Mountain biking in the Esterel

As you may have noticed if you occasionally read my blog, I've been getting some strange sporty inclinations lately (getting up ridiculously early for a morning swim, cycling lunch time with my colleagues and things like that). I've lazed off a bit lately though - so I decided to hesitantly accept Gilbert's and Philippe's invitation to join them for some mountain biking this Sunday.

The weather looked quite promising as I drove down the A8, parking at the Port de la Rague, from where we started. Our trek started uphill, towards the Massif d'Esterel - after a rather steep zig-zagging climb we reached a sort of plateau, from where we had some great views over Theoule-sur-Mer, the Mediterranean and the Cote d'Azur.

The going got a bit easier for a while, as we made our way to the Col de Trayas, from where we carried on to the Col de Notre Dame - with nice views greeting us on the way (with the Pic de l'Ours looming ahead). Our original, rather ambitious plan, had been to cycle up to the Pic de l'Ours, dominating the Massif d'Esterel at a height of 492 meters. (doesn't sound like Mount Everest exactly, but cycling up there would for sure be a bit of a challenge for a part-timer like me!).

In the end (thankfully), we took the collective decision to give it a miss, since Philippe had some DIY to attend to in the afternoon, and well, that gave us a good excuse to postpone it to the next time as well ;-). So me and Gilbert took our time cycling back to the port - thankfully not getting shot by one of the numerous hunters we ran into on our way back.

Nice, sporting way to spend a Sunday! (I even went for a run later in the afternoon with Mathilde, that's like 2/3rds of a Triathlon!)