Clarification over the Col de la Bonette

Jan, who administers the 100 Cols route, has provided some information on the mystery over the height of the Col de la Bonette (see blog entry titled 'Five and a half hours of climbing and no sign'):


'The Col was constructed (in 1937 I believe), to have a fast route from north to south through the Alps. It was made by the Ministry of War by that time, for strategic reasons. Both the col (2715 m) and the top (Cime de la Bonette 2808 m) were opened the same time. The Cime was made to have a strategic overview of the valley.'


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Thank You

 I just received an email saying the following:


Your JustGiving page was one of the most successful of June. Out of 67626 fundraisers, you were in the top 3%!

A massive Thank You to all of our supporters for that achievement :-)


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A note from Steve

There are many people I need to thank for giving me the opportunity to do this bike ride including, of course, my family for their support, Jackie for her forbearance, Dee and Ken for looking after my guide dog Connie, Sandra for keeping an eye on things for me, Limoux Lions Club for their hospitality and help, Saverne Lions Club especially Marc for providing a safe haven for Graham’s car and Tim and Sarah Goff. But the two people I need to thank above all others are Anna Dore for all her assistance to us  and especially Graham for giving me the chance to complete this adventure on what is a challenging and wonderful route, his planning, pedalling, putting up with me, piloting, mechanical work on the bike, navigation, helping me and agreeing to do this with me on a loaded tandem which has made it a more difficult ride for him. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has made a donation to Cancer Research UK and if there is anyone out there who hasn’t yet made a donation and would like to, this blog has the link to the JustGiving page.

Steve

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It is done 😃

This was our last col - no sign so I took a picture of the pothole





Steve and I rose at 05:00 this morning. The lady at our hotel had given us some breakfast stuff in our room so we ate that and we were on the road just before 06:00. I think it took about 15 minutes to get out from the gravel track and lanes where the hotel was and then we will were on our way. The first col came up almost straight away and then there was one other slightly harder one later in the day. On the whole, though, we have had another day of good tandem roads and we were back in Saverne by about 14:00.

It was exiting when Saverne first appeared on the roadsigns but then our route kept turning us away from the town. Clearly the organisers thought we needed a few more km and an extra hill or two to make our day comlpete 😉. Joking aside, the 100 cols route is just brilliant. Definitely hard, but varied and interesting with stunning scenery. I will definitely strive to do sections or even all of it again (maybe not on a tandem 😃).

This afternoon we have driven part way back to the ferry port for the sailing home tomorrow. How strange it feels to have that little plastic pedal and to push it down and effortlessly accelerate up the hills on the motorway 😃. I expect the novelty will soon wear off.

Very sorry but I have tried everything to publish pictures and it just won't work - I will add them for this and the previous day when I am home tomorrow.

Pictures now added - there will be a couple more posts in the coming days.

Today we rode 127km and climbed 2162m.


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Nearly there

Post for Wednesday 29th (sorry, no network available to publish on the day).

The people at the hotel on top of Col Du Ballon D'Alsace told us we could have breakfast early so we wandered down at 07:00. They had left serial flakes for us but had neglected to leave us any milk 😞. Steve tried his with yoghurt but it was the gelatinous set type of yoghurt so that didn't seem to go so well. There was a coffee machine which dispensed hot chocolate so we tried that. I'm not saying I'm going to switch to that instead of milk at home but it wasn't too bad 😃.

Not long into the day we came across another group of British cyclists. It turned out that three members of this group were also into the final throws of the 100 cols - the first other people we had come across doing the route. These guys had taken something like 40 days to do the tour on solo bikes with a support vehicle. They had been taking some rest days and were keeping the cost of their trip down by camping, which is clearly more feasible with a support vehicle to carry all of their kit. The most remarkable thing about bumping into these guys was that some of them had worked at an outdoor education college where Steve's estranged wife used to work so they had worked with her.

Curiously, the other people didn't stop at every col sign and take a picture of it - I guess that's just me then 😃.

Not far into our day we climbed the Grand Ballon. Since dropping down from that we seemed to spend a good part of the afternoon flirting with the 1,000m contour.  The area we have cycled through today has mostly been wooded hillsides of conifers. Some of the villages we passed through have had Germanic names.

All was going well for our early finish for the day until we were close, or at least so we thought, to our booked accommodation. From the map on Booking.com we expected it to be just off to the side of our decent from the last col for the day. Using the grid reference for the place our GPS wanted to send us up a gravel track. The people at the hotel weren't answering the phone so that was no help. The app on my phone came up with some sort of error and then said it would take 40 minutes by car (it was only supposed to be a few km away). In the end we managed to get directions from the tourist office in the town. Once we had directions and we were riding to the place we were riding across white space (i.e. no roads) on the GPS map for quite a while. It added about 7km and quite a big climb to our day 😞.

Today we have ridden 145km and we climbed 2858m.

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Back to Alsace

View from outside our hotel

Our route takes us along some tiny roads

Thank you all for your generous donations to our Justgiving page 😃.

I have put some pictures on for yesterday.

Today we have made good progress along the kind of roads tandems are built for. The hills have been less steep so we have been able to keep up a decent pace even on the uphill sections. The countryside has been very pleasant and there has been a good mix of roads to keep things interesting. Tonight we are staying at the hotel on the (road) summit of Du Ballon D'Alsace. We have cycled 184km and climbed 2776m. From here we hope to finish with one full days ride tomorrow and a part day on Thursday.



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Onwards through the Doubs

Lovely roads

Some idiot has used the sign as a shotgun target 😞

Sorry about last night's blog - it was a literary masterpiece 😃. I must have tried at least 20 times to publish it last night. When we finally got to a place with a half decent phone signal this morning it said 'no drafts on phone' 😭.

Tonight is looking a bit tricky as well (no WiFi) so the pictures may have to be added later.

Today we have rolled through some nice countryside, initially through the Jura and latterly, according to the roadsigns, the Doubs. These are areas of mostly coniferous woodland and farmland but with interesting limestone outcrops, escarpments and gorges. The climbs are less severe than the ones we have become accustomed to in previous day's, although they still go on a bit! I think it was the climb to Col de Berentin which I characterised as the climb which just keeps giving - each time it seemed we were at the top it would drop a bit and then, around the next bend, carry on up 😞. This afternoon we followed one really nice tiny road beneath limestone cliffs for about 10km. The only other traffic we came across was one car and a couple of motorbikes.

Tonight we have stopped 18km short of our intended target because we could find no accommodation (with any kind of online presence) there. We decided we would stop if we spotted a hotel along the road after we had done 150km. So, here we are at Censeau after covering 156km and climbing 2447m. We have now done 90 cols and we are up to 3647km of our 4081km according to the routesheet.

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