Following the Loire: Day One

Day One from Saint-Étienne to Feurs (24 July 2013)

I started with a short detour to Cycles Marcon on the rue Bergson; the street is a major thoroughfare running north in the middle of the city.  I'd forgotten to pack my cycling gloves.  The evening before, I'd found a nearly new store near the hotel called Cyclable specializing in "city bicycle riding."  I'm pleased to see new stores like this, and hope it's part of a successful trend (I came across another Cyclable branch in Orléans.)  But apparently city bicycle riders don't bother with gloves.  Cycles Marcon was a real bicycle store and I found what I needed.

Leaving Saint-Étienne, I'd planned to ride to Aurec-sur-Loire.  This was where I'd left off riding two years ago when I'd started at the source of the Loire at le Gerbier de Jonc and rode the first 200 kilometers.  But I should have studied the map better; and it should have been a topo map.  Saint-Étienne is set in a kind of bowl of hills.  A few, more or less flat routes lead out but they're mostly heavily-traveled roadways.  Probably for this reason Google maps directs a cyclist to take to the hills.  But Google maps may not know the cyclist is carrying 20 pounds of baggage.

Hills just outside of Saint-Étienne

I'd planned on averaging roughly 22 -- 25 kph.  As it turned out, between the hills and a couple of wrong turns, I probably averaged half of that for the first couple of hours.  I was getting worried that it could end up being a very long day.  At a point just west of Firminy, a town known for a le Corbusier project, Google Maps brought me to La Côte Martin.  I was facing a barely-paved pathway, way too steep to ride.  I wondered who devises these routes?  Was it some kid back at Google headquarters in Mountain View, who had no idea of the roads in this part of the world, who wanted to send me up this hill?  This wasn't going to work.  Looking at the map again, I could see there wasn't really any alternative; If I was going to go to Aurec-sur-Loire, I would have to do a lot of climbing.  At that point, it was nearly 1 p.m. and I still had about 50 km to go.  I decided I'd have to compromise a little in my commitment to ride the full length of the river.  Just ahead, along a nice, flat road, was Le Pertuiset.  It was on the river.  I could pick up my Loire route there.  It would only be 7 km downstream from Aurec.

Vacation homes at Le Pertuiset on the Lac de Grangent

But on the bridge at Le Pertuiset I saw that the road was going up again.  The Grangent Dam is about 6 km downstream from the bridge and has flooded any possible route down close to the river banks.  To go north towards Feurs I needed to climb up the D108 above the west side of the Lac de Grangent, the lake behind the dam.  Sometimes, after all the fretting, a climb can turn out actually to be fun.  From Le Pertuiset to the top of the climb at Chambles is about 7 km.  Over that distance the road rises about 200 meters (about 650 feet), which means a gradient of a little less than 3 percent.  But I didn't know that when I was riding.  All the way up I worried that the road would get steeper around the next bend.  And, at the same time, I was continually relieved that it didn't.  Most of France was suffering from a heat wave that week, including the areas around Saint-Étienne.  But long stretches of this road were shaded; I don't recall ever breaking into much of a sweat.  I also don't recall encountering more than one or two cars; several other cyclists, yes, but few, if any, cars.  At the top I felt great.  Coming to France I believed I was in decent shape.  But I wouldn't know for sure until I started riding.  The steep roads out of Saint-Étienne and the decision to turn away from La Côte Martin had made me nervous.  Here, though, I rode without any real strain.  I could handle this.

After the descent from Chambles, most of the rest of route to Feurs followed flat, straight roads.  Between the Monts du Lyonais off to the east and the Monts du Forez to the west, the Loire has created a wide, rich valley for agriculture.  I rode through fields of wheat and corn and felt for a moment like I was back in Iowa where I grew up.