Thursday 19th July 2018 - Stage 13 - Bourg d'Oisans - Valence

After last night's late arrival, we had breakfast at 8am at the hotel. This was good with bread, cereals, pastries, orange juice etc and again a nice hot chocolate.

Cycling was delayed due to choice, logistics (one van was taking a support crew member to the station to go home) and heavy traffic due to the Tour de France proper. We were finally away on the bikes at 10:30am under sunny skies with a downhill and steady pace start leading to the first hill of the day.

Arriving at the first feed station at 59km, we were told the support crew had made a local working woman very unhappy as they had gate crashed her spot.

It was another hot day with the temperature on the road reaching over 35 degrees. The road was relatively flat with some downhills and it was nice to see the kilometres tick by relatively quickly compared to the days in the mountains. The 2nd feed stop was at 120km.

It was an uneventful day and we passed the women's team when they had stopped.

 I recorded 5hrs 38m of riding, 164.7km and 1,110 metres of climbing for the day.

 

We arrived at the hotel for the night at 6:30pm to find all the rooms had double beds. These separated into tiny single beds after much effort from the hotel staff. The hotel also offered to do the laundry but since we had not had any done for a while due to a lack of facilities, they may have regretted this offer when they saw the huge pile given to them. However, it was all duly done but took some time to sort out.

Dinner was again at the hotel which was a set menu with small portions but was good quality.