Our last full day of holiday saw us back in Avignon for the third time in 2 weeks.

We were both keen to exercise and decided on separate plans. 

Phil booked himself a gravel bike (€30 for 4 hours) and set off down the Via Rhone. 

A word or two here about Komoot, the navigation app. We’ve used it for most of the two-wheeled navigation on the holiday and found it to be an easy to use and flexible tool. As long as you stick to national cycle routes and tarmac roads.

It allows you to fine tune routes, picking quieter or more direct options to suit you. You can combine recognised routes with detours to towns etc along the way. It’s also very good at quickly coming up with a me route if your plans change.

However, if you venture off road, it’s less reliable. Phil’s planned exploration of some limestone hills, just off the Via Rhone was not especially successful. 

Having requested “gravel” options in the target area, Komoot came with plenty. But, the reality on the ground was that they took him into impossible terrain. Sometimes extra rocky, sometimes completely overgrown and sometimes precipitously steep and narrow.

After a frustrating half hour, Phil shut down Komoot and referred to satellite imagery to choose wide “fire-road” style paths. This proved much more successful and the ride was rescued.

Julie’s attempts to go swimming didn’t come off as the Avignon “lido” had recently been drained for the winter and she had to be content with a riverside walk plus a return visit to the brilliant indoor market.

Afternoon was passed with a walk up to the pope’s gardens at the top of the old town, with great views out over the town, Mt Ventoux and back up the Rhone to Chateuneuf-du-Pape (visible in the distance) and beyond. We also revisited Rue Banasterie where we stayed in 2023 and located the Airbnb.

Gravel Ride

In Avignon

We scheduled most of this day for a gentle wander round Aix. 

A word about the weather – as with every other day of this holiday, we woke to clear skies and as the day went on the temperature rose to around 30 degrees. 

As with the Rhone valley, winds rose through the afternoon and helped keep us reasonably comfortable. It hasn’t felt particularly humid and it has been cooler in the evenings.

All the reviews of the Airbnbs we have been using have featured comments about the summer heat and the various properties’ air conditioning or lack of it. It looks like 40 degrees was the norm for long periods this summer and the wine salesman in Chateauneuf-du-Pape said that it had been that hot until very recently.

Happily, 30 degrees with breezy afternoons has made for comfortable cycling and general holidaying. 

A final note on the heat – whilst researching Aix, we found the quoted average temperature for July was 25 degrees. That will need amending! 

Back to Aix and we wandered the narrow and colourful streets to the north of the centre. Markets sprout in many of the squares in the morning and fade away sometime after lunch.

As previously noted, Aix is generally quieter and less touristy than Avignon and the high proportion of young people added to the sense of a vibrant city.

We spent a profitable couple of hours in the Musée Granet, which is dedicated to Paul Cézanne and has several of is paintings though most of his output is held elsewhere. We discovered more about this revolutionary artist who was born and died in the city and painted many scenes in the local Provence hills including La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, which we had explored the previous day.

The museum also housed a large sculpture collection. The current featured exhibition was dedicated to Paul McCartney’s photography from 1963 to 1964. It was an impressive selection of images and McCartney was clearly a talented and dedicated snapper. 

There were shots from the Beatles trips to New York, Florida and Paris and additional photography from some of the press photographers of the time. 

McCartney’s images were largely candid shots of the group and their support crew, and of fans at airports and city locations. 

We ate lunch in the museum’s cool and peaceful courtyard, before heading off for a little shopping and then down to the bus station for our late afternoon trip to Avignon, where we had an apartment, appropriately called “Cezanne”, for our final two nights. 

Aix Streets etc

Our accommodation in Orange was immaculate and spacious but unfortunately did not include cleaning! We got stuck in before leaving determined to leave it as we found it!

The final day of cycling took us back to the Rhone from Orange, via the hilltop village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

The route out of Orange was pleasantly safe and relatively traffic free – thanks to the Komoot app, which is generally really good at planning routes and has a “quiet” option, which really maximises the “away from traffic” choices.

As we approached Châteauneuf-du-Pape, we climbed the first notable hill of the week, though not especially challenging compared to those back home.

The fields gradually became vine dominated and the land was increasingly strewn with smooth, riverbed stones and pebbles. These contrasted with the green rows of vines, most of which had already given up their fruits to the harvest.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape itself is pretty and almost entirely dedicated to promoting wine with tasting and buying options at numerous well appointed farms on the surrounding roads and shops and units within the town.

Porsches and Ferraris cruised the streets and, the public toilets excepted, the town was immaculately turned out.

We had a leisurely mid morning coffee and fresh orange in a cafe where the service was glacial… but charming.

Keen to sample the local wines we visited the Domain Durieu winery. There we confessed that we’d be limited to buying a single bottle due to our mode of transport. Their salesman was undaunted and gave us a very informative talk in the local wines, their exceptional qualities and the reasons behind their excellence.

We also got to taste and compare two of their recent vintages and discussed the effects of climate and soil (terroir) on wine quality and production.

We left with our limited wine knowledge slightly bolstered and with a bottle of 2023 wine for 33 euros! We were advised to keep it for a year or two to let it mature. We discovered the best recent vintage was 2016 and the worst 2013!

The remainder of the ride took us along the banks of the Rhone into Avignon. This section featured some very fine new cycle paths and infrastructure.

All too soon we were back at Southern Spirit cycles, decanting our panniers into suitcases and handing back our bikes. We were able to report to Mattieu the proprietor, an incident free week, with not so much as a puncture to our names.

A quick word about our Trek hybrids – with flat bars, hydraulic disc brakes and 10 very wide ratio gears, they proved to be exceptionally well suited to the job of lugging heavy panniers along paths with very variable surfaces. We did wonder if we’d miss our own bikes, but the opposite was true. We grew to really appreciate the rugged, easy-handling Treks, which matched the upright comfort and control of mountain bikes with surprisingly smooth rolling on tarmac, despite heavy ish Schwalbe Marathon tyres.

We didn’t achieve high speeds, but the riding was surprisingly easy and we also enjoyed a couple of town centre visits without panniers, where the unencumbered Treks became nimble but steady platforms for jousts with the ever-enthusiastic French urban drivers.

Olivia now heads for home while Julie and Phil turn to more sedentary tourism in Provence, for few more days.

With our journey down the Rhone almost done – we have just 20 miles to ride to Avignon tomorrow – we opted for a day exploring Orange.

It’s a town with some outstanding Roman remains and an attractive centre, with the obligatory cafes, bars and chic shops.

We began the day with a walk up the Colline Saint Eutrope, a 300 foot high outcrop which looks down on the city and offers great views back up the Rhone Valley down which we have cycled.

This hill was once the location of a large fortress, very little of which remains. There is excavation work ongoing, which is unearthing some significant stonework.

We then descended into the town and picked up a very good coffee in a very well presented and tiny cafe.

In the afternoon we visited the town’s museum, home to the usual local artefacts from down the ages. Again, it was well presented.

A short cycle ride then took us to the town’s Roman triumphal arch. This stands now, as originally, at the gateway to Orange and depicts, in its stone carvings, scenes of Romand army and navy triumphs.

Whereas, in Roman times the main road through the area passed under the main arch, modern road engineers have put the arch at the heart of a large roundabout.

The arch looked all the more impressive in the late afternoon light.

As darkness fell we visited the Roman theatre, which dominates the town with its immense wall.

Inside, we explored the restored semi-circle of seating whilst enjoying a light and sound display that made good use of the setting and provided us with a mesmeric and relaxing end to the day.

Our longest day in the saddle (just short if 40 miles), but not particularly taxing as we had the Mistral at our backs for most of it and a fresher (though still very sunny) feel to the weather.

But before we get cycling again, a quick look back at our very unusual overnight location, the former seminary, the Hostellerie Charles de Foucauld.

When we arrived, having pre-booked, we were met by the living embodiment of the French bureaucrat stereotype: he managed to make a 2 minute registration process extend to nearly 30 minutes (including 10 minutes waiting for him to arrive). Bear in mind we’d carefully timed our appearance to coincide with their stipulated “after 4.30” registration time.

He faffed, stabbed at his keyboard and generally acted like a fool for an inordinate length of time before failing to take a card payment due to non-specific WiFi issues. We eventually paid him in cash, put our own bikes in the bike room and carted our kit up to our third floor room.

Checking out was infinitely easier, handled by a young woman who took our keys and sent us in our way in 30 seconds flat! What a relief.

Once on the Via Rhone again, we enjoyed some of the best paths, scenery and weather of the trip to date.

We’d originally aimed to cover about 20 miles before hopping on a train for the last run into Orange.

But after lunch and coffee in the small town of Bourg-Saint-Andéol, we found we were making such good progress that we decided to ride straight into Orange.

For some of the way we ran parallel to the main TGV line and periodically braced ourselves as trains rocketed by shaking the ground and making a noise closer to a jet fighter than a train.

Today’s landscape also revealed changes, with lower hills, limestone escarpments and increasingly good views of Mont Ventoux, its peak topped by the familiar, white weather station.

We arrived in Orange after an almost entirely vehicle-free journey, only to find ourselves jousting with heavy traffic in the last mile or so. It focused our minds and made us all the more pleased to find our next AirBnb, a spacious ground floor flat, 10 minutes walk from the city centre.

We finished the day with beer and food at a tourist restaurant in the centre, with a big party of Scandinavians at the next table and a big flock of jackdaws coming in to roost, noisily, in the canopy of plane trees overhead.

Leaving our Airbnb in Ancone, we cycled a couple of miles into the nearby town of Montelimar.

We then enjoyed half a day exploring the narrow streets, chic shops, open market, contemporary gallery and generally relaxing.

We collectively decided we were tired and therefore put the emphasis on taking it easy.

Montelimar is a very typical small French town and kept us entertained without delivering any particular highlights.

Lunch was a mix of market and supermarket buys: greengages, figs, crisps, quiche and sushi: eclectic but suiting our moods and fads very well.

The cycle to our next destination, the historic town of Viviers, was only just over an hour, but we crossed numerous bridges, encountered a huge hydro-electric power plant and seemed to be constantly changing direction.

The wind always seems to get up mid-afternoon in these parts, but with the temperature down a few degrees on recent days and some cloud cover, conditions were great for riding.

Wildlife was back in focus, with a black kite swiftly followed by terrapin and a bever feeding in riverside greenery. This was then overflown by a kingfisher, to cap a satisfying few minutes.

We made our way up narrow, twisty, cobbled streets to our accommodation in Viviers, a hotel in a huge monastery. impressive from the outside, inside it is decorated and furnished like a secondary school.

After waffles in a cafe and a rest we found our evening meal in the only restaurant in town that looked worth visiting and actually proved really good. Les Chevalliers fed us some excellent savoury galettes and some even better ice cream.