DAY 6 on the bike, June 19th - Bourg-en-Bresse to Bellegarde-sur-Valserine

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This entry by Tom.

Today started the same way yesterday did, with the promise of another hot day and a very solid Kyriad hotel breakfast.

Caroline took the day off the bike since the route today involved a lot of climbing in the Jura. In the morning, she visited the abbey in Brou with Donna and Luce and then they loaded up with water, energy drinks, Coke and fruit with a plan to drive the route and help out anyone who needed drinks and food. This was a great idea since today’s route is a bit remote with limited opportunity to reload plus it was going to be well over 30 C again.

My plan was to ride the alternate extension up to the Cize-Bolozon viaduct to shoot some video with my GoPro camera but then stick to the shorter prescribed route over the Jura.

Leaving Bourg-en-Bresse, no problem. Turned off busy D979 onto the side road D23 a few kilometres east of town and immediately started seeing other cyclists out for a morning spin. I always like to see this as it confirms my routing.

It was a pleasant descent from Hautecourt-Romanèche to Cize where I turned on my GoPro for the run down to the viaduct. It is an impressive structure and I got some pretty good video, plus a still. Riding back to the main road alongside the Ain river in the gorge was very attractive. It reminded me in some ways of the gorges de l’Ardèche. It was about that scale but deeper and greener.

The climb from the river up to the turnoff onto D85B was a nasty 15% in the heat of the mid-morning sun. I’d received a text message from Caroline that they were nearby in the van, and sure enough they passed me then pulled over and waited for me to meet them a little further up. I accepted some water and an energy drink.

Then I did a dumb thing. I left a water bottle at Chapiat and didn’t realize it until I was about 3.5 km down the road at a non-potable spring, pouring cold water over my head, in Étables. D’oh! Back I went. Burned off a good 20 minutes or more and added 7 km to my day on the bike.

A little further on I came upon a spring that wasn’t marked non-potable so I loaded up. Nice to see these exactly when you need them.

It was a fast and fun descent along D1084 to Maillat followed by another brutish climb along D12G. I stopped in the shade to eat my pocket sandwich from breakfast before tackling it. These climbs are no joke but you can reach higher elevations quickly if you power through them.

It was fairly easy rolling uphill along D31 to Col de la Chiminée except for a few stops to cool off in the shade and pour cold water over my head. Several minutes of this periodically really helped to keep me rolling, but I had to do it every half hour or so.

Between Col de la Chiminée and Col du Cuvéry I got another text from Caroline. She was waiting at Col du Cuvéry alone while Donna and Luce went to help Henry. Turns out he was fine and having a great time plugging away; he just needed drinks.

Took me a while to get to Cuvéry. Stopped another two times to cool off. But once there, Caroline had water, a Coke, two Pringles chips(!) and a basket of apricots. Sweet. And after only a few minutes, Donna and Luce pulled up in the van.

A quick stop for a photo at the col sign--this time a rare one with me in it--and then another photo at a lookout on the way down to Bellegarde-sur-Valserine (quote of the day, by Luce: "It's just like Champlain Lookout!") was followed by me chasing the van all the way into town and to our hotel, another Kyriad. I was only a few moments behind the van at the end...heh heh.

Bellegarde-sur-Valserine is a relatively large place with a nice town centre but our hotel was nowhere near there so the group had dinner at the hotel. Available salad bar, dessert bar and choice of two entrees--Caroline and I both had the shark (no joke), it was done perfectly so it was good.

And that was it for the day.

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