Our first night there was a little stressful because the organizer told us the name of the town (Vizille) where were meeting, but not the address or name of the hotel, so one very tired driver and his favorite navigator were trying to figure this out with very little information. After someone finally agreed to meet us in the town at a large monument that we could find, they drove us back out of town (not mentioned in the directions) to a long winding driveway (that we never would have found) and a beautiful old chateau that overlooked the large valley below. The rooms were quaint, but certainly acceptable, and I still don't know the name of the hotel where we stayed.
The next morning, the bicyclists left about 6 a.m. and I slept until 8. Since I was the designated driver, Sophie, the wife of another bicyclist waited for me and we spent our next two days together. We explored the Vizille Chateau and magnificent gardens, and then, around 11 set off to follow the cyclists and meet them at a designated stop.
Following 1500 cyclists up a mountain road is no fun feat, and after what seemed an eternity we finally arrived at a beautiful mountain village and had lunch with the husbands and the other 10 members of the group, as well as another wife and daughter who were also driving gear and water for the team.
We tried to avoid the cyclists for the later part of the day, but fortunately for them (one with a flat, and Pat who ran out of water) we came up behind them just as they needed us, very near the top of the day's second mountain. Sophie and I then took a detour and arrived at the next night's hotel. It was a dive, and not what we were hoping for. Sophie's room didn't even have a toilet in the room, and the other woman's room faced the highway and the train tracks, which ran all night. This place gave a whole new meaning to "don't expect much."
So, after a not so good night's sleep, we loaded up the next morning, and Sophie and I tried to leave early enough to beat the cyclists to the next town. We passed maybe about half of them as they started their ascent on the first of three mountains that day. It was a beautiful morning. The fog was thick in some places and clear as a bell in others. Our goal was to get to the next town, Valloire, which Sophie knew well, and she promised was a delightful mountain town. It is a ski town with 2 lifts, and a lot of alpine chateaux and touristy places to eat, drink and shop. They also have a great sports complex with a year-round skating rink, indoor swimming pool, and a million marked hiking trails that lead up to the summit of the mountain.
Sophie was right! We spent most of the day there, hiking and shopping and seeing a small farm where they made fabulous cheese, and a donkey parade, and just enjoying the atmosphere of the touristy Alps town. We were tickled to watch Pat and Sophie's husband come rolling into town and we restocked them for the day, before we carried on with our activities.
We left Valloire around 4, again hoping most of the cyclists had already passed through this pass, but there were still about 200 climbing up the mountain. We took a deviation and through a tunnel so we didn't go to the top of that mountain but got to see the full beauty of it as we went down the other side and could see the valley created by several magnificent mountains in this area. We went through several little towns that hung on the edges of the only road through this region, and came across an amazing view of a retreating glacier in a small town near Graves, France. There was a beautiful little church there, which we explored, and then got back on the route to head back into Vizille for our last night on the road.
The boys still hadn't arrived by 6 p.m. when Sophie and I decided to look for the last hotel of the trip. The Coin au Bar was so awful, had we not been in a group and knew there were no hotels to be found, we would have left. I offered to drive us home (6 hours), but Pat and I were so tired that wouldn't have been a good idea. The owner, was a really friendly guy who had apparently bought the place within the last year and was trying to make a go of it. The rooms were small and clean, but there was only one shower for 8 hotel rooms, which I didn't even go look at, and the 2 toilets were a porcelain hole in the floor with an overhead flush, the kind found in the primitive roadside restrooms.
Dinner wasn't much better, but we were all so tired, we ate it. The dessert was good, and it was fun to watch this group of 12 weary riders drink shots of some green looking stuff and talk about their two days of climbing.
I wish I could say that I was happy to get back to the house, but arriving home brought back the sad memories of the last few weeks, so that really didn't improve much, but I did get a nice shower and slept in a really comfortable bed.
