June 13th: Valloire to Briancon

 We had bought breakfast the evening before from the supermarket down the street. One problem with renting an apartment is that you have to clean up yourself according to pretty strict standards so we couldn’t make a big mess by cooking anything complicated. About the most ambitious thing we could make was fried egg, but between that, some instant ramen (which Boen loved) bread, meat, and cheese, we got plenty of fuel for the ride.

The climb up the Galibiere from town isn’t fearsome at first. The initial grades were gentle, though high enough to grant us views of side valleys that contained hiking passes. Trees disappeared rather quickly, since Valloire was already at 1400m. Because Galibiere was so tall, even at 2000m, we still had half the climbing left.

At that point, the climb began in earnest, earning Galibiere’s fearsome reputation. Switchback after switchback began to have names of famous professional cyclists written on them. We started to see waterfalls. As we rose, I realized that I had never seen Galibiere in good weather before, and it was indeed beautiful, with plenty of waterfalls. We filled up with water at the last restaurant before the summit at around 2000m, and climbed the rest in oxygen deficit, which forced us a stop and rest at every waterfall intersection every 200m of climbing or so.

The summit surprisingly had no restaurants or café, but was instead a massive zoo, with cars, motorcycles, and cyclists all bidding for parking as well as pictures at the summit signs. Mark and Stephan had gotten to the top well ahead of us. We got our summit pictures (some of which were taken by Californians who’d identified the tandem, having seen that unmistakable bike from when we climbed Mt Tam with the Western Wheelers), and then said goodbye to Stephan.

The descent to Lauteraut from Galibiere is a delight—the long straight runs were perfect for the tandem. In fact, I even overtook a beginner motorcyclist down the road! At Lauterat we found Xiaoqin and Bowen eating lunch and joined them. When we were finished, I saw the bus coming and decided that there was no chance I wanted to be stuck behind a silly bus on this fast descent. Boen and I stomped hard on the pedals and cleared a traffic light as the last vehicle through. Since this was an “alternee circulation” traffic light we knew we had a long interval before the next cars could come down, and rather than wait for Mark or Arturo we went ahead.

The first 8km of Col du Lauteraut on the Briancon side do not require braking at all, as you were capable of achieving terminal velocity the whole time. Back in 2005, Mike Samuel and I found ourselves drafting busses and car transporters while descending, spinning out our high gears furiously.

At 1200m Briancon was the highest cathedral town in France, but that was still low enough that when we got to 1400m it was so warm we had to stop and take off our jackets. At that point, the bus that we’d worked so hard to stay ahead of passed us, followed by a stream of cars. The last 200m of descent was punctuated by hills which marked ski towns (as identified by fancy hotels and ski lifts), but we had reservations waiting for us, so we kept pedaling until we got to the Logis de France hotel.

The owner greeted us, showed us the garage and the bike parking space and the apartments which were generously sized and well shielded from the heat. Once the car got to the hotel, we unloaded It and took showers. It had been a few days since the EV got charged, so Arturo and I took the car to the local city parking garage which had an EV charger. On the way back to the hotel we passed a carrefour and I noticed it had laundry machines sitting outside which dispensed detergent as part of a wash, so once I got back I got everyone in the family to give me the dirty laundry after I took a shower and I went and did a load as well as buying cold drinks and breakfast.

It was warm outside, so it was very nice relaxing in our cool hotel apartments. At 6:15 or so we hiked up to old town to explore it prior to dinner, and the walk was exposed and hot. The old town provoked memories as the last time we were here there was  Renaissance fair, which in the surroundings were much more appropriate. The town had lots of nooks and corners, prompting memories of Carcassonne, both the Languedoc city and the board game of the name.  Inside, it was quite steep, with water continually running down channels of many streets.

At 7:00pm, we stood in front of the restaurant which were already seating guests. This was a popular place, since they had sent me a continuous stream of e-mail asking me to confirm I was coming. We were seated quickly, and there were two fixed priced menus that we separated by only 2 euros, the choice between Duck Confit and Duck Breast. Both dishes were very good and being cyclists we put away all the food including dessert with no issues.

We debated choices on the Col L’Izoard tomorrow. We had been riding for 3 days without a rest day at this point. The Col L’Izoard Napoleon refuge had a good reputation, but we would hit it prior to the summit. I noticed there was another Logis de France hotel with a good reputation at around 1400m down the other side. It was a Sunday so I didn’t expect much competition for lodging, plus there were places all the way down the valley. This Logis de France hotel even had a swimming pool!

Walking back to our hotel in the evening, I still felt the need to take another shower to cool down before going to bed.