Tour de France 2021 – Stage 2

Col du Glandon – La Toussuire

Before I get to today’s stage, I’d first like to make a mends with our apartment owners, Christelle and Jean Claude.

Apart from the warm welcome we received – as expected from the visitor’s comments on Booking.com – we found a basket with garden veggies in the kitchen: courgette, paprika and tomatoes.

We also found another basket with “regional products” in the living room, which we didn’t open until this morning.

To our surprise, we found two pocket knifes with our names engraved on them – all with the best of intentions, no doubt 😂

As to the apartment itself, it actually exceeds our expectations.

We’ve seen the pictures, but it’s not the same as seeing everything yourself and it’s always exciting to find out how those pictures have captured reality.

They actually sell the apartment short and there’s little left to desire more from it than it offers.

So, with that, let’s get to today’s Tour de France 2021 Stage 2…

I anxiously check several weather stations every morning and they all give me different forecasts.

For today, la Chaine Météo got it right, but you never know in advance 😎

I decided to get to Saint-Marie-de-Cuines for the Glandon. As I remembered Pontamafrey had road works blocking the passage, Paula had to take the highway. My Trek doesn’t have a problem with some rocky gravel patches, nor did the “Route Barrée” sign/barrier stop me…

After getting to the start of the climb, I turned around and began my ascend.

Some 5 kms in, we encountered the first cyclists descending the Glandon and that went on all the way to the summit.

These were the participants in the Cyclosportive de la Madeleine event, the 135 kms course from what I could tell.

Coincidentally, I rode the 60 kms course yesterday, other than that I did not start in La Chambre and I did not finish on the Madeleine.

Anyway, the weather was not that good to start with and didn’t improve much on the way up.

The usual splendid views on the final hairpin section – see my blog’s background – were shrouded in clouds.

On the bright side: again no rain at all today.

I briefly paused on the Glandon summit for the pictures, but went on to the Croix de Fer summit quickly.

Obviously, we – or rather I – had another coffee with blueberry pie break there. If there, you should try it – it’s delicious 😋

After that, I rushed down – cold af! – to Malcrozet, to take the Route Panoramique from there.

Quiet and with some splendid views, but the descend back to the D926 was a menace.

As was much of the rest to Pierrepin btw, where I turned left for the climb up (and down later) La Toussuire.

While that is a regular 14 kms long climb, I did start to feel tired the last 3 or 4 kms or so.

At the ski resort, we found a cycling souvenir shop, that offered La Toussuire, Chaussy, les Lacets and the Mollard km markers (bornes), so as I hadn’t seen the latter three anywhere, I bought them.

Another flying – and safer – descend brought us back to the apartment in Saint-Jean-de-Maurinne.

Total for today: 89.3 kms and 2,662 m of elevation difference.

Link to Garmin.