Friday, July 4, 2014

Stage 9: Mayenne to Nogent-le Rotrou

Long day ahead with the most climbing of the trip, 2089 meters (~6853 feet).

The hotel last night was called the Grand Hotel and it really was pretty grand. Nice large rooms, good food and fast internet. I think that you might be able to stick me in a one star hotel and give me good internet and I would be happy. When I'm trying to blog and upload photos, a slow internet can really be annoying.

Oh well back to the trip. Beautiful day as we left the hotel. As we weaved our way out of town, the morning traffic had begun, but we we soon out on the country roads again.

As you can see in the map below, the elevation for the day was constantly varying with a couple of steep long climbs, but the elevation keep accumulating. It also was pretty warm as well, getting warmer as the day went on.

The entire day was on the back roads, but toward the end of the day we started to ride on roads that recently been resurfaced with chip seal. Chip seal is simply tar spread over the road and gravel applied top of the tar. When fresh, the gravel is loose and can cause problems for bicycles. In our case, one of the riders had some of the gravel bounce on to his chain then jamming his rear derailleur and bending it, which ruined the unit and he was unable to continue. We called the van and we was picked up. As a group, we decided to get off the chip seal and headed toward the more busy D955 and finished up the ride fairly quickly.

Except for the last part with the chip seal, it was a great day, if not a bit exhausting.


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