Mon Tour de France: Departure

Due to time constraint, I can’t complete the section kit and cloth now.  Will come back and post it later.

But I would share this, so that if you would like to follow me and know my whereabout, you could even look at the same view as I ride in panorama! – thank to Goggle map technology.

Here is my daily route:

Day 1: Aix – Tarason 94.0 km,

Day 2: Tarason – Avignon – Arles 80.1 km,

Day 3: Arles – Baux – Sain Remy – Arles 61.2 km

Day 4: Arles – Nimes 98.4 km

Day 5: Nimes – Aix 111.2 km

And to view the panorama picture you need to go to the site and follow this instruction:

Go to the website above where the overview of the route is shown

Click on the little man on the bottom left

And place him on the route, maybe a bit difficult as many blue route come up.  These are the road with available panorama view.

Then the new pop-up window will come out, Great isn’t it!  I used this same method to check the condition of the road before the trip.

See you on 20th July!! and Thank you for following.

Mon Tour de France: Preparation I

One more day left before leaving Vienna for France and 1 week before my cycling trip began.
not many day left (1) but I think I’m nearly prepared:

• Accomodation – booked
• Route – sorted
• Hired bike – sorted
• Guide for each city – printed but not read, that will be my airport in transit reading..

The excution can only be as good as the preparation, if not worst.  Because one can only prepare for the known problem, and known-unknown problem.  However it is the unknown-unknown problem that always get me.  Thing that I don’t know exist.  The best I could do is to narrow it down and dear Buddha – I always would try my best to.  I know too well how bad it can get when things go wrong and worst when I am alone.   To make it more challeng, the extension of my French goes as far as “Parlez-vous anglais ?”  How do I say, my bike is punture? Not a clue.

Acccomodation: Overnight stay in France is not cheap.  Normally range between 30-40 Euro.  Youth hostel are avialable but not widely spreadout.   Due to cost contraint, I decided to plan my route around accomodation and I manged to book all my accomodation in the Youth Hostels as listed below.

Aix: Auberge de Jeunesse	19 Euro
Tarascon: Tarascon, 31 Blvd Gambetta 13150 Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône)	13 Euro
Arles: 20 Avenue Foch 13200 Arles x 2 nights	17 Eurox2 = 32 Euro
Nimes: 257 Chemin de l’Aubergue de Jeunesse 30900 Nîmes	13.35 Euro
Nice: 3, rue Spitalieri 06000 Nice	23 Euro
Total	102 Euro + some booking fee

Bike:  I decided to hire a bike instead of bring my own from Vienna.  Although the cost over all is more, (70 Euro in total – 5 days, 10 Euro per day, plus 20 for safety kits and baggage compare with 40 Euro surcharge for a return flight bringing my bike with German Wing).  My Poco Rosso (that’s the day bike I used in Vienna)  is not fit enough to take the hammering of over 300km journey.   In addition, as his name suggest he is not on the light side either.  Check out aixpritvelo.com for more information on hiring.  They are pretty good, responsive and helpful over the email.  I will let you know if the bike they provide is on-par with their service.

Route: I use http://www.bikemap.net/ to plan my route.  It’s a lot better than google map as it checks the verticle climb out and draw route profile too.  I learned my expensive and painful lesson – last trip I planned the route without taking into account of the vertical profile and arrived a the base of the countless hills of Cornwall, totally unprepared.

The rough map of my tour route is as below.  I will post a detailed route out individually later.


View Larger Map

Mon tour de France: Pre-trip

I am going to France for a cycling trip.  The precise area is South of France or Provence.  I have been in the area a few times with my Buddhism group as we have a centre in Trets, a little town near Aix.  I had opportunity to visit Aix, Trets and Carssis.  I witnessed the sunrise and sunset over the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a magnificent scene that inspired many artists including giants like Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.

but that wasn’t enough…

I want to see more, I want to know what is all the fuss about South of France that draw millions of tourist there, surely it can’t be only because it has and average of 330 days of sun per year?

And above all.  I want to see ‘her’.

I can’t remember the first time we met but it must have been somewhere in the UK some 10 years plus ago but I remembered clearly, the light colour of her dress and her lightly calming scent that has subdued me since that very first day.  I got to know her better and that she was also from an ‘Auslander’ like I was.  She was from France.

This trip is going to be a long one and again I am going alone.

Yes, alone again, and no I don’t want to go alone.  Having some sort of human contact called ‘friend’ is nice in any situations, especially when one riding in a middle of nowhere, and not-knowing-where one is.  My last cycling trip was Bristol-Land Ends in 2009 and that too was ridden alone.  I still remembered vividly how fearful I was when I got lost in a rural path somewhere between Taunton and Exmoor while the sun was slowly setting.  (Riding in the dark in a rural road has the same risk as riding bike on a fast speed rail track – you don’t know what coming behind you until it hit you).

What would happen if some unknown creature pop out from some cave and chase me…

Or if someone tries to steal my bike?

Anyway, why is it so hard to persuade people in my circle of friend to do a cycling tour?  Most people reacts with a big glowing eyes ‘ Wow, that sound really nice’ or something along that line that indicate their admiration to my proposal.  The conversation then went on for a while ‘where, what, when, how’ before a soft downcast rejection with something that means in short “Bike tour is not for me”.

Bike tour is the greatest invention since man learns how to put the two wheels together, for god sake!  And no you don’t have to be fit like Lance Armstrong to do it!!

Even he enjoys it!

I will take my further winching somewhere else.  Let’s talk about le tour!

Pictures credit (google.com)

Next: Preparation