Mt. Biking - Les Baux BIG circuit!

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Owner: squiz
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Member#: 6644
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Registered: 27-05-2007
Diary Entries: 2882

6th October 2014
Mt. Biking: Les Baux BIG circuit!
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Weather: cloudy
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Distance Covered: 25 (Nautical Miles - unless stated otherwise)

Monday 6th October – My 61st Birthday! Bike Ride ***** Les Baux BIG circuit!

BIG Birthday and BIG Bike Ride!! After breakfast, birthday texts, phone calls and card opening, we set out to bike over to the Plateau de la Caume. We followed the same track as our walk yesterday – the red and white stripe of the GR6 but then instead of turning off we carried on on that path until it met the road up from St. Remy de Provence. Its not a bad track really but has loose stones and rocks and is quite steep up and down in places. After crossing over the road it turned into a tarmac road but was very very steep so quite hard going. When we got up to the mast at the top it levelled out and although it was back to stony track we had reached the plateau so quite easy to bike. We stopped for half our lunch on a rocky outcrop with a great view and decided to walk along the ridge as far as we could. It was an amazing place – pinching ourselves again! We had a great trip back down the tarmac road, really whizzing. Then we turned off onto a track down to St. Remy and although it was steep it was quite a smooth path and great fun. Then suddenly it turned into a rocky river bed between huge rocks and it was quite a obstacle course to get the bikes down! Once at the bottom we followed the path through the woods to the road and headed for the Roman Chapel on our map. It wasn’t very easily accessible so we pressed on to the Roman bridge for the rest of our lunch. Unfortunately it had rather a lot of unRoman concrete patching it up!! Decided not to go back on ourselves and although our map didn’t reach that far to go back along the other side of the ridge. The road did, unfortunately turn away taking us on quite a detour but it was a good and pretty road with a little up and lots of down! Passed through the villages of Mouries and Mausanne and had to go a bit further because of a road closure detour but eventually found ourselves on the road back to Les Baux and we started dreading the huge push up back to the van! We stopped at an Olive Oil farm on the way up the road and had a look in the shop. A man was actually harvesting the olives with a strange piece of equipment which looked like a fan on the end of a long pole and a net spread on the ground. No wonder its so expensive if it is that labour intensive – he was doing one tree at a time and there are thousands of them!! The hill back to Les Baux was every bit as bad as we expected and by the time we had pushed up that and the last remaining hill back to the van we were exhausted – not quite sure how many miles but 25 nautical miles on the gps. We hadn’t taken enough water so had several cups followed by a cuppa. Luckily it has been overcast most of the day, if it was hot it would have been very difficult. We had a birthday curry for tea and played phase 10. Had birthday texts from the boys and Dan is very excited because he was on his way to buy a new (to him) car!! Somebody Jay works with is selling it so a bargain apparently. Blue Ford Focus with a 55 plate. So pleased for him because he hasn’t had a lot of luck with his old bangers so far so hopefully this one will be reliable and last him a while.

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