When I got home one day and Paula handed me an envelope, I thought for a moment she was handing me the divorce papers.
But it actually contained my birthday present 🤣
It was a printout of a reservation she had made on Booking.com and while she knows that my hearth lies in the Dolomites, that was just (way) too expensive.
As we both have fond memories of last year’s stay in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, she figured this would be more than a consolation prize.
HELL YEAH!!!
Those of you (more) actively following me know what this means: another “Tour de France” in the making.
Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne is a subprefecture of the Savoie department, in the region of Auvergne-RhĂ´ne-Alpes.
It is located at the confluence of the Arc, a river which has shaped the Maurienne Valley, and the Arvan which descends the Arves Valley (Col de la Croix de Fer).
And I planned on going to try and incorporate some, if not all, of the two last stages of 2022’s edition of the CritĂ©rium du DauphinĂ© in my trip(s).
In the end, that didn’t happen, for practical reasons: the car transfer(s) were just too long.
As our base camp was in the same place – but not the same apartment – as last year, I refer to the posts I wrote back then for more info on the more famous cols in the area.
You can find links to those on the Tour de France 2021’s main page here.
For this year, I was concentrating on last year’s “leftovers” and other lesser known climbs in – or out of – the Maurienne valley.
That was already enough for me more than I could handle under de “hotter than hell” circumstances…