Col du Trébuchet

Another blog post narrated into my phone at various points during the ride.

I’ve stopped at the same place as yesterday, at the Col de Saint-Raphaël. I’m taking a slightly different route today, via the Col du Trébuchet instead of the Col du Buis. The main difference is that I’m on my Colnago, after hastily getting it ready. The ascent felt ok, but I could tell that I had 4500 feet of climbing in my legs from yesterday. An old guy went by in an upright position on a VTT with a rucksack, easily passing me. His rear hub looked suspiciously large (ooh er missus!) so I can only hope it was electrically assisted. Again, at this col, someone offered to take my photo, but I’d already done it. This time it was a French motorist.

I’m now standing here getting cold as I’ve worked up a bit of a sweat. Time to ride on (brother..)

Just stopped at the 15-mile mark, about a mile outside of La Rochette,

a lovely small village perched on a hillside.

I passed three people chatting so I decided to turn around and go back and ask them to make sure I was still on the D10. I thought that should be easy to say in French but I was pronouncing the ‘D’ wrong – I was pronouncing it as in ‘de’ so they didn’t initially understand, but we got there in the end.  A few miles before that was a very small village of Saint Pierre

where the church chimed right next to me  4pm

… and then again as I rode away. It made me realise that for some reason most hourly chimes chime twice. In other words there are four chimes at 4pm, and another four about a minute later, maybe in case you didn’t hear it the first time. This is a beautiful peaceful road winding among the hills, no traffic whatsoever just completely silent and the sun is shining as usual.

The Colnago is a complete revelation. I mean it’s a completely different bike to the Giant, especially on descents it’s fantastic because the handling and balance are so much better and the brakes are significantly better. Such a great bike to ride. I’ve just had the other half of that cheese and ham sandwich I had yesterday, even better after being squashed in my back pocket and another day older. Supplemented with a banana.

Since that last report there was a long and steady climb up to Col du Trébuchet

I got my col photo and then just went straight into the descent. All the descents have been amazing on the Colnago. I was worried that there was going to be a final climb. I sort of knew in the back of my mind that there was.

So when the shortcut part of this route re-joined yesterday’s route it started climbing up towards the Col de Félines. And then it was definitely downhill all the way into Entrevaux. Then I set a fast time all the way back to to Puget-Théniers along the main road. Averaged about 21 miles an hour.

Things to know about the Colnago – my right hand was going numb – don’t think that happened on the Giant. But my neck felt better. And my right foot would go numb now and again but that happens on The Giant anyway. If I thought that a bike fit would clear up permanently these couple of ailments I’d go and get one done.

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