Prologue

So, yeah, at the end of a sabbatical of one semester at the university, I planned another alpine expedition. To enjoy some more of the many magical roads in the Cévennes, to see if I 'could still do it' in the high (French) Alps, and to bring to life again long forgotten and not forgotten memories, noticeably the ride I had made with my 'pal' Art in 1986. And one memory dating back even longer, my stay in the youth hostel in Séez, where I'd spent a night during my first ever solo Tour de France. And also possibly to come to some new insights regarding work, and life in general, while passing the time at a speed generally between 12 and 22 km/h on quiet roads in beautiful environments.
In May I had booked a return trip via good-old Cycletours, by good-old bus, to good-old Suze-la-Rousse, and in June/July reserved beds for nine of the fourteen nights, especially the first, to have a good start, and the ones in Valloire and Jausiers, where I would be when the 'real' Tour would be near. My 'training' consisted of many trips to and from Haarlem (a little over 50 km from home) and a four days' trip in the Ardennes/Eifel, for the climbing: Cadier & Keer (NL) − Champl (B) − Wallersheim (D) − Sittard (NL).
JJ (my Jan Jansen bike) had got a thorough repair, and I had asked Jan (my cycle repairman) to install a larger cassette of chain wheels because of my old(er) man's legs.

The ride to Utrecht − this year quite unusually from Haarlem − was horrible: Not a nice cycling route, I got 'lost' several times (to save weight I had left without a map of Zuid-Holland), and I ended up in a terrible half-an-hour downpour from Breukelen to Utrecht. "Why didn't you board in Amsterdam?", a fellow passenger in the bus asked, in the evening. Good question; I just hadn't thought about it . . .  So wet through and through (my raincoat appeared far from waterproof, very far) I arrived at Utrecht Central Station, partly changed to dry clothing, bought me some eatables for the 15-hour bus ride, and set off in the rain again to the usual pick-up point at the Jaarbeurs. Was I glad there was some shelter to make our bikes bus-proof.

11-07-2019:   Departure from Nootdorp

12-07-2019: Gruesome weather after Breukelen

The bus arrived well on time, lost an hour to schedule during the first fifty km in the Friday afternoon traffic jam on the A2 (a first memory relived 😏), and another hour till Maastricht, where a last couple of couples entered the bus. In the meantime all suffering was well forgotten, the prospects for the first few days were thirty degrees and sunny, and in the bus and during dinner and other breaks I appreciated many of the easy going other passengers, mostly in duos, who each had their individual plans. A couple that travelled on racing bikes, really lightweight; a Belgian couple of which on the way to the bus the man had hardly survived a collision with a Russian van (and which couple had had to order a taxi from the hospital to make it to their pick-up location Maastricht in time); a couple where the woman rode an electric bike to bring together their cruising speeds; a family of two Mums and two daughters that would cycle to and across the Pyrenées and would start with the Mont-Ventoux on day two; and lastly the man who asked me about "Why not Amsterdam?", who was, I guess, in his early seventies, member of a cycling club, with a long history of cycling − with or without his wife − all over the world, who in a leisurely way would ride back to his wife in about three weeks. Oh, and there was this (relatively) young guy, also with quite some knowledge of cycling in the mountains (and obviously quite strong too) who had, a few years ago, got rid of his odometer and performance oriented apps as Strava, and since then enjoyed his cycling in a much more mindful way.
I survived the night ride quite good, having 4/5 of the rear seats to my long body to lie down on, sleeping short periods adding up to at least three hours. During which the bus completely made up for the time 'lost' in Holland, and reached La Suzienne, the exit point in Suze-la-Rousse, within five minutes of the time (i.e. 7 a.m.) mentioned in the brochure. Well done, chauffeurs! We got out under a clear blue sky! Getting everything (mostly the low riders) fixed offered no trouble (I'm always worried some screw or bolt will get lost), so around 7:30 a.m. I mounted JJ for its first French expedition.

And, well, yeah, what was different this tour was that I didn't give myself the time to write, at breakfast, during breaks, in the evenings, so a detailed day-by-day journal should be fed by (at least) two weeks old memories. I had set myself quite a strict itinerary with stages that, on the couch at home with a slightly positive expectation of my condition, seemed manageable to hardly manageable. Namely, two long displacements, from Lozère to the north (I sincerely hoped not to have to struggle against a strong wind as in 2014), and from Jausiers to Sault, and two displacements in the Alps with two first category climbs, right after another: Séez − Valloire − Jausiers. And the first renewed acquaintance with a first category climb with full luggage, i.e. the Col de Porte, in between. Indeed I usually left between 8 and 8:45 a.m and hardly ever arrived at my destination before 6:30 p.m.
Another new thing: I had installed the Strava-app on my mobile phone, and apart from some struggles in the beginning (putting it off at a break and then forgetting to push "continue", and the "synchronization" that took a few days, sometimes, due to me being off-line all the time), it worked rather nicely, and reported rather positively, especially regarding the elevation gain. It was usually up to 30 % higher than what I concluded from my Michelin maps. On the other hand: The average speed it calculated sometimes was rather disturbingly low . . . .