Ballard's Tour de France: June 8, 2014: Provence Bike Tour

We met our Backroads leader, Sara, at the train station in Avignon at 11:30 this morning. As is typical with any of these Backroads tours, they took us to a lovely location for lunch, after which we were fitted on our bikes, given a "bicycling in France" safety talk, reviewed our route for the afternoon, and we were on our way. By this time, it was in the heat of the afternoon (2:00 PM and 100 degrees). Our ride today was only 18 miles, but it felt more like twice that distance as we battled both the heat and the Les Baux hill! Although the hill to Les Baux was less than a mile, it was brutal (due more to the heat than the grade, I think)!

Unlike other Backroads trips we've been on, this is a fairly small group, there being only 13 of us plus our leaders Sara and Pablo. We have a couple from Australia and everyone else is from the U.S. Interesting to note that the 6 of us (me, Rich, Becky, Jerry, Lee and Mary) make up almost half the group. From our lunch and dinner conversations today, this is going to be a fun group to bike with.