Saturday, 30 October Off-Roading Again! The historic town centre is very picturesque and lent itself very well to being photographed. So that's what I did for the first half an hour after I arrived there. Being under the warm sunshine among 15th century buildings in the narrow walkways was a rewarding way to end the day's bike ride. Sadly, all this was very shortlived. Within the space of 10 minutes the sky turned black, and worst of all the sky looked even blacker in the area where I was headed!
Like a fox trying to evade the hounds, I pedalled as fast I could to try to beat the rain, but I was very quickly caught. The raindrops were heavy and beat down on me hard as I tried to find anywhere that I could shelter.
If I'd known where I was going I would have continued to the hotel, however no one around here seemed to know where the Formule 1 hotel was.
After a couple of hours sheltering in a dustbin area and also a supermarket petrol station I made my way to the hotel, which, I was reliably informed was about 3 miles out of the town. Luckily I did't have to travel far for my dinner on this rainy night - just next door actually to La Courte Paille.
Despite the weathermen's best efforts to reassure us that there would be sunshine, I was determined to keep an attitude of "I'll believe it when I see it. Not nice. The rain lashed down around us, and I knew that the planned itinerary of going over the cols, including Grand Colombier had to be shelved. The only problem was that by staying in the valley I would be on the main road, which was not the place to be with reduced visibility on a fast road and with lots of trucks around.
