De retour à l'hexagone

Getting out of Switzerland was a lot harder than getting in. I rode along the lakes to Neutchatel, which was beatiful, thankfully, because it proved murderous getting out of their little Valley. I knew it would be hard, but the switchbacks after switchbacks were utterly exhausting. It probably took me four hours to get over the mountain at the lakeedge, and that was just the first one!!! Fortunately I found a gorgeous alpine meadow at the top, that I stayed in and ate swiss chocolate for a good long time. The cows all had huge cow bells, and the herder was yodelling (sort of), so it was a just reward. I think this mountain was about 1200 m, so I'm very glad I didn't get into any of the really big beasts. The really depressing thing was reading the next day about the guys on the tour who do several LARGER peaks and 200 km in about 5 hours, and are then considered really crummy if they fall a minute behind. I did about two peaks and maybe 40 km that day in about 12 hours. I guess I put it down to their not having to haul around so much baggage. Yeah, that's it.



So back to France, where it is oppressively hot again. It isn't so bad in the countryside where its nice and cool at night, but its too hot for daytime riding. I covered a lot of territory in the morning and late afternoon though, and I'm now in Besançon. I haven't explored much yet, but it looks like a very nice town to ride out the heat wave. Supposedly we're looking at 38 degrees tomorrow. The temperatures they give are always a bit inflated I find, but I get the drift that it will be hot. I'll probably stay for another day to rest up after several days of mountainous biking.