What a day of superb riding.
But a long and hot one it was. To
avoid the hard climbs to the summit we
took a round about route through a town called Sault. I think we were away from camp for about 10
hours and covered 100ks. The return down
hill trip took about one hour.
We all rode our heavy touring bikes. But they had very low gearing which was
great.
If anyone is think about riding up Mont Ventoux the route
through Sault is definitely the easier of the three ways to do the climb as the
follows a ridge to the top. The actual
climb is only about 26 ks but the getting there was about half of the effort as
it also had some hills to cross. I now
have a great admiration for the ability of the ‘Tour’ cyclists who race up
these hills. The last 6 ks take a real
effort as the gradient kicks up to well over 8 degrees in places.
Phill, Chris, Clem and Steve were the only takers for this
ride. Chris was the first to the top. Unfortunately Steve got bad cramps and had to
turn back about one kilometer from the top.
Bugger.
The 360 degree view from the top is stunning and stretches
for miles.
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