Dear friends,

it is a bit tricky to describe these two legs… Reason being that it would be best to completely forget about the 100 kilometers between Macon and some 30km south of Lyon. It was simply not nice and was not made any better by trying somehow to find a way to leave Lyon… The mentioned 30 kilometers were marked by us not being able to find any kind of bicycle path and we were with bikes and panniers in the middle of heavy traffic, surrounded by cars and lorries until we accidentally found the “Via Rhona”. That is the bike route which shall lead us first to the river Rhone and following it towards the Mediterranean Sea.

Well, let`s say that Via Rhona is nothing for people with weak nerves. What we have found so far was: Missing sign posts, perfect indication of the route, paths that were hardly possible to cycle and brilliant surfaces. To keep things entertaining they change in random order 🙂 The second half of the stage eventually made up for it and became more and more beautiful. Even people we met were a lot more friendly than around Lyon (where I admit they appeared to be rather grumpy – no offense…) – and our mood rose!
Today`s leg was rather short with 65km and absolutely gorgeous: The landscape became more “southern” (as Olli said: Look, the grass is looking burnt from the sun!!), Valence is beautiful and rewarded the visit with a wonderful lunch – and we enjoyed the rest of the day to Le Pouzin fully. Even the headwind did not bother us too much – we have been very lucky so far with backwind that it almost feels right to have a bit of a headwind now.


The funniest what has happened so far took place in front of a supermarket just beyond Lyon. We were approached by an elderly couple and while I tried to make sense of his gentle words the wife taps on the sholder of the husband and says: “Honey, I think they don`t speak French. Look at the way they travel – No French would do THAT.” I almost died laughing 🙂

Tomorrow we will go towards Orange – we get ever closer to the Sea!

So it`s Bye Bye from us for now… Bye Bye!

Claudia & Olli