On the road again...

It was time to get back in the saddle and leave Alpe D'Huez.  Due to very early road closures to allow the teams to get off the mountain, we had to get our gear to the bus before breakfast, with the plan being to ride down the mountain to the bus later in the day.  The great thing about about staying on the mountain is that for the first 60 km of our ride today we got to ride all down hill...

At about the 50 km mark we were on the course just outside of Grenoble .  We regrouped here for the ride through Grenoble - hitting almost every red light through town.  By the time we were through Grenoble it was obvious that we were racing the clock and the ever enthusiastic gendarmes to get to the feed zone after around 110 km of riding. 

The course went over a Category 3 climb, with the feed zone just beyond it.  Unfortunately we were stopped at the village at the base of the climb - which meant a little detour to get back on to the course.  The detour was also up a bit of  climb in the baking hot sun - probably harder than the cat 3 but for us it's just another day at the office.

There were Bikestyle groups all over the road today - with most of them just a few days into their trips.  After almost two weeks on the road together, we're pretty organised and roll along at a pretty consistent pace.  It's pretty fair to say that the other groups were not as organised as we were.  That little climb was a killer - the first 500 m or so was very steep and quite a few people had to get off and push.  I climbed surprisingly well today - maybe all of these km are paying off!!

It was beautiful French countryside but it was very very hot.  We regrouped at the top and descended along beautiful wining country roads until we eventually rejoined the race course.  By this stage the course was well and truly closed and most of the caravan had passed by.  We found a shady spot to wait and watch the race go by.

Once the race had passed the wait was on for the road to be open.  Once again we fell into the pattern of rolling on Gendarme at a time down the road until we finally cleared the villages and got back on the course proper.  The roads were still closed to traffic so we had a relatively uneventful ride to the bus.

We loaded the bikes onto the bus and then drove for around 4 hours to Vichy - finally arriving at around 8:00.   Dinner provided in the hotel tonight - good quality food, salad, duck and sorbet.  The race goes straight by the front door of the hotel tomorrow.  There's a few options on offer - including the chance to ride the TT course.  Unfortunately that option involves perhaps 4 hrs of bus time.  I'll decide on my final plans tomorrow morning.