Day 8: Mende to Orange, 317km.

Day 8: Mende to Orange, 317km.

Another great day. All the trails! Dramatic changes in landscape too. Some really long stages and no "low value" graded gravel at all.

This is a river bed.  What drought?

I had a late start owing to tyre change and morning faff, so regretfully skipped some good looking bits north of Mende to rejoin further along. Cevennes National Park was outstanding. Like further north, in sense you could fall over and find yourself in a great trail.

Took him an hour. Getting the Metzeler off the rim was hard, and watching it absolved me of any guilt about paying €7 and not doing it myself by the side of the road! 

First things first.

Several other people thought so too, so for the first time there was traffic off road. Still can't quite understand how the Honda Blackbird made it near Mont Lozere...

Cevennes.  Popular trails!

Forestry trails were mostly like this. Lots of culverts (?) or the ramp form opposite to jump off.

I'm now in a wood just outside Orange. Last 30km were road to cross the Rhone and circumnavigate Avignon.

Crossing the Rhone sent a chill down my spine. Probably because I was tired and looking for somewhere to stop, but still: there's a great sense of geography doing a trip like this. Rivers and regions of France I knew or had visited getting connected like when you make the overground journeys between two familiar tube stops in London.

Now out of the forests, and long departed the moors, to see arid dry stony tracks corridored by scratchy catchy shrub bushes. Hot too!

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