By the time I got off the train, it was mid-afternoon – so it was a gentle reintroduction to the saddle. Quite quickly I was out of town and steadily climbing up onto a ridge on nice gravel tracks as I just followed my nose heading generally south-west. Overcast, and at that nice temperature that it’s sometimes cool and sometimes warm (depending on level of exertion) it was perfect riding weather with no breeze. Soon I was in woods and bikepacking seem to make sense again. For what turned out to be only a forty kilometre day, I did a fair amount of climbing – and reached the massive heights of 650 m, shamefully the highest I’ve gotten so far. After dinner, the riding got even better with a big climb to get things going again and some nice challenging rocky fast descents – and a gently steady drizzle began to fall, even that was quite nice.

What houses are looking like now, opportunely taken while putting more layers on for the evening riding.

I had hoped to keep riding until after eight, but when I came across a log cabin locked up for the season, the roofed veranda was too good an opportunity to pass up – no need to get the tent out and get it all wet in the heavy rain that is forecast tomorrow morning. But stopping early does leave a bit more to do tomorrow if I’m to make Aosta on the weekend. I think I’ll head through a bulge in Switzerland tomorrow before heading back to France to skirt the border. Although, Adrien did say that if you get up onto the plateau of the Juras at about 1000 m you can stay up there for a long time and it’s really nice – maybe I’ll have to see if I can find what he was talking about.