The weather was good.
No wind this morning at 6AM. Drove from Salon de Provence to Sault, arrived at about 7:45, and was ready for an attempt at the mountain around 8AM. Got fresh supplies of mineral water and pain chocolate and pain with raisins from the local boulangerie, and set off.
Beautiful day, as mentioned no wind, and at least at 8AM in the morning rather cool. Obviously the day for it, if ever.
The distance from Sault to the top is 26 kilometres, with a climb from 710 meters above sea level to 1912 at the top. On average a rise of about 5 meters for every 100 meters on the road. Averages do not tell the whole story however; the last 6 kilometres climb about 600 meters, or 10 meters for every 100 meters of road.
Those last six kilometres start where the road coming up from Bedoin joins the road from Sault. There is a large restaurant located there, the place to stop obviously and spend a major part of the day, at least for riders with some understanding of what is involved in tackling the last 6 km up to the top. Since I am the eternal optimist I thought there was no reason for stopping and pushed on.
Those last 6 kilometres took me at least 45 minutes. It was hard work. I was passed by more bicyclists than I care to remember. All kinds of bicyclists, young men, young women, older men, maybe not by any older woman, but it is hard to tell. I was busier taking photographs mainly in order to have an excuse to stop, than to closely observe who passed me on bikes.
Well I arrived eventually. Took photographs in all directions,
and got on the bike again and was back in Sault in less than one hour.
I also stopped at the Tom Simpson memorial on my way back; the tradition is for cyclists to stop and honour Simpson by leaving something.
As a result the place looks like a garbage dump. What kind of honour is it to have things looking like this?
Came back to Sault at around 12:30, after 3.5 hours on the road and about 30 minutes at the top. What happened to the rest of that time I have no idea. Maybe it was taken up by stopping for photographs (as an excuse).
As you can see it was a fine day.
back to Aix finish - back to on the road