It’s now exactly five month since Jonathan snapped his Achilles whilst skiing off-piste. He’s been doing lot’s of rehab with an excellent physio called Jo who is based in Val d’Isere. His walking now only shows a trace of a limp and, following our lovely cycle trip in Annecy, we thought we might attempt something a little more challenging! Jo’s stern warning was ‘no standing on the pedals’ as we headed off to follow in the cycle tracks of one of our National Heroes.
We headed down the hill from Ste Foy to Seez for coffee and croissants from from the best bakery in the Alps. Then began our ascent following one of the 2018 legs of the Tour de France. Geraint Thomas made the 16 km 1000m climb to La Rosière in 36 min 58 sec, but we took a little longer! Once we’d passed the finish line in La Rosière, after about erm.. 2 hours, we pedalled on to the Col de Petit St Bernard. Overall a total climb of 27km and 1338m to the Col at 2188m. Happily they sell Petit St Bernard beer at the top!
We descended back to La Rosière for lunch, as many more lycra clad wannabes powered up the hill. The descent to Ste Foy affords stunning views to Mont Pourri and the villages below. The total trip was 59km and 1424m elevation gain-not too bad less than 5 months post surgery and after months in lockdown!
This may be the last post from the mountains for a while as we are heading back to the UK next week. We plan to visit family in Switzerland and do a little tasting in Champagne en route. Let’s hope this doesn’t break the rules for all three countries, and fingers crossed that we don’t have to quarantine! If the work on Merryn has been completed we may even get to do a little sailing, although constantly changing lockdown and quarantine rules may restrict us to the southwest coast. If all is well we will return to the mountains in September. Having not been able to achieve our original dreams for this year we may have a new plan-cycling the Route des Grandes Alpes from here to Nice over an awful lot of Cols and clocking up climbs approaching 17,000m! I’m not sure we’ll make it but it’s always good to have a cunning plan.
It looks like you’ve had a fabulous summer so far even though it’s not the one you expected but great to see you making the most of it.
Gary’s comment from your video riding round Annecy – Happy Hour…….yeah!
Take care 😎