Little bit wet today

Well a little bit cold and a little bit wet today – starting to sound like a cracked record with the cold huh! Still, I saw a lot of lavender fields, a very pretty gorge and bumped into a couple of small cols.

Leaving this morning the rain had turned to drizzle thankfully, and so before long I was even taking off my rain jacket. I kept my rain booties on as they were doing an OK job of keeping the wind off my already wet feet – it only took 4kms before the rain came inside the booties, unsure why they are called rain booties. It was a really nice ride though leaving Laragne Monteglin as I headed through quite an amazing gorge called Gorges de la Meouge.

Awesome colour of the water

It was obviously normally quite popular as there were a lot of car parks and tramping signs about the place, but today there were not many cars or people around at all.

The road gently wound through the gorge uphill, not a huge incline, just enough to now you were pushing against it. It lead itself up to the top of the gorge and then into open meadow type country. The road then started to get a bit steeper as you started to climb up to Col de Macuegne. Just before you get to the top though I started to spell a very strong smell of lavender. This is where the lavender plots started and didn’t finish until the town of Sault about 20kms away.

The plots came in all shapes and sizes, some weeded and looking nice, others looking almost overgrown with weeds, but all had had their flowers picked so no purple rows unfortunately.

It was a fairly benign and short climb to the top of Col de Macuegne as you wound your way through the lavender fields.

From there I turned left and went up to another pass, the Col de l’Homme Mort. It was another fairly benign climb to get there but I was starting to feel cold, and I realised that the rain was back, not just drizzle anymore.

It was a nice view from the top of the col, but because of clouds I could not see Mont Ventoux, which apparently you normally could by the sign up there.

I popped on my jacket and came down the short hill into Sault, which I now believe is the lavender capital of the world. I only say this as the place I am staying has lavender everywhere like he wallpaper, tiles, the soaps, everything, that and all the lavender fields around the place of course. Still, could be worse smells, like that one at the place I was staying in Gap.

Here I now stay for the night so the rain can go away and I can head on up Mont Ventoux tomorrow. The route from Sault is the easiest of the three ways up so I plan on going up from Sault, and down to Bedoin, then back up from Bedoin (which is the “proper” route) and down to Malaucene. Lets hope the weatherman is right!

Highlight: Traveling up the gorge was just awesome!

Lowlight: In my constant internal debate about jacket on or jacket off when it is wet, I think I may have got it wrong today as I was freezing cold by the end of the ride. Although, I took the jacket off as I was being to sweat, which also would have made me wet, and then cold by the end of the ride as well. Oh who knows?

Lesson Learned: Where the lavender capital of the world is.