Roy's stage 7

We stayed last night at a charming B and B in Trembly, a small and sleepy village. As usual, the process of finding the exact location was complicated by the fact that Dale and I didn't take much notice of the Garmin, but given the size of the place, it wasn't that difficult to park eventually in the right place. The exciting stuff came with our entry into the village, when we drove past a cow giving birth to a calf. We had to leap out of the van, and observe the first moments of life, as the mother licked her calf clean and gently nuzzled her to her first stumbles. Gwen is posting pictures of the event.

The B and B was housed in a 1830s building - as Florence said later as she showed me my room, or more accurately my three-bedroom suite on the second floor, not very old for France. Decorated with the touch of an artist, which her husband, Francois, is, and strewn with books and pamphlets that denote Florence as a student of architectural design, the rooms had an unmistakably French feel and look. It is the sort of place where you could spend a delightful week, doing nothing much more than eat, drink, talk, walk and soak up a bucolic lifestyle. Outside, we found a large garden, which is lovingly tended by Francois, full of flowers and vegetables, most of which I recognized but could not name - my dad, an avid gardener, would be ashamed of my lack of knowledge, but would spend hours in conversation with a fellow friend of flowers.

We all passed up the opportunity to walk down the street to have dinner, and sat out on the stoop (wonder what the French for that is?) eating bread, cheese, tomatoes and spicy mustard, and sipping wine (had to sip, since we had no more than a bottle between three of us). It was an early night to bed; even if we had not ridden very far, we had driven a long way.

Bright sunlight greeted me at 6.00 am, and I fixed a traditional French breakfast of croissant (home-made), yoghurt (just a bit better than the commercial brands, I can say with true British understatement) and coffee: Florence had told me the night before that I was in a self-catering unit and thus I was to be self-sufficient, I guessed.

Having fixed a new pair of cleats to my cycling shoes the previous night, I discovered that they were the wrong size, and would not slip into my pedals no matter what I did, so I wasted some time (of which I had plenty since Dale and Gwen were having their forced late breakfast) putting the old ones back on, and hoping that they would last until I find a better equipped cycle store ahead of us. I can not believe how much wear and tear we are subjecting our equipment to: back in the USA, I can ride for months without paying too much attention to the bike and my equipment; but here, we have been starting and stopping so often that we are eroding the hard plastic of the cleats remarkably quickly. I am going to have to do some maintenance work on my durellieurs on our rest day, since they are beginning to chatter a lot. The amazing thing is that our tires seem to be standing up to the brutality of riding on many of the roads - apart from Dale's "aneurism", the tires seem to be standing up to rough tarmac, fast descents and vibration (of course, this means at least two punctures tomorrow as my punishment).

We left the B and B this morning at about 10.00 am, with the aim of driving the early part of the route and then cycling up the final climbs, both of which were 2nd category. The plan was sidelined by the weather, which turned ugly as we got on our bikes. We rode for about 10 kms, largely downhill into Cernon, got wet and cold (riding at 20 mph into a rainstorm is a bit like having multiple acupuncture treatment, I think), and decided to return to the warmth of the van until the rain stopped and we got clear indications that the storms had passed.

The indications did not appear, and we decided to drive rather than bike to the end of the leg. It was an education to do that, for we climbed for miles on the road that we would have cycled. The 2nd category climb that was the final climb of the day was not terribly steep, but it went on forever, and I am sure that it would have taken us three hours to have climbed. As Dale has suggested elsewhere, it is not that the climbs are impossible for us, but that they take so much time, because we can not climb at speed, and it is the length of time required that makes it difficult for us to complete the legs. I'd love to be zooming up these climbs at something close to the speed that the racers achieve, but they are animals with VO2 volumes and endurance capacities we can only dream about.

So, into Morez, a small town that probably leaps alive when the snow arrives. But it sure isn't alive this Sunday. Our nice little hotel does not serve dinner on Sunday, and the alternative was declared by our host to be a pizzeria that would be open between 6.00 and 7.00 pm, unless we wanted to go to an out-of-town place about 10 kms away. But a walk around town revealed (within 50 yards of the hotel, mmmm) a small Turkish take-away/eat-in that served donner kebab and other assorted niceties, as well as wine and beer (on a Sunday, no less). We ate well and early, and now I can go to bed early, ready for a long ride tomorrow, that appears to be flat (more or less) for 100 kms, and then gives us a nice 1st category climb at the end. Should be a fun day, before our rest day on Tuesday.