Day 3: Tue 26th June 2007
Ride: Millau to Sorede - 233 miles
Considering the nearly 700 miles that they covered yesterday Pete, Kyle and Cat felt suprisingly good this morning. After a lie in and a late breakfast, what was left of the morning was spent stretching their legs wandering around Millau. It turns out that besides the famous bridge Millau is also well known for glove making, the production of Roquefort cheese, it's the main centre in France for paragliding...and it's twinned with Bridlington.
Millau and the surrounding area is very scenic and warranted more photos but they were keen to get to Collioure and only managed to take a couple of token pictures. Below are a couple of photos that were taken from the bar-restaurant that they ate at last night. The one on the left is looking across the road at their bikes parked in front of the last night's hotel. The one on the right is looking towards Millau town centre.
Cat's VFR, Pete's Blackbird and Kyle's SV parked in front of Hotel du Commerce (L) and the centre of Millau (R)
The destination today was Sorede, near the coastal town of Perpignan. They didn't have a specific route planned however they did want to take a look at Millau's biggest attraction, "Le Viaduc de Millau" or "The Millau Viaduct". Designed by Norman Foster, it's a road bridge that spans the valley of the river Tarn and is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with the tallest mast atop pylon peaking at 343m above the valley floor. The viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute from Paris to Beziers and was opened to traffic on 17th December, 2004. There is a viewing area on the northern side of the viaduct.
Below are some views of the viaduct but unfortunately the weather was very overcast in the morning and none of the photos that were taken did it any justice.
A view from the approach to the viewing area (L), one from the viewing area (R)
And one from the valley road underneath it
It costs €5.60 - €7.40 during the peak months of July and August - for light vehicles to cross the bridge but Pete, Kyle and Cat wanted to ride underneath the viaduct and along the Tarn Valley instead.
Junction of the D41 and D96 just outside Compregnac
Whether by luck or good judgment the decision to take the valley road was absolutely the right one. From Millau all the way to Albi it's 60 miles or so of pretty much perfectly surfaced, traffic free D-roads that swoop up and down the valley. It really is a terrific biking road and possibly one of the best in France. Unfortunately they enjoyed it so much they didn't stop to get their cameras out.
From Albi they made their way to the motorway and picked up the A61/E80 and then A9/E15 pretty much all the way into Sorede. The side winds that gusted across the A9/E15 were quite unpleasant but apart from that the rest of the ride was incident free. Except for Pete's mad half hour when he started riding towards Carcassonne instead of Perpignan, and Kyle and Cat had to chase him down and point him in the right direction. In fairness they had been talking about visiting Carcassonne - at some point - and Pete had got it into his head that that was where they were staying tonight.
It was nearly 8.00pm when they checked into Hotel Saint Jacques and they were glad to get out of their leathers, get showered and changed, and get something to eat. The hotel was nice enough, clean and comfortable with pleasant staff, although the restaurant was closed when they got there. Fortunately there were a couple of places to eat in the town, only a few minutes walk from the hotel.
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