As it turned out this was to be my last ride in France this time as we came back home a couple of days early.
After my previous longer ride, my final adventure wasn’t going to be as far as I didn’t want to disappear for too long. I had been delighted with how much I was enjoying the local roads which were a good combination of challenging (if small by French standards) climbs, fun descents and plenty of flat roads with very little traffic.
With this in mind I decided to re-run my favourite parts of the rides I’d done to date. I started by heading downhill over the roughest sealed road I’ve ever had the “pleasure” of cycling on to date. From there it was back out to the D905 past the resistance memorial – one of many in the area.
I took the climb up to Flavigny from the D905 and enjoyed riding through the line of trees along the top of the plateau before reaching the village. A quick blast down the descent on other side and I was back on the flat again – riding on the correct side of the road today.
As I reached Jailly-les-Moulins I was a bit nervous about the climb up to Dampierre-en-Montagne as I struggled the previous time. It was still hard but not as hard as the last time and I got to the top a bit more comfortably. My reward was the great descent down to Villeferry again, which this time was dry and sunny and even more fun. As last time I didn’t see any cars at all on the way down the hill – fabulous.
This time when I got to Vitteaux I looked carefully at the signs where I’d had my “incident” with the French driver the previous time and sure enough I’d been completely in the wrong. My apologies Monsieur – not that you’ll ever read this.
After watching the roads much more carefully I once again climbed up out of Vitteaux. It’s a good climb but the road is too busy to really enjoy it. I probably had more cars pass me on this 2-3km stretch than in the entire rest of the ride put together.
From the bottom of the descent it was a relatively flat run for 17kms back to the hill up into Alise-Ste-Reine. It was however, a head wind for the entire way, so I got down on the drops and rode as fast as I could to get it over with as soon as possible.
Headwind aside, it was another great ride.
I loved riding in France and was sorry that this turned out to be my last ride. I’m pretty sure I’d struggle with the Alps – but I’d love to try sometime. I’ll have to figure out when I can get over the channel again soon.
Thanks for reading.
