Day 8 – Sunday 22 June

Chalon-sur-Saône to Villefranche-sur-Saône

Route Statistics	ml / ft	km / m
Riding Distance	71.19	114.56
Total Ascent	2297	700
Total Descent	2290	698
Start Elevation	604	184
End Elevation	610	186
Min Elevation	548	167
Max Elevation	1099	335

Hotel

Kyriad

Notes

Today it was hot, about 35°C at times, but so long as you keep moving the breeze evaporates perspiration and it's possible to survive. However, when you stop the breeze stops too, but the perspiration doesn't. The route was undulating and we puffed along through a long tunnel and along the Voie Verte de Bourgogne du Sud that we should have been on all day, but initially on leaving Chalon-sur-Saône we stayed on normal roads instead of taking the cycle path through Buxy. It would have added a few miles to the day that was long enough as it was. We eventually joined the cycle route just north of Taizé and followed it all the way to Cluny where we hauled up for a good Sunday lunch.

After lunch we became rabbits. The gradient profile for the day shows a peak half way that in reality isn't there. We were underneath it in the Tunnel du Bois Clair, a disused railway track converted into a cycle path. Google maps only shows the height at the surface.

During the morning Jon said to me, "You know what you've forgotten don't you?" I replied, "Yes I know." I had forgotten to hand in my and Mike's room key and I thought it was the room key that Jon meant. The previous evening we had locked our bicycles in the Kyriad hotel's underground car park, and this morning I had been the last one out and had locked the garage door behind me and left the garage key on the hotel lobby's desk. Apparently Rob (in England) had received an e-mail message from the hotel saying we had run off with the garage key. At lunch I mentioned the room key only for Jon to say, "You've got that as well?" "As well as what?" "The garage key!" I dissolved in a paroxysm of embarrassment. We held a memory blast and I dragged back my recollection of what I had done with the garage key, only for Jon to get an e-mail message from Rob saying the hotel had contacted him with an apology saying they had found the garage key.

I got to the Kyriad hotel in Villefranche about 20 minutes before the others and mentioned to the chap on the desk that I had got the room key from last night, and as that was also a Kyriad hotel he offered to get it back to them. Nice man!