Le Tour 2015 Part 3: The big ascent

In the last part of my series on the trip to the Alps I'll cover our climb up to Villard Reymond and our ascent up Alpe d'Huez.  This would prove to be a tough day with 2180m of climbing in total.

 We started ascending col d'Ornon and turned off once we reached the road towards Villard Reymond.  This was a tough climb with 700m of climbing up to the village.

I had actually descended down here before but we decided to ascend this west facing pass in the morning so we wouldn't have to deal with the heat.  Ambient temperatures were somewhere in the 30ºC range in the valley.

 There were some absolutely spectacular views to be had to distract you from the climb.  We stopped at Villard Reymond for lunch, it's a cute little village high up at the top of the mountain, at about 1700m above sea level it's somewhat remote.  However there was a vintage and antique fair on that day which meant it was actually quite lively.

After lunch we descended down again to Bourg d'Oisans via Villard Reculas which entails a fantastic little ride through the mountains and along a cliff edge mostly on gravel.  Again the scenery is absolutely breathtaking.

Then finally a descent down to Bourg d'Oisans along the cliff edge with views over the valley, with a few sections in complete darkness through some unlit tunnels.

Finally we made it to Bourg d'Oisans and we stopped for a coffee for the penultimate climb up Alpe d'Huez.  I managed to do it in about 1hr26mins which was ok on this bike as it's slightly heavier than a race bike.  This concludes the series on my Alps trip, thanks for reading!