Ballard's Tour de France: June 11, 2014: Provence Bike Tour

Today our wanders through the Luberon mountains took us to the small hill towns of Lacoste, Roussillon, Gordes and Venasque with our final destination for the night being the Chateau de Mazan in the town of Mazan. This was the most challenging ride of the week (unless one decides to ride Mt. Ventoux tomorrow), as each of these towns is perched at the top of a hill. Factor in the heat (it's been somewhere between 90 - 100 degrees all week) and the rides become very difficult (as Rich would say, "Are we having fun yet?").

Surprisingly, this was my favorite day of riding so far, as the scenery is spectacular and the towns are very quaint. Lacoste was our first destination and is best known for the Marquis de Sade's castle, which sits on the hilltop just before entering town. It's now owned by Pierre Cardin, who has renovated the lower part of the castle, but has left the upper part pretty much in ruins. One can walk through the grounds and imagine what it was like in the Marquis de Sade's time. There's a statuary garden at the top, to which Cardin adds a new statue every year.

Roussillon, the next stop on our ride, sits on a deposit of ochre, giving the earth and buildings of the town a distinctive red color. It's perched atop Mont Rouge ("Red Mountain") at 1,000 feet above sea level. The town is very picturesque and Becky and I did a little sightseeing/shopping while the guys had a gelato.

We left Roussillon headed for Gordes, our lunch destination, and saw eye-popping lavender fields just starting to bloom. At this point, Becky and I were riding with Rich and Jerry (downhill ride out of Roussillon), but as we started to climb again, Becky and I pulled ahead. Somewhere along the way, we took a wrong turn or didn't turn where we were supposed to and got ourselves lost. When we came to the town of Lumieres (which wasn't on our map at all), we both knew we were lost. As we started to retrace our steps, Becky's phone rang and it was Sara, our ride leader, checking to see if we were okay. The guys had made it to the van stop and thought we were ahead of them. When Sara indicated they hadn't seen us, they knew we were lost. Anyway, Sara rode back toward us as we continued to retrace our steps until we finally met up. Sara led the way to Gordes, which was going to be another hot, uphill climb, but Maud met us with the van and we shuttled to the top. By this time, Becky and I had already ridden a number of extra uphills and were done for the day.