Provence, August 2014
I had originally planned to climb Ventoux with The Vueltas in May 2014 but I got injured and couldn’t make the trip. Big disappointment so we decided to go there that summer instead. We stayed in a small town a few km from Bedouin and hired a villa for a week. The towns surrounding Ventoux are brilliant and you can do some great cycling in and around the foothills and surrounding areas. We went for one ride in the evening through a bunch of vineyards and it was stunning.
Ventoux is what it says on the tin – it’s a big mountain! I cycled up it three times in a day, it’s not as hard as it sounds if you have the right gearing and just pace yourself. There’s a good account of this challenge here – I found this description very useful.
I would go back to this area and do it all again without question, maybe go up a bit faster.
Anyone who’s reasonably fit can do this one – my daughter (a fit rower) just hopped on a bike and did it – she had a 25 cassette on the back! She’d done very little cycling before that which shows that if you’re reasonably fit you can do it the once – she did it in the wind where it becomes a different climb on the exposed moonscape areas.
megustaria 