Apologies for the big delay in posting the round-up of the end of my summer stay, but with only a cuple of days in between guests leaving and my own departure, then my return to work the day immediately after I got home, it’s all been nicely hectic.

Anyway, the last two rides were a simple Quint Valley loop on the Tuesday, and out to Crest for breakfast with friends on the Wednesday. Both days had thundery rain forecast later in the day, so I stayed away from the big mountains, and got home by lunchtime.

Thr journey back wasn’t quite as planned – the early train was so late I ended up hopping on a bus to Valence, then the train to the to the TGV station was fifteen minutes late, the TGV was five minutes late, and the plane was 30 minutes late taking off. Apart from that, it was all easy…

I’d been hoping to ride to les Gorges de la Bourne one day while the Paris to Rome team were here… last time I’d hoped to do it with them – pre-pandemic – the road was closed for repair works, but today the road was open, the weather set fair (with little wind, and not too hot), so off we set at 8am.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, or know the area, you’ll know that the road is an absolute wonder, and worth the effort of a 100-mile ride!

When my Paris-to-Rome friends stay, we seem to do so much, I lose track of what we’ve done in a short time… in the past fours days we did a Col de la Croix loop, an aborted trip to walk at Font d’Urle (cold, windy and cloudy), and aborted trip to Gap (no space on the train for our bikes) replaced by the previously planned walk at Font d’Urle, a ride to Col de Col de Miscon and Boulc, and a short ride to Saint Roman and Laval d’Aix.