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Europe
2005
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From St Flour to Villard de Lans
is a convoluted 170 mile long cross country ride, and we had a GPS problem. Up
to now it's been a real boon and we're beginning to rely on it, but Wesley has accidentally dropped it. This actually happened on the way to St Flour and the wires
on the charging & power plug have broken away but there'd been just enough power
in it to get us here. The search for somewhere that sold a soldering
iron to repair it with has proved fruitless, so we've come to the conclusion they
don't use them in France, or if they do they must get them by mail order from
distant lands, or galaxie's far far far away! There's just never a B&Q when you need one! In the event
an emergency repair has been done with matchsticks superglue and
fond memories of Blue Peter lash ups, but it's not looking too good. At least there's now some charge in it which
should hopefully get us to Villard.
By 9-30 we've paid the bill, packed the bikes up and we're well on our way.
We follow an amazing road full of twists and turns (and bumps and ruts!) and soon arrive at the small
town of Langeac, where we spot a market, complete with a guy selling tools, so we
stopped. Has he got a soldering iron? Has he hell, In fact all the tools he has are decidedly second hand, we've chucked better ones away.
The road continues as it had started and we wind
our way through the eastern part of
the vast Massif Central and through Le Puy en Velay. This looks a fabulous place but by now the weather
has become so hot we just don't fancy stopping and walking about in
our bike gear. As we ride through it, the geological heritage of this
region can't be denied. There are huge outcrops of volcanic rock scattered about the town, most of them with some religious building or effigy high on their summit. There's obviously a very strong religious connection here.
One of
the volcanic outcrops at Le Puy en Velay
The quiet little village of
Desaignes
From Le Puy to Valence the road (D15 - D533) just gets
better as it climbs through the mountains with every twist and turn getting
tighter than the
last. Eventually the road drops into a sleepy little village called Desaignes,
and in need of some refreshment after heaving the luggage laden bikes around bend after bend for miles, we stop at a little roadside hotel there.
This is where I have a nice wee snack of soft cheese with fresh
cream poured over the top. It may be bad for the cholesterol levels but
it sure tastes good.
As the road continues on,
twisting its way through the Ardeche region towards Valence and the Rhone
Alps, the sun is getting higher and hotter. At least we'd had a bit of cloud cover earlier in
the day but now even that has gone. This whole area is dusty as hell, it looks like it's not rained here for
months. The next photo shows just how dry it is.......
This is the
remains of what should be a river
As we head towards Valence the (miraculously still working) GPS tells us to turn off the main road which would take us through the city. We're not about to argue with that. Sitting on a traffic infested road in a hugely built up place like Valence in the heat somehow doesn't appeal. Once again it does a great job of getting us around the outskirts of the city and on to the Villard de Lans Road.
We
stopped here just after Pont en Royans. After this we had to negotiate the
gorges before the drop down into Villard de Lans
Hot tired Honda - about to become even more hot & tired!
So far we've covered a fair bit of
France and
not seen any roadworks at all. It's "Sods Law" which dictates
that we wait until reaching here in this heat to
get our first taste of them. The roads in this area are carved out of the rock
and are very narrow in places. Being the main road which feeds the likes of
Pont en Royans and Villard they also take a fair bit
of traffic. If you get
roadworks up here it's a recipe for jams and a long wait, if you get them in
this heat & in bike gear, then it's also a recipe for heat stroke. We
now have a situation where some clown
has decided it would be good fun to bring a bloody huge motorhome
up here. Of course it and a workers wagon meet at the
narrowest point and can't get past each other so we're at a complete
standstill before we even reach the roadworks. We're sat in the steaming sun for what
seems an eternity, the engine temp gauge on the Honda is showing 121 degrees C, and my inner body temp
is rapidly catching up.
The Vecors area around Villard de Lans has
many roads like these, cut into the gorges
Eventually we're
moving again but I'm most definitely getting dehydrated and have
no more water left. It's a relief when we eventually arrive in Villard, but that's short lived. There's a festival going on
here and the road to our hotel is cordoned off so we have to
find another way in. We ride
around the town for ages but can't find any other way to get there. I'm now really suffering from the heat and almost passing out
when Wes stops at the end of a road to ask
directions. As I sit waiting I notice a small sign on the wall with the name of our hotel on it, and an arrow is pointing to a little
alley which takes us around the back
and to the hotel.
I've never been so pleased to get off a bike in
my life, I run up to our room, strip off, drink half a small reservoir of cold water and
then throw myself into a cold
shower, it's absolute heaven. Once showered, cooled off and the bikes are put away in the hotel owners garage we're
in dire need of a cold beer. We just get comfortably installed in one of the many pavement cafe
bars as the street entertainment begins. The timing is perfect it
kicks off just as our beers arrive at the table - we're getting good at landing in these places at festival
time.
Now, there's a novel use for a pair of pink saucers
As drum bands go they're
not too shabby
Villard is a nice enough little
town and
so far the most tourist orientated place we've visited this trip. It's quite small but has a fair few pavement bars, restaurants & shops but these are mostly quite
expensive, especially the bars. It obviously caters for the winter
sports season, the 1968 Winter Olympics having been held here.
One of the carry overs from that is the Olympic sized ice skating rink which,
even if you hate ice skating, is a grand place to
go to cool down in the summer heat. It seems half the dogs in the
town thought so too !
Our accommodation for the 2 nights of our stay in Villard is
the Hotel
Les Bruyeres where the
owners & their labrador "Topaz" (who wasn't at
the ice rink today) make us all feel very welcome, In fact it's a "Touren
Fahrer" hotel so it actively welcomes bikers. The
rooms are outstandingly clean and comfortable and the owners seem
to pride themselves on the tranquility of their hotel so won't
appreciate any drunken noise. Not that we plan on making
any you understand? During conversation they mentioned that the
name of the Hotel was inspired by a trip to Scotland
they took a few years ago, translated it means, "The
Heathers".
One final point worth mentioning about Villard is that there's a little
Vietnamese restaurant here called "The Mekong" (what esle?)
which is situated at the opposite end of town to the main square.
The food here, if you like Thai / Vietnamese type
cooking, is sublime - highly recommended if you ever visit the
town.
The Hotel Les Bruyeres
This is the view from the edge of town.
If you look closely you can just see the Von Trapp family
having a barbie on the second hill from the left.
The next stage of our trip would
take us as far as the lakeside town of Annecy, just a short hop of about 80 miles north. There's a direct route there which uses the Autoroute but being bikers of
course, we want to go the more macho way over the incredible
narrow mountain roads. In fact it would be damned rude not to.
Although the shortest run of the tour it's one of the most spectacular. Immediately we leave Villard the road takes us along a wide flat valley, with mountains on
either side as we head in the direction of Grenoble. After a few miles
it gets twistier and enters into more gorges, which we can now appreciate because were not so damned hot. The road then
begins to climb a little before starting on the long drop down in to Grenoble. The views here from
the high twisting mountain road are
absolutely awesome. Following the
scenic descent we find ourselves in the Grenoble valley and skirting around
the edge of the city before ascending once again in the direction of Chambery and Aix le
Bains. We're now entering the Chartreuse region of the Rhone Alps where
the scenery is just fabulous, and the roads are a bikers paradise.
Climbing out of Grenoble and heading for Chambery
At Chambery we once again ignore
the Autoroute up to our destination of Annecy. Instead, turning off on the D912
which takes us over the Mountains to drop us nicely on the shoreline of
Lake Annecy at Sevrier,
a few miles south of Annecy town. Once again
this road turns out to be a real treasure with some incredible views of rivers
mountains and lakes.
(Photo Wesley)
As the road swoops down from the mountains and
loses altitude the terrain becomes
slightly flatter and more agricultural. We're passing through one of the small villages when Wesley, who's in front, slams his brakes on hard and stops. I pull up behind him as he leaps from his bike and rapidly
tears his crash helmet
off. He's been stung by something - right on his Adam's Apple. Ouch! The
sting is still in there and Morticia manages to get it all out for him, still looks bloody
sore though.
We ride on a bit further and reach yet another small village just as the road is
starting to climb back up into the mountains again. There's a roadside cafe here so we stop to have an
Adams Apple check and grab a coffee. By now Wesley's throat is looking rather
colourful.
Almost at Annecy - having a coffee
The last leg doesn't
take us long, the road has once again climbed up over another mountain and the view of the
deep blue of lake Annecy as we round a bend and see it laid out
beneath is breathtaking. Unfortunately there's nowhere here to stop and photograph
it. The GPS which is still working by some divine intervention has done yet another great job and takes us right to the front door of
our home for the next 3 nights, the Hotel Du Nord on the Rue Sommeiller in
the town centre of Annecy