We awoke to a beautiful, sunny day which would have been perfect for riding. Today, however, was going to be a driving day towards the base of our final Col: Mt. Ventoux. Daan came over as planned and everyone had a piping hot café au lait to kick off the morning while Megs had tea. We wished Daan the best of luck for the remainder of his journey and then we packed up camp and began our drive south-west. It was an uneventful drive and not particularly scenic either in comparison to places we've been so far. A couple hours into our drive, we went by a McDonalds and pulled over to get some junk food. Now we rarely go to McDonalds (unless it is to use their free Wifi) but we stopped because Tan wanted to see how the menu was customized here. So out we came with some French fries and Croque McDo (i.e. croque monsieur, McDonald’s style). Neither were as good as they would be in any other French eatery. 

As we came closer to the Mt. Ventoux area, we drove through a really scenic gorge (a very mini Grand Canyon of sorts) and stopped for a few photos. Once out of the gorge, we started seeing lots of olive groves. Shortly thereafter, I spotted an olive co-op and Megs obligingly pulled over so we could check it out. I was pretty excited as was Rod as we both love olives! Both Tan and Megs are indifferent when it comes to olives. We went in and they had a large range of olive oils, olives, olive tapenades, wines and various other products from the region. So we began an olive oil tasting where we were given a couple teaspoons of different types of pure olive oil and you just drank them like you would in wine tasting. I really enjoyed the gold and silver medal winners and in the end, we settled for a large bottle of the silver medal which had a slightly less strong flavour. These olive oils were from the famous AOC Nyonnaise variety. We then went on to taste a variety of olive tapenades and added two jars to our growing shopping basket. This was followed by a quick wine tasting which resulted in a a few bottles of wine being to the basket. Megs’ addition to the haul was a bottle of grape juice which based on our previous experience, tastes absolutely delicious when you buy it from a winery. We got into camp pretty early that day, around 4pm, and went for a "refreshing" (read: cold) dip in the pool before sunset.

Mt. Ventoux is another one of the famous Tour de France mountain stages, particularly because of its unique moonscape-like landscape near the summit. It also stands out pretty starkly given that the surrounding geography is all flat, composed mostly of vineyards and olive groves which means that you can see Ventoux for miles and miles on a clear day. Not that it needs to stick out any more, but there is a large tower on top in case you were unsure of which mountain you were looking at. It was a bit cloudy that morning and pretty cool out so we waited till mid-morning before heading out. Today's climb was about 23 km with a gradient average of probably 7% getting to an elevation of 1912 m. We had a really nice warm up ride, passing alongside vineyards and olive groves.

When we got into the last town before the actual ascent, I pulled over into a bike shop to pick up some oil. My chain was making some noise since it wasn’t greased enough. Luckily, by the time my chain was greased, Megs caught up to us in the vehicle and I was able to leave the oil in the van and not have to take any extra weight with me. One thing I haven’t mentioned is how I’ve gradually been stripping off any unnecessary weight on my bike. After the first ride, I took off my panier racks, then my front and rear lights and even the light on my helmet. I figured that given the difficulty of the rides and that my bike is considerably heavier than most road bikes, I should take a minimalist approach.

The ride up three quarters of Ventoux is among the trees and you don’t really see how high you are climbing. There were lots of riders on the road that morning and I was feeling ambitious so I passed a few serious looking road cyclists who were riding in a group. They didn’t look all too pleased since here I was on this big, heavy cycle and definitely looked out of place since even though I had on a roadie’s cycling clothes, I definitely didn’t have the bike to match. One or two of their group caught up with me a few kms later on and passed me. I wasn’t too fussed about them passing but I managed to keep them in sight for the rest of the ride. The ride up was quite steep with certain sections hitting 12% for several consecutive kilometers. Megs would appear from time to time taking photos of us and cheering us on. I was sweating profusely and had nearly finished all my water but I didn’t want to stop because I wanted to see if I could push hard all the way to the top. I hadn’t seen Rod for a while now but Tan did catch up to me just to see how far along ahead I was and then went back to join Rod. She also mentioned that she got some looks of surprise when she passed other cyclists. Tan was definitely one of only a handful of women doing these mountain climbs and the ease with which she approaches them is amazing! 

About an hour and a bit of climbing later, I was suddenly out of the trees. That’s when I looked around and realized how high we were – over a thousand meters above sea level, and still climbing. The view was quite amazing but unfortunately it was a bit hazy that morning. The clouds had cleared and the sun was shining which meant that I was sweating even more than before. I was glad that it had been shady in the trees as it would have been very tough doing this climb in the heat. I looked up the road and I could now see what was meant by the "moonscape". It was like a desert up there, made up of small, white rocks that make it look like sand from afar. Only a few shrubs scattered here and there and of course, the large tower right at the peak.

There were lots of professional photographers taking pictures of all the riders that morning but having seen some of the photos that Megs was getting of us, we had our own personal photographer. Megs got some great shots of Rod and Tan with the Ventoux tower in the background but I was missing from these since I wanted to get to the top and passed the photo spot before Megs got there. The last couple of kilometers were quite steep and also windy since we were out of the trees. It was extremely satisfying when we finally reached the top! One of the riders that I had passed on the way up came up to me and asked how heavy my bike was – he was one of those in the group of roadies that I had passed earlier. We got some photos at the top and I gulped down a couple of liters of water to rehydrate. We decided to have lunch a little further down, out of the wind. We pulled off the road a little ways down, still in sight of the peak and stopped for a quick lunch. We then continued on our descent back to the campsite. We stopped for a quick café and crème caramel at the base, a few kms before camp.

Once we were cleaned up, we drove about 15 minutes to a really well preserved medieval town called Vaison-la-Romaine. The town is divided by a river and and to get into the old town, you have to go over a stone bridge that has been there since the 14^th century! We couldn’t believe that the bridge was still strong enough to support all that vehicle, let alone pedestrian traffic. We wandered through the steep cobblestone streets on the north side of the river up to the ruins of the old fortified castle, perched on top of a hill. There were great views from the top and after a few photos, we made our way back down. On our way back down, we spotted an awesome mailbox that we would’ve liked to bring back home.

Once in the old town, there were lots of neat little shops selling local products and of course the usual souvenir shops. One shop that stood out in particular was a colorfoul candy and chocolate shop where I could easily have spent a lot of money but fortunately, I just window shopped there. Vaison-la-Romaine was an old Roman town and we also got to see some of the preserved ruins, too. Not as large or impressive as in Rome, but still pretty neat. After getting back to the campsite, we walked into the little town of Malaucène and browsed the various dinner menus. We settled on a menu that consisted of: flan de courgette et son coulis de tomates (a zucchini flan with a tomato coulis), filet mignon de porc à la sauce moutarde (pork filet with a mustard sauce, ratatouille and fries) and an île flottante (meringue floating on a runny custard). Megs went for the salade Niçoise, chicken sautéed in a tomato sauce, and crème caramel.

Satisfied after a hearty meal, we then walked back to camp in the pitch black, with only our headlamps to light our path and hit the sack shortly after.