigrid suggested to put the raingear on, but I told her we would just skip the bad weather since the road we were on would just pass it. Well, the road had a heavy bend and we were heading straight into the bad weather. Why didn’t I stop? Well, I was still hoping that the road would make another turn, but it didn’t. We got into a torrential downpour; the rain was so heavy that I had water running inside my jacket within half a minute. I had to put the emergency blinkers on and pulled into the emergency lane. I couldn’t see anything in the rain, same with some cars. To top it off, lightning was hitting the mountains not far from us multiple times. By the way, the water running inside my jacket was freezing cold. Sigrid was seriously peeved for some reason.
We moved at a snail’s pace and finally stopped under a bridge. There we put our rain gear on.. on top of the wet clothes… at least the wind would not cool us down too much. We didn’t talk much on the rest of the ride, except for the occational barking of orders 😉

Not happy Bjoern!

The wind was freezing and we started to shiver. So on the next turnoff we went out and got into the first hotel that we could find. Why is it that as soon you have a hoel the sun comes out?!

much better now, might try the pool later after all

Anyway, we had plenty to dry and the bathroom heater was too small for all the wet items.

But as the sun was out, our things dried in no time

At night we had some pizza in a small town nearby.

Date: 30/09/2013
City: Baillargues, France
Kilometres ridden: 254
Cumulative kilometre: 61094
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

In the morning we had a great breakfast and took our time. We were heading towards the Grand Canyon du Verdon. When we got closer the road started to get narrower and narrower. In the end, there was no side lane or middle line; it looked like a wide bicycle path. The landscape was great, I didn’t see too much since I was looking out for the traffic, but Sigrid enjoyed it thoroughly. When we arrived at a view point, we had a short walk and I took my time to look around.

After a nice walk we continued towards the Millau Viaduct. The mountain road was nice and windy. Great to ride with a fully functioning bike 😛
When we turned a corner we saw a blue lake. The view was just great. Below a picture ofKuh Elsa, she had a well earned rest after the strenuous mountains roads :).

On our way we passed our first castle, we checked it out from the outside. Unfortunately we were there at the wrong time to look inside.

Date:01/10
City: Noyers-sur-cher, France
Kilometres ridden: 624
Cumulative kilometre: 61718
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, warm,

After a nice breakfast we set off for a long day. We drove to the Millau Viaduct, went over it and stopped on the other side at the view point. It is really difficult to get the sheer size of the bridge, on the right you see a truck behind the guard rails.