Le Vercors

A couple of weekends ago we took a bike trip up on to the Vercors mountain range. The sights were really amazing as was the cycling. As usual, the pictures don't really do it justice but I took some because I had my phone with me and they do give a glimpse at least of how cool it is. The ride starts from Grenoble and right off the bat you go to the top of the mountain. It's about 18km up to the top and you go from ~200m to ~1000m. It's hard but totally worth it (especially on the way down when you get to glide for 20 minutes or more...).

The best part of the ride are the Gorges de la Bourne. The roads were carved out of the mountain ~100 years ago and go right through huge pieces of rock. You're right at the edge of these gorges that drop down hundreds and hundreds of metres. Super cool. Here are some pictures from that area...

This one above is really neat. For a long ways you're cycling in a kind of half-tunnel I guess where if you look up you see rock above you. It goes on for a long time. On the other side of the road is a drop of about 1000m down to a river below.

This one (above again) shows Sandi about to enter one of the tunnels that you go through where the road cuts right through the mountain. It's a cycling paradise.

There are better views but this last picture was where I had a chance to stop on the way down to take a picture. This is probably half way up the mountain and shows Grenoble in the distance (we're still clearly pretty high up -- I'd say this is about 600m [?] elevation)..

We did the Aquathlon yesterday and it went really well. When they post pictures I'll put some here (if there are any of us) and I can write all about it at that time.