We arrived in Sault just around noon and setup camp in a forest of pine trees. We walked about twenty minutes back into town to catch the tail end of a market. The vendors weren't selling anything we hadn’t seen before but Sheahan did manage to find a carry-on bag for her return journey – a large, colourful, woven bag for shopping like most of the French carry around on market day. We had a good time wandering around the market and so far, they still interest us, even if the goods are the same. It must have something to do with the atmosphere, the smells, sounds and tastes and it just being such a treat for the senses overall. There were also a couple of folks playing some really old musical instruments, similar to a hurdy-gurdy. Before leaving town, we picked up so bread for lunch and some patisseries (2 strawberry-custard and one citron tartlette) which were delicious for dessert.

After a picnic lunch back at the campsite, we went for a scenic drive around the Gorges de la Nesque. It was a beautiful drive and on several occasions we got great views of Mt. Ventoux off in the distance. We noticed that instead of road-side railings, there were perfectly manicured hedges that reminded me of Canadian football training equipment. I’m not sure of its purpose on a narrow, twisty road like this but I guess it offered some false sense of security. We stopped for a number of impressive viewpoints along the way and the tunnels that were literally cut out of the rock were something else. You could see right through the tunnel for a great view of the gorge on the other side and the road skirted the edge of the cliff. The French sure know how to build roads that make for great scenic drives. The drive was a loop that brought us back into Sault for a great view of the town from below. I did some carbo-loading that evening (i.e had an enormous helping of pasta) and went to bed relatively early as I was planning on tackling Ventoux on the bicycle the next morning for the second time. It seems like we always get some noise makers at every campsite (flamingo cannons in the Camargue, partyers in the Marais Poitevin, a campsite rock concert in St-Cirq, African drummers in Gordes – or at least Sheahan’s interpretation of it) and this night was no exception. A large group of Czech travellers on a cycling tour were singing quite loudly into the wee hours of the morning. Sleeping in the van blocks out a fair bit of the noise so we usually don’t have any issues falling asleep but poor Sheahan was in for another sleepless night.

The next morning, I was up by six am and getting ready to head out on my hill climb. There are three approaches to Ventoux and when I rode Ventoux back in September with Rod and Tanya, we had gone for the most popular and difficult one through Bedouin. Given that I was in even worse shape than I was back then and the last time I’d been on the bicycle was for a leisurely ride through the flat marshes of the Poitevin, I was taking the easiest of the three approaches this time. Nonetheless, it was still a 26km ride with 1200 m of elevation gain and an average grade of 5%. I set off from camp around 7am and Meghan and Sheahan were going to pack up camp and catch up with me. It was a brisk morning but the skies were clear and it was wonderful to be riding up with almost no traffic. The first 20 km were totally manageable and they caught up to me around the 15 km mark. At the 20 km mark, they had pulled over and so I did the same and we were just in time to see a shepherd cross the road with his flock of sheep. The last six kilometers are completely out in the open sun and have a very steep gradient averaging 10%. It was a brutally slow climb for that last stretch but I still managed to make my way up to the top without stopping, although at times it felt like I was almost at a standstill. The total ride took me 2 hours and 15 mins and although it wasn’t a particularly good time, I was glad I had still done the ride. It was another hazy day, just as it had been the last time but visibility was pretty much unlimited. I decided to not ride back down the other side and it’s a good thing I didn’t because we found a great spot for coffee partway down at a ski chalet. We each had a grand crème before heading off to Seguret.