Newtonian Principles applied to Cycling

The law I am thinking of is the one that states for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. I have relied on the truthfulness of this observation all my life, but lately my faith has been shaken. There have been a number of bike rides I have commented on where I had the impression at least that I was always going uphill and hardly ever downhill (the road to Veau -- or for that matter, the road from Veau -- being a prime example). Then it crossed my mind that all the loops I cycled clockwise were more uphill-y than the ones I cycled counterclockwise. I know there are things that happen differently (like the toilet flushing circles of water) depending on whether one is in the northern or southern hemisphere, but I have never heard that direction inevitably or necessarily influences altitude gain. Secretly, however (by which I mean without telling Kate of my nonsense) I decided to test it today.

But first, I went to the market. This was Malaucene market day. I went just around 9am when everything was set up to buy Guy (who arrives tomorrow) some white tea. There was only one available from the tea merchant and I fear it will not be up to his usual standards. I also stockpiled some soap for myself (rosemary, thyme and lemongrass). There was a surprising amount of traffic and paucity of parking space and any number of unexpected vehicular encounters (all at low speed fortunately) before I got back to the house.

Shortly after I returned Kate and I left on a grand cycling adventure. We went to Bedoin via the usual route, and then (up) to Flassan, and climbed the col des Abeilles (996m) towards Sault. After a tremendously fast but short seeming (of course I was travelling in excess of 65km per hour) downhill, we turned off towards Monieux and the signs for the Gorge de la Nesque, rather than carrying on to Sault. It is a fairly narrow road and doesn't look all that promising initially, plus there was a bit of a headwind and we were required to regain all the altitude we had just lost, so that was a bit irritating. Still there were a lot of cyclists en route, including a trio led by a formidable woman older than I am with toeclips on her bike, so we assumed there must be something rewarding coming up. The first thing I noticed was one of those signs advising that a beautiful spot is just 200m in one's future. Then we rounded a bend and faced a sheer wall of limestone. After that the vista just became more and more spectacular. There were some rocky structures that resembled a natural amphitheatre, and a really precipitous drop down to the coy Nesque River (at least I assume she is coy as I saw no sign of her -- just a rocky riverbed). The road from this point on was amazing. It just hung on the edge of the gorge. I think it is called a corniche road, which is a type the French favour -- there is a famous old one from Nice to Monte Carlo which features prominently in the novel House of Mirth and also marks the end of Isadora Duncan (decapitated when the trailing bits of her headscarf caught in the wheels of the convertible she was driving). Nothing so dramatic happened to us as we sailed through tunnels carved out of the rock -- all of them portentously announcing the maximum height of the vehicles that could pass through. I say it was portentous because I noted that at either end of the road, there was a 2.3m limit, and yet the tunnel in the middle had a 3.4m limit, which should have been unnecessary to announce after all as nothing more than 2.4m could ever manage to approach it! The road was also downhill for at least 13km, but gently so. We sailed right into Ville sur Auzon and then on to Flassan and back to Bedoin, where, alas, the service de dejeuner had terminated. So we each had a Clif bar for lunch and carried on back to Malaucene, where Kate dropped off her rental bike and then came to the bar to wait for me while I rode home (total km just over 101) and came back in the car (after changing out of my rather uncomfortable cycling shorts as I am suffering from some irritating saddle sores). Is there no limit to the suffering that la patronne will endure for her loyal readers? Not to mention the pursuit of scientific knowledge -- the route was clockwise -- part way through I was quite sure I had again been cheated in terms of more uphill than downhill -- then I encountered the glorious descent of the Gorge de la Nesque. Now I am thinking my theory is a lot of hooey.