We made it to the top of the mountain! Surprisingly,800 meters of climbing isn’t nearly as daunting as we thought it would be. That must be the bonus of having a bicycle with gears that are designed to climb telephone poles. Thanks to our great bike builder Rob Mather for that! Even with 30kg of stuff to carry, we just put the bikes into a low gear and pedalled steadily up at about 9km an hour.
The Ardeche is as beautiful as our first glimpses yesterday led us to believe and you can see for miles from the top of the mountains. For anyone who enjoys the outdoors, this would be a fantastic holiday destination, very unspoilt.
Despite being so high up, the weather is exceptionally warm so no signs of snow yet. We are now enjoying working with our hosts Bert and Patricia,who have a holiday cottage in this gorgeous part of France, along with 2 dogs and 7 cats. We will help them with general tasks around the house and garden, including digging a few trenches for a new fence and septic tank drain.
Because it is the off season, we are staying in the holiday cottage but eating our meals with Bert, Patricia and the other WWOOFers (more about the program). On a website note, we finally got a map of our journey working!