Having arrived home safely, here’s the report of stage 13 and the prologue of this year’s Tour de France.
I have completed all 28 entries on the VeloViewer Alpes du Nord list, which was my main objective for this year’s Tour.
To date, only 5 on the list have completed all of them – as some people not having completed all of them got more points, as they were (way) better than me, I landed in 8th spot on the list…
Stage 13
This stage was really only about climbing Semnoz.
As I expected, that climb was a lot harder than meets the eye, at least for me.
The good thing is that you cycle through the woods most of the time, but that comes with no views to speak of.
The view at the summit is great, though.
We had a coffee and after that, I started the descent to Lecheraines to climb the parallel road up to Col des Prés.
It would have been nicer to actually climb the road in the profile I guess, but from the three alternatives for the remainder of the stage, I had picked this one, not knowing that…
Anyway, after the Col des Prés, I cycled mostly downhill towards Montmélian, enjoying the landscape and views.
Total for the stage: 75.3 kilometers with 1,890 meters of D+.
Epilogue
For the Epilogue of this Tour, I realized I didn’t have a lot of options if I wanted to cycle in the direction of home, i.e. Lyon first.
Not from Albertville anyway, so we transferred to La Motte-Servolex, close to where I started the Tour.
I encountered one-and-a-half climb on the route: the Col de l’Épine, but via Saint-Sulpice, and the Col de la Crusille.
After that, I kept on cycling parallel to the A43, through the nice landscape and the villages in it, until my plotted route landed me on the (busy) D1006, which wasn’t much fun.
So, I got off the bike just past La Tour-du-Pin – my Tour de France 2024 had officially come to an end.
Total for today: 54.1 kilometers with 1,079 meters of D+.
