Five and a half hours of climbing and no sign 😞

Fantastic lunch 😃

The only sign at the top of the Bonette



Steve - head in hands "what is this you are making me do" (actually he is putting on sunscreen)

It has been another great day on the bike. We rose early and left the hotel in time to catch the opening of the village bakery for a quick brioche - enough to carry us through to the control village about 15km up the road. We had a proper breakfast there and then settled into the rest of the climb to the top of the Col de la Bonette. The top of the Bonette was 53km from our overnight place and the route was pretty much uphill all of the way. This was, by quite a big margin, our longest section of uphill to the top of our highest col so far. I was looking forward to getting a picture of the Col de la Bonette sign when we eventually arrived at the top but there wasn't one - maybe it has been taken away for refurbishment or maybe some low-life has nicked it for a souvenir. There was a little cycling sign - see pictures.

It seems that the Col de la Bonette has been altered because the roadsigns lower down suggested the col would be higher than it actually was. There was a road carrying on higher up than where our track turned back down. This higher road looped around the mountain and then came back to just the other side of a narrow ridge of rock which is now breached (these higher roads are now route barree and blocked with piles of rubble). My guess is that the Bonette has been reduced in stature by short cutting through what would have been a fairly insignificant rock wall to make the old higher section redundant. Anyway, we weren't complaining, we felt we had climbed enough 😃 - 2715m is pretty high in my book (as opposed to just over 2800m on the old signs).

This afternoon we climbed the much smaller Col de Vars. In some ways this seemed harder because it was hotter by then and, even trying our very hardest, we just couldn't out accelerate the cloud of flies which bothered us all the way up the mountain 😞.

This afternoon we called into a bar in a village where we needed to get a control stamp. The dog tied up outside seemed excited - I bet he was thinking "first customers in three weeks". We went inside and an old chap came through from out back. He had no food, the coffee machine was broken, etc., etc.. I took Steve to the loo and I could almost see the cogs in the old chaps head clattering around. He had noticed that Steve was blind and was clearly wondering how it was we were both in cycling kit. He walked slowly over to the door and peered outside to see the tandem and an expression of enlightenment appeared across his face.

Today we have covered 110km (most of that was uphill) and climbed 2892m. It has been a day of stunning alpine scenery in perfect conditions. Hopefully the weather will hold for a few more days until we have the really high cols behind us. We have now covered over 3000 of the 4081km on our sheets.

Tonight we are sleeping near Vars.



www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer