Bike Trip Day 1

Back to the drawing board.  The trip was again rescheduled for Sunday, June 3 as Roger and Dominique were out of town for a week.   Rain is predicted for that day!

June 3 dawned with heavy clouds but no rain.  Anna and I trekked off to meet Roger and Dominique; as we approached their apartment building, rain began to fall.  As the rain began to fall heavily, we made a joint decision to postpone for one day. 

As mentioned before, the route we were to take is called the Via Rhona – a planned bike route from Lake Geneva down the Rhone River Valley to the Mediterranean.  It is completed in some places, non-existent in others, and in others just a marked path on a country road or along the shoulder of a secondary highway.  I had purchased a detailed map and description of the route which helped immensely in the areas where there were no markings or obvious route.

Because we were going down a river valley and because the route-makers had done a good job in most places, we rode mostly on flat ground.  The few hills were mostly manageable on the bike.

Unfortunately, we took few pictures on the trip.

Day 1 – June 4.

Monday broke cool and partly cloudy – good bike weather.  This time there were only three of us – Pascale was unable to take time off from work to join us.  Off we went, via essentially the same route as three weeks previously.  I had brought a box of macarons, a prized local confection, to bring to the hospital as a thank-you for patching me up.

David and Roger at His Apartment about to Leave to Meet Tony

Upon reaching the scene of my disaster, and after a quick stop at the Givors hospital to drop off my card and macarons, we stopped to see if an obvious cause for the fall could be seen.  Besides the rain that day, I did note that the rail line curved as it reached the right side of the road where I had encountered it.  This made the angle of crossing somewhat less than 45 degrees, and probably led to the wheel slipping into the track groove. 

About 200 yards south we reached the first section of the paved bike route.  This first section was beautiful, taking us through woods, farmland, along the river bank, through wildlife preserves and over old arched stone bridges.  We also crossed onto an island in the river, and then back to the right bank again.  We passed through small and not-so-small villages, such as St-Romain-en-Gal, site of an old Roman settlement.  We also passed through some of France’s most renowned vineyard areas such as Cote Rotie and Condrieu.  We stopped at a café for a nice lunch in this area.

After lunch we continued down the right bank for a while, then crossed to a rural island for a while before re-crossing to Serrieres, where we booked into the only hotel in town.  No air conditioning, but clean and comfortable.  They secured our bikes in a small storage room for us. The only restaurant available Monday night [many restaurants in France are closed Sunday and/or Monday] was a small storefront place run by a personable man who made a good hamburger [mine] and Tex-Mex plate [Roger].  I don’t recall what Tony had, but he did pronounce it good.

Tony at Dinner - note the sign behind him.

Based on the map numbers, we covered about 65km; Tony’s and Roger’s odometers showed considerably more.  We may have ridden a bit more due to occasional side trips and/or back tracking, but neither the hours ridden nor our apparent rate of travel would seem to support the odometer numbers.