It has been quite quiet here lately, partly because we have not had much exciting and interesting news or adventures to report, and partly because we were out of town for three weeks on our annual bicycle tour. This time we did Le Tour de Bourgogne. We will post pictures and stories about it later.

This past Saturday a friend of ours organized a winery tour and wine tasting event in a very unlikely wine growing region, namely here in Isère on the edge of the Vercors range near Pont-en-Royans. The other  attendees  — quite an international bunch of people originating from Ireland to Norway to Hungary, from the US to France to Vietnam — went for a hike before joining us at the winery — we skipped the hike since we are still in a process of returning to normal after the three-week bicycle tour. The vineyard was located in a beautiful place with the view to the Gorges de la Bourne. The vines did not look great because of this season’s heavy rains, but the wines were quite nice — they are growing only very common grapes like viognier and syrah.

After the event we stayed overnight in Pont-en-Royans at the Hotel du Royans, since we did not want to drive home in the evening, and we wanted to enjoy the area the next day with some easy hiking. The hotel was quite nice, quiet and clean, but the breakfast, as usual in French hotels, rather poor.

Not only was the breakfast poor, but there was no place open in the town on Sunday morning for us to buy food for our hike; the only bakery was closed just for this weekend, and the snack shops were opening later. So, we had to drive quite a bit (to the wrong direction) to find a grocery store at a campground, and even there we got just a baguette with some cheese and ham. We really did not mind the detour since the ride on the narrow and curvy road was very scenic, although a bit too ‘exciting.’

We had a great view to the Isère river valley from our hike (9.7K in 2h 30mins, D+/D- 271m) from Presles to Le Faz on the North-Western slopes of the Vercors range, somewhere where we had not been before. The day was sunny but very windy — despite the summer-like temperatures we felt chilly in the wind.