A Devious Deviation

The 6th ride of 44 5’s HRC 7 day tour through the Cevennes mountains in France is supposed to be an easy day. Sandwiched between a 71 mile loop with 6200 feet climbing Mont Aigoual and the ‘Queen Stage’ of 72 miles over 4 cols with 6,800 feet of up, this day is almost a rest day.

The route was supposed to be 37 miles with about 3,100 feet to climb. The ride began with a long, long descent from la Garde Guerin all the way down to a river at the bottom of a canyon. From here the climbing starts and would take us to the village of La Bastide where we would stop for coffee. At the bottom we could see the towers of La Garde Guerin where we started far, far above us. The climb back looked impossibly hard, but I had ridden the route four times before and I remembered that it was a long climb but not steep, except for about a 1/2 mile at the bottom. The rest was only 4 to 6% with some really nice views.

The planned route did not go as planned:

The Road Not Taken: We planned to take the right fork but the France version of CalTrans had other ideas

The ‘”Route Barrée” signs made our guides scramble, using their phones and cycling apps like Ride With GPS to see if there was an alternate road that would get us to La Bastide. There weren’t a lot of options other than the deviation suggested by the arrow where the pavement was torn up. Gerry and John decided to direct us up the deviation, telling us that the distance was about the same, but there might be a little more climbing. It turned out to be quite a bit more…

Our Guides in Action: Gerry is pointing up. And up it was: a really steep up

We turned onto the alternate road, and right away I can see that this is much steeper than the route we planned. For the first two miles I saw mostly 8-9% with occasional pitches of 10-11%. For the last mile things got serious:

Strava Data and a sign for motorists heading down. But we were climbing!

It turns out that the deviation was a Strava segment of almost 3 miles averaging 9.1%. But the last 1000 meters were much steeper. My Garmin was stuck on 11-12%, then broke out on the upside and reached a maximum of 16%. That is steeper than anything on our two week trip, including Mont Ventoux.

We all made it to the summit without walking. Here is Jeri, tired but triumphant.

When we finally make it to La Bastide for café crème we all agreed that this 3 mile ramp was probably not the best way to prepare for the 4 cols the next day. While our van was waiting for us a French rider got to the top and stopped to talk to our guide. He said that this was the steepest road in the area, that he had failed to make it his last time, and he was back to beat it. I’m glad I made it the first time but once was plenty.

So if you are riding in France and you see a Route Barrée sign, brace yourself and hope your legs are good. You might need them.