AubrysInFrance: The Annual Bike Trip

Tuesday morning we went up to the restaurant and had a light breakfast – mostly coffee and pastry in some form. We finished packing and loaded our bikes, setting off on a level road around part of the lake. We soon found difficult going as the road began to climb steeply out of the valley where the lake is.

In fact, we soon came upon signage informing us that we were ascending an 11% [!] grade! That is extremely steep – even with electric-assist it was a challenge getting up the 3+ kilometers that we had to negotiate before the road became a bit more-user-friendly. We all managed it OK. We stopped a couple of times to admire the view back down to the valley and the lake, and to catch our breath.

View after the 11% Grade

Coming up the grade from Chancia - not the 11%

Looking Down on the Lake at Chancia

Hotel in Saint-Claude

Protest Banner across from Hotel

Bikes Temporarily Parked across from Hotel

Refreshments at the Hotel after Arrival

We then had some more ups and downs, including one stretch where my bike registered 55km per hour. It is certainly somewhat satisfying to know you are covering distances rapidly, especially after the day before, and the steep climb out of the valley.

We made such good time that we arrived in Saint-Claude a bit after noon and had lunch at our hotel for the night. There were no dirt roads and we saw no cars on some stretches of road.

Saint-Claude is an interesting old town in a scenic mountain setting. It had been a center of pipe-manufacturing, as in smoking pipes. It also had a gemstone cutting industry. There are shops in the area offering tours and sales of such items.

The banner in the photo above is protesting plans to close most of the hospital services locally - like everywhere, the French are having difficulty maintaining complete health services in smaller towns.

Gérard decided that we should shorten tomorrow’s ride a bit after the strenuous parts of the past two days, so we went into Saint-Claude to the train station to buy tickets to Pontarlier. We had to use a machine to buy tickets and could not get the machine to show us Pontarlier as a destination. So, the other folks used their phones to purchase electronic tickets. As I did not have a smart phone, Gérard bought a ticket for me. While we were in town, we had a drink and looked around for a place to have dinner. We did not find anything very appealing and went back to the hotel for dinner.