Today Rich and I headed straight south to the village of Gordes. I had been there before but it has been about 13 years. It was a cool quite Sunday morning and Mont Ventoux was out of her cloud cloak!
The village of Saint Didier.
I don’t remember too many thing about this ride 13 years ago, but I do remember this gate and driveway!! One of the most spectacular chateau entries I have ever seen. We were flying down the decent just to the right and I slammed on my brakes for a few photos!
Fontaine de Vaucluse with amazing clear blue water.
This is an aqueduct carrying the Le Canel de Carpentras over the La Sorgue River
The village of Gordes
Soon, we finished our longest climb of the trip and started downhill. The decent started out fairly mundane but soon we were ripping down a amazing road! No cars, butter pavement, curves, scenery, wow!!! I later concluded it was one of my top 5 all time road descents!!!!
The cycling part of me was wanting to roll this road as fast as I could, the photography part of me was saying stop! Shoot some images!!! It was like having a little devil on one shoulder yelling in my ear “GO!” and an angel with a camera around its neck on the other shoulder yelling “STOP”!
I managed to do both!
It was about this point I realized that with a road this good, the Tour De France must have come through here…… I vaguely remembered watching them do this road a couple years ago.
After a little research when I returned to the B&B, I realized that this was part of Stage 12 of the 2016 TDF and if you remember correctly, it was the one that finished on top of Mon Vonteux. That stage was shortened due to winds creating all kinds of chaos and ended up with the yellow jersey (Froome) crashing into a TV moto and running up the mountain without his bike….. (something that is totally illegal in bike racing and he should have been penalized!)
That is Mont Ventoux in the gap to the right.
Rich and I sharing a moment near the day’s high point! Today was our last ride as we are headed home soon. Another amazing trip to one of my favorite places in the world!
davefaitlemonde.com 