Maggie and I have done Chris Ellison's CTC Tour in Provence a couple of times. It's based on Buis les Baronnies, in the Drome, which is a fine, sunny, old-fashioned sort of place, in the middle of wine and lavender country. It's a good area for cycling.
For this year Chris offered the novelty of one week based on the hotel in Buis and one week touring from place to place, with the luggage being transferred by van. This sounded good to us, and so it was. We had a group of a dozen, all experienced tourers, and things rolled along nicely. The big hill is obviously Mont Ventoux, but we've been up it quite a lot and gave it a miss this year, as the weather was mostly pretty warm - more than 30 degrees on many days. We couldn't miss the Signal de la Lure, which we have also done before, as it was on the route. It's a pretty similar mountain to Ventoux, so we made an early start to make the best of it. In the event it was hot lower down but cold on the top. We scuttled back down to lunch at the bottom, and warmed up like lizards.
We stayed in a variety of hotels, some good, some, well, interesting, but it all worked well. We were made welcome, the bikes were looked after and we ate and drank well. About 500 miles and a bit over 40,000 ft of climbing.
Recommended for a sunny cruise.
Mark
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