Finally I am able to write (or at least start writing) in the present tense. What a relief to be caught up. It is a very warm day here, with not a cloud in the sky.
Peter and Glenn and I decided to go for a ride around the Dentelles (counterclockwise). What with one thing (breakfast and a late start) and another (a knocking noise in Peter’s crank arm) we did not actually get really moving (from the bike shop) until about 10:45 am, by which time Rosanna had walked there to make her rental arrangements. She was then going to buy a couple of necessities, check out her e-mail and head home to make lunch (the long-anticipated frittata).
Our first 44 kms were just the way I like them, downhill with good pavement. We rode through Vaison to Seguret (avoiding the pottery festival) and then on to Sablet (that’s a really nice little stretch) and Gigondas and Vacqueyras and Beaumes de Venise. At this point, as I had anticipated, Glenn expressed a desire to take the road to Suzette, which I recalled as consisting of 10 km of uphill followed by 6km of downhill. Peter went with him. I went the other way towards Caromb and then Le Barroux. That was possibly a poor choice, because it involves 16km of climbing, albeit at a less steep gradient. At one point a French rider motioned to me to hop on his wheel and hauled me up an uphill stretch, then I met some Dutch riders doing a multiple ascent of Ventoux and explained to them (in a variety of languages) how to determine if the water in a fountain is safe to drink.
Then home to lunch. In addition to the frittata we cleaned out the fridge of leftovers (bye bye spelt and lentils). Peter and Rosanna spent a very long time fiddling with her camera and his computer and then her iPad
trying to organize her photos. I rested. Then Glenn left for another bike ride, Rosanna retired for a siesta, and Peter pretended to read for a minute or too, before falling into a nap about a foot from the desk where I am typing this. I hope to go to the Blueberry soon and post these entries (assuming the incorporation of photos is cooperative today, which it has not been of late), and meet Glenn after his ride. Later this evening we are heading to the lovely town square in Villedieu for pizza (by car). My only apprehension is navigating the wretched detour, which I will surely have to do as the place in front of the Mairie in Beaumont du Ventoux (the current Mairie, not the one we sometimes rent) will be closed again for dancing (with a DJ) this evening.
Now I am switching to the past tense – still writing about Sunday, but from the perspective of Monday. We went to Villedieu (using a slightly less wretched detour of my own devising). We had no reservation. We had no dinner. At least not there, but I seized upon the opportunity to take us to Buis les Baronnies, which has a lovely colonnaded town centre, and we had pizza and calzone and it was all fine, and the cook sang the first two verses of a lot of pop songs from the seventies in a loud but good voice while slapping the dough around. There are no pictures of this part of the day due to the exhaustion of the camera battery. Rosanna does not like the topography in that part of the country, but she agreed with me that there were nice wide well-marked roads for our return in the pitch black (no high beams necessary). The DJ party was in full swing as we detoured around it at 11 pm.
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