Yesterday we arrived in Avignon .. a day earlier than planned as we decided to skip around some unpleasant weather predictions (rain!)
So far most of the rain has occurred in the night .. Seems to be a pattern here!
We had some wonderful rides in Sault and enjoyed our apartment and cooking our own food at a good hour!
Leaving Sault we took a route south of the gorge d'neste which resulted in a pretty climb up to 840m (about a 200m gain) then down the very quiet D5 through some quiet villages and a few gorge views and Mont Ventoux shots. The road was bumpy and so limited our speed which was a drag but in the end our GPS planning tools managed to find us a great route into Avignon on quiet farm roads ... only for locals and cyclists!
Avignon is a busy place with lots of tourists and this lady in gold hanging over your every move! (Probably the virgin Mary?) We have a two star hotel for the three nights on a quiet street that is working our fine.
Today we had a great audio tour of the Palais de Papes which is where the Popes hung out for a hundred years around 1340. Very interesting! We didn't find the museum next door as good .. full of 13 and 14th century panel board paintings of the virgin Mary with various Popes of the time taking some sort of credit for the miracle! As we got into the 15 century, the paintings started to look more real with better colour.
Tomorrow a few more museums and then Friday we will take the bike path up the Rhone as far as Saint Martin at the head of the Ardeche. Marion has a nice place picked out to stay!
We are watching the weather .. probably too much! .. but we've developed an escape route if the weather forecast in the next week becomes real .. the plan being to head south and west of Bezier where we can likely get better weather! .. but looks like we are good for next 5 days but with strong head winds (45km!!)
