Bon soir from LowGear! We hope you have all had a wonderful week and are enjoying the weekend as much as we are!! This post is coming to you from the outskirts of Switzerland herself as we are camped up for the weekend only 5 miles from the international border and the city of Geneva is literally just down the road!! So before we made it here a very wet Wednesday put a halt on our travels and forced us to stay another day at a campsite in Cluny, on the western edge of the French Alps and far side of the Jura valley. I know terrible isnt it, being forced to chill out and relax for another day like that........!!! We took the opportunity to eat lots of food and rest up for the journey ahead, as we aimed to drop down and cross the Jura Valley from the western side and climb over its eastern edge into the French Alpine region, with the ultimate goal being the city of Geneva, Switzerland. We had a really nice few days at the campsite in Cluny and took full advantage of the facilities- hot showers and some nice clean clothes being top of the list!! After pulling my hamstring last week it really was just what the body needed- some rest and time to recover before a very challenging ride to come. We took in the sites of the beautiful town itself and spent a couple of days heading off into the surrounding slopes covered in lush green pine forest. The rides were tough and provided a good opportunity to loosen and strengthen the leg muscles in preparation for the inevitable climb over the French Alps a few days later. The campsite was very busy and we met and spoke to a variety of different holiday makers, general travellers and various cyclists touring the area and exploring its demanding terrain. We have found everyone we met truly wonderful and upon looking at us and all the gear stacked up and strapped to our bikes, they are all amazed when we explain that we are travelling around the world with all that stuff and are almost desperate to help us out in any way they can! The perfect example being a lovely Dutch couple staying at the campsite for a while, who supplied us with some awesome hot chocolate, pasta snacks and even leant us an extra gas cooker to relieve the stress on Robs Trangia cooking set, which has single handedly made all our meals thus far.......with a bit of help from the LowGear head chef of course (culinary skills courtesy of Rob!!). We would like to say a huge Thank you to Lilianne and Kees Brondijk for all of your help, support, kindness and general mothering over those few days!! We are eternally grateful and have already devoured those pasta meals and a few delicious hot chocolates as well!! We wish you all the best and hope you enjoy the posts yet to come! So after leaving Cluny we travelled east passing through the larger cities of Macon and Bourg en Bresse, before stopping at a charming church in the small village of Saint Just. After chilling out and getting some dinner on the go, an elderly lady and the local vicar turned up at the church for some choir practice and after chatting to them for a while and explaining what we were doing (which was met by the usual raised eyebrows and surprised questioning to make sure they heard us correctly - autour du monde???! Au velo??! Cest tres bien!!)- before we knew it we had a place to pitch our tents and spend the night.......right on the church ground itself and just in front of a beautifully managed cemetery. We have found the churches in France an invaluable source of help for us so far, as the majority of towns and villages are centred around them they literally ooze a welcoming and hospitable Christian attitude towards community and helping anyone in need. As such, there is also usually a water supply and public toilets attached or located nearby, which the locals are more than happy for us to use and they seem to really enjoy chatting to us and then watching us load up the bikes with our mountainous amounts of gear before heading off again. For anyone out there thinking of cycling or travelling through France, I highly recommend stopping in at these truly wonderful Eglise if you are ever in need, whether you are religiously inclined or not. Anyway, moving on from our night in the churchyard we set out for the soaring peaks on the horizon and it wasnt long before we found ourselves dropping down the gears and pushing harder and harder as the road began to rise up and up............and up! We climbed over the first ridge and dropped down into a valley where the amazing rivers Soane and LAin cut wide meandering paths through the towering landscape. After admiring the views and taking some pictures we began the challenging ascent up the far side, noticing a short way into the climb that we had accidentally taken a route up one of the cols of the Tour de France! It was only after catching a sign out of the corner of our eye which read Col de Berthiand - Ouvert, did we realise what we had ahead of us and there was no way we were backing out of this one...........not that we could have done even if we had wanted to!!! In all honesty its of the smaller cols at a little under 800m high and around 4 miles up (a baby compared to the high cols of the Tour de France), but it did boast a grinding 10-15% incline the whole way up and down the other side!! And with 30+ kg of gear on the bikes (not including ourselves and the steel frames) was definitely not something to play down!! So after sweating it out in the lowest of LowGear and watching these carbon fibre racing bikes cruise past us with no more weight on them than the skin tight Lycra outfits the riders were sporting, we literally whooped and cheered each other on to the top! It was a very emotional climb and the descent on the other side almost brought us to tears as we dropped down into Nantua, a beautiful town nestled in between soaring peaks and on the edge of the first true Swiss Lac that we had come across - ice cold glacial water, as clear and fresh as a bottle of chilled Evian water!! It was a truly magical day and we ended it with a dip in the lake, a good meal and a wild camp on the shores of the lake itself. The next morning we were definitely feeling the burn!! The legs were aching and fatigued from the heavy climbing the previous day and we were glad to hit a downward route for the majority of the day, closing in on the international border and Geneva itself being only 28 miles away. We took a few small detours on route, stopping to look around a magnificent 17th century fortress literally clinging to the side of a cliff face, as well as treating ourselves to a quick swim and a nice cool off in an old quarry filled with amazing turquoise coloured water and surrounded by the cloud covered peaks of the start of the Swiss alpine region. After that we slowly cruised the last 10 miles or so toward the town of Neydens, in order to set up for the night at a campsite and get ourselves ready for a weekend of bike maintenance and exploring the city of Geneva, including its infamous lake and stunning scenery. Well that really brings our current journey to a close just for a short time, as we made it here and have spent a day cycling around Geneva and discussing possible plans of attack for the next leg of our travels. At the moment this includes a few potential directions of passage through the truly demanding Swiss Alps, with a few choice countries in mind and an overall goal to consider, as we now begin thinking about leaving France behind and continuing our ride into the rest of Europe and wider world beyond the mountains! Hope you all enjoy the post and pics so far! We will be doing another update over the next couple of days to share our experience and some pics of Geneva, as well as hopefully including some info about the next part of our adventure yet to come. From LowGear much love and Bon Nuit!!
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 22:39:45 +0000
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