Peret Countryside, France

Yesterday’s forecast called for rain most of the night and all day today. I woke up early and started taking photos of the countryside off my balcony. I realized that although the skies looked threatening and it was a bit windy, it had not rained.

Same basic photograph with a wide angle lens and a bit more light.

After carefully searching for a favorable forecast, I decided that the rain was not supposed to start until 11am. I decided to go early and get in a bike ride!!! Bonus!!!! This image is for my friend Julie. She is not so secretly in love with Julian…. It appears that at least one other French girl in the town of Fontes is also in love with him….. You can always tell when the Tour de France has recently traveled one of the French roads as this road art is frequent. I believe they came through here last summer. A quick web search (click here) and indeed, on July 9th….. in fact the intermediate sprint was in this town.

I traversed this section of Route D124 for a while and saw several places where people had painted the road, then is was on with my ride.

Soon I was doing some significant climbing.

I was racing the rain but stopping frequently to shoot photos.

I came across this fairly old looking dam. Turns out it no that old (1986) and is called the Barrage des Olivettes.

Here is the other side….

After the lake, I happened on a fairly significant climb and ended up on tree covered roads. Did I mention that I really enjoy my second autumn of the year here in the South of France? Many of my regular blog followers scold me when I show only road pictures but this one was pretty special! Sorry Tom.