Stage 8: Seyssinet -> le Bourge d'Oisans

6 september 2014 - Le Bourg-d'Oisans, Frankrijk

Stage 8: Syessinet, Grenoble -> l’Bourge d’Oisans.

I am standing next to a nice and bright spring. The sound of fresh water, sparkling through the tiny riverbank sounds like jazz music. I am thirsty and I like to taste the water. It’s in the wild, but who cares. What can happen if the water is gold as ice? Sitting on a rock, bending to the water, I wake up. The spring is gone. The sound is still there and I check it out. Looking outside, I see that the irrigation system of Seyssinet starts automatically at 3:30 AM. I get out of my bed and drink some water from the tap. After 3 glasses of water, I decide to get downstairs to buy some cooled drinks.

I take my laptop with me, to do some video editing of the footage taken during stage 7. In the lobby, I finish the blog and the video. During the breakfast, which is typical French, we watch the video together.

Then we take the bikes from the garage and off we go. On our way to Alpe d’Huez. It is a bit raining, so we must be careful on the slippery roads. I am riding the race bike again, in the afternoon we’ll get Henri’s bike to the shop. Taking pictures and movies is much more difficult on this bike, due to the bumpy roads and the lack of suspension. Also during the ride I notice, that my wrists are getting hurt and my hands are not feeling quite comfortable.

Wow the ride to le Bour d’Oisans is normally so familiar by car,-we do this last part every year-,  by bike it is totally different. Never done before, the route is slightly different. But the mountains are the same and so familiar. Halfway we take a stop. We take it slow and need to refill the bidons. 25 km left. We are really in the count down now.

After a while, we enter the round-about towards the Alpe. After setting-up the camera, we ride our last part to the camping Picine. We have succeeded!

It was a very nice experience and we loved it!!

We like to thank you all for the nice comments and the support we have received via our blog. As already said, when we have finished the movie, we’ll post it on the blog as well.

Saturday will be the day of the climbing of Alp d’Huez with the CSi group. That will complete the entire route from Raamsdonksveer to Bourge d’Oisans.

PS: Mister M and mister R.

Thank you for reminding me to the competition I have mentioned a couple of days ago. You might have noticed, that we have no “M” nor mister “”R in our team.  The competition was about the bikes. My Race bike has been taken to a lot of places and I rode approx.. 70.000 km already with “her”. Then in the beginning of this year, I bought a Mountain bike. And I like it very much. This season I hardly had any tours on my race bike, but on my mountain bike. So it feels like I betrayed my race bike when I decided to do the tour with the mountain bike. And then the time trial to go onto the Alpe. Which bike suits best for which task. The Marmotte. Long distances, steep climbs, fast descents. After a lot of pro and cons, -thank you very much Sergiu for you good advices-, I made up my mind and finally choose for my 29-er MTB.

Sorry race bike, my darling, I still adore you. Having the mountain bike on this tour was a very good decision. I did not have had any problems with muscles, bones, pain or whatsoever. 29-er, thank you very much designers, it gives a lot of extra to my biggest hobby!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

5 Reacties

  1. Remco:
    6 september 2014
    Gefeliciteerd allemaal met het uitrijden van jullie tour! Het was leuk om jullie de afgelopen week te volgen op mijn trainingslocatie bij Cahors. Veel plezier vandaag met het oprijden van dat pukkeltje (echte bergen gaan hoger of niet Arnold?). Groeten Remco
  2. Bert Naaijen:
    6 september 2014
    Henri en consorten wat een prachtige prestatie! Hopelijk is alles goed gegaan en komen jullie zonder blessures weer terug naar Nederland
  3. Jan de Bruijn:
    6 september 2014
    Fantastische prestatie geleverd, gefeliciteerd!
    Nu nog een paar mooie dagen op en rond L'Alpe gewenst.
  4. Tduijzer:
    6 september 2014
    Super goed gedaan veel succes vandaag op de alp duez
  5. Kees Oosting:
    6 september 2014
    Well done everybody!!
    Great achievement individual and as a team.
    It was fun to read your posts everyday.
    Have fun on "the Dutch mountain" !!