DRAFT
Tl;Dr: Great trip! S. France is agricultural & tropic-esque. Folder was fine. New Friends are fun.
Some Facts
This year the Merry Bikers went to Southern France for a 6-day bike tour from Avignon to Tolouse. I rode 284 miles, with two longer rides (65 and 64 miles), all in very hot weather (top temp I saw on my garmin was a ridiculous 118 degrees f on day 1, 109 on day 2).
The Merry Bikers are a group I’ve been riding with for about 5 years now – they are mostly retired architects (and uniformly older than me). Bruce is the organizer, and he organized this ride back in January. When the organizer organizines the ride to a place you’ve never been you go! For this trip, only 4 members of the Merry Bikers went (John, Chaz, Bruce & me), but we met up with 2 other cyclists (Daniel and Amber) and were supported by Gail and Melanie. All in all a great bunch.
Our Route was (click the link to see the Strava maps)
| From-To | Miles | Notes |
| Avignon->Nimes | 40 | Very hot, big gravel at the start |
| Nimes -> Sette | 65 | Very hot, very long. A hard ride. |
| Sette -> Bezier | 32 | A bit cooler, a recovery ride |
| Bezier-Olargues | 35 miles | Some elevation, wow Olargue! |
| Olargues -> Castres | 44.75 | A very big tunnel! |
| Olargues-> Tolouse Day 6 pt 1: Castres to Cassoulet! Day 6 pt 2: Castelnaudary to Bazier (to Train) | 62 miles in 2 parts | Cassoulet! Canal! A City |
About Southern France
I’d never been, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. A couple standouts: it was very agricultural, almost tropical, very diverse cities, seemingly lovely people.
Flying and training into France was very informative – I suppose it makes quite a bit of sense, but I somehow think of France as kind of Extended Paris rather than Farmland but wow was I wrong. Lots and lots and plots. More and more the farther south I got. The cities (more below) were fun, but it was really amazing to be riding through field after field of grapes, olives, lavender, hemp, and many other crops. The farther you get out of town the more tractors you see, but the change is fast and abrupt. It makes me think that there are centuries of tradition and knowledge about growing things that must have developed.
The weather was hot, and the climate landscape made me think of Mexico. We saw palm trees, cactuses, and generally just felt like things were.. tropical. I imagine most of that is temporary – S. France is at about the same latitude as Oregon, so it’s hard to imagine it’s quite so tropical year round, But certianly at the peak of summer it felt like the equator.
I’m really greatful to Bruce for taking us to different kinds of Cities. Avignon was a middle sized city. Neim, Beziers and Sette seemed much larger. Tolouse seemed like a huge bustling city! And Olargues was just tiny and strange (more later).
It seems like the people of France operate on some fairly basic rules: If you say hello (Bon Jour), things are gonna work out. Once that very low hurdle was passed people were generally very pleasant and patient with linguistic fumbling around. Some folks were right out insistent on being helpful (like JC the trail angle who helped J. out with some cocacola).
Speaking of speaking: I didn’t have as much opportunity to speak french as I could have (I let better speakers do the talking). I did feel fairly self concious as an english speaker – the obvious tourist blearing out foreign words when sitting in the park. But on my trip through the duty free line in the Paris airport the cashier said she thought I was French, so I must be speaking a little bit Ok.
I had a lovely time, and I’d like to go back with Marcie to visit Olargues, Sette and Tolouse (maybe more!). But maybe a bit later in the year.
Riding ze Bicycle
I took a Brompton Folding bike to France, thanks to my wonderful friend Jim. (Thank you again Jim!). The bromtpon was not the ideal bike for this trip, but it has some unique properties that were very helpful: it folds up and fits in a 2 foot by 2′ by 10 inch wide package which I was able to just check as luggage. This made 3 plane trips and 2 train rides pretty dang easy. It was also easy to get up and down narrow stairs into Airbnb’s. I was expecting to not be able to take as many photos (due to having to do more steering than on my big bikes), and maybe more hand trouble (lots of vibration on the handle bar), but none of that came to pass. I did get a raft of flats, but that was my own bad planning – the CDCY TPU tire innertubes I used seem to last about… 30 miles each. Never again.
In the first 5 miles of riding we encountered some fairly serious gravel – loose, smaller than baby head. On the top of a levee utility road. I was worried that with that kind of gravel I’d be at a serious disadvantage (30mm tires), but that was the worst of the proper gravel (there were other surface challenges, but nothing else gravelly).
Flats, flats, I got lots of flats. These were due to the TPU tubes. I think I had 4 flats overall, and ultimately switched back to Butyl tubes which worked flawlessly. I was running about 70lbs of pressure in the tires (pretty low for these tires) but they worked great for me and my load. I was carrying about 3.5L of water most of the time, along with a repair kit and a few other sundries which pusts the overall system weight at into 240 lbs (whoaf).
Much of what we rode was essentially rail trail, somewhat like the Burke Gillman in seattle. We ended up overtaking a lot of folks. And there’s zero chance I’d learn how to say ‘On your left’ in french (or even understand if that’s something they’d say). Instead I just said ‘Bon Jour’ or if there was a serious block ‘escume em mois’ and that seemed to do the trick.
Holy cow – I rode 300ish miles in the very high heat with zero saddle sores or issues of any kinds. THIS IS AMAZING! Here’s my recipe:
- 1 Brooks b17 saddle
- Rapha Randonee shorts (I’ve been wearing these for a dozen years now?)
- Merino wool underwear (Woolys or Icebreaker)
- Anti-Monkey-Butt Powder
I’ve used powder (basically cornstarch) in the past to help keep things dry. AMB is a commercial powder with a few other things besides cornstarch in it (calomine?). I don’t know how things would have gone without it, but they went great with it. I think it’s 90% Brooks Leather saddle, 10% AMB.
I used this DIY approach for packing the brompton – $15 worth of Ikea bags, it worked great. I did have to take off the saddle (basically to make sure it was protected), but otherwise the bags did the trick.
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