Crossing the Swiss Border we are once again in France and still haven’t managed to shake off the virus we picked up in Austria.  I think this is probably travel at its worst as neither of us has much energy which means a lack of motivation combined with short tempers leading to the most ridiculous arguments that would be laughable if only we could muster the strength.  The only thing we seem able to do is drive, which means Bob is eating up the distance between us and our chosen destination of Morocco, but such rapid travel is unsatisfactory and leaves a lot unexplored and opportunities missed.

It wasn’t until we reached the Rhone-Alps region of southeastern France that we mustered the enthusiasm to leave the motorway in order to drive through one of the most beautiful parts of France, a region that we visited some years ago and which allowed us a brief trip down memory lane.

The Ardech River descends from the Massif Central running for 125 km as a right-bank tributary of the River Rhone between Lyon and Avignon.  Over the last 110 million years, the river has carved out caves and gorges, creating some strange and beautiful rock shapes out of the surrounding limestone countryside.  With granite mountains bordering the western side, the scenery is a mix of wild rugged landscapes interspersed with beautiful stone farmhouses and wineries and one that we explored quite extensively a few years ago as part of a cycling holiday from Paris to Monte Carlo.  Our route through France then was a selection of 3-5 day cycle guides taken from Lonely Planet and other cycling resources which we had pieced together to provide a more or less continuous route from start to finish. 

The Ardech region is well known for its wine and finding ourselves cycling through the quaint village of Chateneuf de Papp we stopped to do a bit of tasting at some of the local caves.  The tasting went a bit too well and Ian ended up purchasing a substantial amount of wine which he then arranged to have shipped over to Australia.  We were building our home in South Australia at the tine and one of the features we had planned was a wine cellar – what better to decorate the walls of such a place than the end panels of wine boxes?  Great idea, and to start us off we persuaded the wine seller to hand over one of his wooden boxes as part of the deal.   Obviously, we only wanted the end with the stamped logo but unbelievably no one had a tool with which to dismantle the box and so Ian secured the complete box to the top of his panniers and we continued on our way.  A couple of days later we arrived at the small town of Bedouin and whilst enjoying a typical French breakfast, we remarked upon the large number of cyclists in the town.  In fact, once we really started looking around, the place was packed with some serious looking pro bikes and riders.  Typically, our own organisation was a bit casual and it wasn’t usually until the last minute that we looked at our route map for the day, so tearing our attention away from the many lycra-clad bottoms surrounding us, we got out our cycling profile for the day.  WTF, surely there must be some mistake – this is what the relief map looked like! 

Okaaay, might need some more coffee and croissants!  Not really comprehending the information in front of us, we eventually set off heading out of town and uphill.  In fact, 1,579 metres uphill for 21.3 km at an average gradient of 7.4%.  To this day, I don’t know whether we were there when a special event was taking place or whether the route up is always popular, but the seemingly never ending road up to the top was lined with people shouting encouragement to the hundreds of cyclists labouring up the hill.  Of course, we were the only two on the mountain on fully laden road bikes with, apparently, a box of rather nice red wine.  It was without doubt a challenging day but with shouts of “Courage!” coming at regular intervals from the delighted crowds and looks of surprise followed by delight on the face of nearly every cyclist who overtook us, we were without doubt quite the novelty. 

We did eventually make it to the top where we briefly enjoyed the party atmosphere before it was time to reap the rewards of all the hard work and freewheel down the other side.

Returning to the present and back on the money grabbing French motorways, we could no longer ignore Bob’s rapidly deteriorating situation with regard to his lack of brakes.  The slightest pressure on the pedal and Bob lurched violently to the left and the handbrake was incapable of holding on even the slightest of slopes.  We found a garage just outside Perpignan, close to the Spanish border, and despite language difficulties managed to get the job done.  Of course, the discs also needed replacing but the guys did a great job and even re-synced one of our key fobs which hadn’t been working since replacing the battery back in Finland.

Still feeling very unwell, we crossed into Spain over the Pyrenees, and still keeping to the motorways crossed the Sierra Espuna and the Sierra Nevada before eventually arriving at the Costa del Sol which is so built up that you would be hard pushed to find a gap between the various villas and apartment blocks large enough to slide a piece of paper through. Being out of season, tourist numbers were comfortable enough to deal with and we decided to spend a week just outside Fuengirola.  The down time was just what we needed to finally shake off whatever virus we had picked up and our last night in Spain was spent in San Roque, sleeping in Bob for the first time since Norway. We caught the 1 hour ferry from Algeciras over to Cueta the following morning - still Spain but on the Moroccan side of the Med - ready for the next phase of our adventure.