La Dolce Vi(t)a – do figure

Old railway lines make perfect bike paths: they go from town center to town center, or from village to village, and even if not completely flat, they have gentle grades. The US has its Rails-To-Trails project, which is a nation-wide system, and France has La Dolce Via in the Ardèche department. I am sure there are others in Europe, but they are yet to be found.

We briefly visited La Dolce Via on our ViaRhôna bike tour in August, and decided to come back later when Fall colors are at their best. They were not quite yet, at least at the lower altitudes, but nevertheless we had a very scenic overnight weekend bike tour.

We started riding from the old railway station of Saint-Laurent-du-Pape. It was all uphill to Le Cheylard on partly paved, partly dirt path with very gentle grade between 0.6% and 0.9%. We took a detour to Les Nonières on a bumpy gravel path with the grade of 2.5%. It started drizzling very early in the day, but it was still comfortably warm, around +17C. Of course the scenery would have been much better in the sunlight, but we trusted the Sunday weather to be nicer on our way back on the same route.

“Vous me direz”, 2014. A sound installation by French sculptor Elisabeth Ballet.

The final climb up to Les Nonières was a tedious one, especially after going uphill for more than 40 kilometers.

We stayed overnight at a cute little Airbnb apartment in Le Cheylard.

Sunday was quite different from Saturday; it may have been a bit chillier because of the strong gusty wind, but the sun made it all up, although the afternoon sun was very hot (Grenoble reached another record this day with +29C). We started relatively early, and first rode from Le Cheylard to Saint-Agrève, all 26 kilometers uphill with on average 2.4% grade. We were lucky and reached the railway station just minutes before the old steam engine of Velay Express pulled in. Then we turned back and rode downhill to Saint-Laurent-du-Pape in 70 kilometers.We tried to appreciate the scenery a bit more, stopping frequently to take pictures and sip water, even if we were a bit pressed to return the car in time, completely oblivious of the traffic jam we were to face when entering Grenoble …

Le Pont du Malheur. Got its name because of the collapse during the construction in 1902 that killed nine people.

The steam engine of Velay Express, the touristic train operating from the Saint-Agrève station.

There were a lot of chestnuts on the path.

The gorge of the river Eyrieux was a hard target for photography on this sunny day.

The highway travelled on the other side of the river.

Altogether we rode 152.47 kilometers, with about 1200 meters of ascent and descent, which wasn’t much in absolute sense, but it was somewhat taxing to go uphill for tens of kilometers and then down the same distance.