Day 59: Tearjerking Col des Saisies

Pussy – Les Saisies 50.89km 🚴🏼‍♀️ 4.45.54 ⏱10.7km/hr ⬆️ 1510m (Suuz 1779m) ⬇️ 650m 🌡27C

Oh my god! What a day. Normally we start with how we slept, what we had for breakfast etc., but all that is on our minds at this moment is what the hell did we just do 😱? Today it was us against that mofo of a thing. Well it feels like we were actually eaten up by that mountain 🏔 . But hey, we made it up! Mas cycled the Col des Saisies a couple of years ago, same bike, same kind of luggage, but at that time she took the main road. Nothing wrong with that, but this time the route we planned on taking was a smaller secondary road. Since we loved the one we did yesterday we decided to go for it. If we would do it again? Maybe. On a road bike!

Again this road was really quiet, we saw three other cyclists 🚵🏻‍♀️🚵🏻‍♂️ and a handful of cars 🚗, but that was it. From the moment we left the main road D925 to cycle towards Queige the road went up with a pretty insane gradient. We had a final cold drink 🥤 in the place with not so many vowels and then started the climb not knowing what to expect. On the map 🗺 it showed as this small white road but on Google earth 🌎we saw it was paved so why not? Well I tell you why. When Suuz spoke out after the first kilometer that she was kind of scared it would be this steep for the entire 16 kilometres, Mas told her she was crazy. Well, it turned out Mas was the crazy one. It was like cycling up a sixteen kilometer long Keuteberg! Okay it wasn’t 20%, but for sure it was a pretty constant 10% incline with some pieces that were even worse. In the beginning it was pretty funny, but after about 1.5-2 hours of this insane climbing it wasn’t that funny anymore. Note 📝 to ourselves, next time, main road! Oh and we did this to ourselves, this was extra, we did not have to go up this mountain at all, it was just for fun. And to make up for the two mountains  🏔 we missed out on due to the mud slides. Well we made up for them, big time.

Okay now that you know all about today’s crazy climb, let’s get back to business: breakfast. Yesterday’s fruit salad was served this morning as well, together with multiple types of baguette 🥖 and marmalade. Not the kind of breakfast we get al hyper and excited about. We want savoury stuff like eggs, cheese, meat. But yeah, this is how the Southern European countries do it. But really, where is my croissant 🥐?? After packing up we said goodbye and started what was left of yesterday’s downhill. This was about 4.5km of freezing the nipples off, Mas thinks she actually lost one along the way (she’s still looking for it). What followed was a nice piece of cycling on a good road that can audition for a bike path. Except maybe for the part where it led us into a tiny dark tunnel with flooding warnings ⚠️ and it wanted us to cross a small little bridge with electrocution warnings ⚠️. It was so nice we even stayed on it all the way to Albertville. No that’s not the home town of yesterday’s house cat 🐈 Albert, it was the hometown of the Winter Olympics in 1992. We had a coffee ☕️ and a croissant 🥐, okay and a slice of pizza 🍕 and a huge cookie 🍪, and chilled for a long time. Suuz even went back to the bakery across the street to get more food cause everything was so tasty.

From there on the only way was up. First we passed a sign that said the road to Beaufort and the Cornet de Roseland was open! Lucky 🍀 us. We stayed on the main road towards Beaufort for a while since it seemed not too busy. We were wrong about that, it was busy. It was a nice road, not too steep, nice view but also really narrow and no shoulder. As soon as we could we went off this road, a very steep but not too long climb to Venthon. Right after this town we had to go back on the main road so it wasn’t very useful but how could we know (well we could have known if we had a better look 👀 at the map 🗺). Anyway, back on the road it was a little better except for this mental truck driver 🚛 had to slam his brakes when overtaking us because there were cars coming from the opposite direction. 

So if you scroll back all the way up you’ll find the piece that follows right now, about the maniac of a climb. Really, if you are in the neighbourhood and want to hurt yourself let us know and we will give you our route of today. And really, no fancy road bike, heavy fully packed touring bike.

After a second set of tear jerking hairpin turns we reached Bisanne 1500 where we joined the main road thinking it would be better after this. Well it wasn’t. The next few kilometres were up 9.3% (there were signs), yeah why whine, it’s at least 0.7% less than before. We struggled to get the last piece done but we made it all the way up to the hotel, this typical old winter holiday hut. The only thing is, it’s just outside Les Saisies and we wanted to go there to get food and see the sign that says you made it up the Col de Saisies! What we didn’t know, but should have checked, we had already climbed higher than the actual Col des Saisies. That thing is only 1650m or something and we were above 1700m. Our excuse, too tired to think, or communicate. So we went downhill about 💯 meters and up again 50 meters to find all restaurants in Saisies were closed for food BECAUSE IT WAS AFTER TWO O’CLOCK AND CHEFS ARE GONE AT TWO O’CLOCK. AND GROCERY STORES CLOSE AS WELL!!! We were able to get a drink but our lemon 🍋 soda had such a bad aftertaste, €7.80 for two lemon sodas? Are you kidding me?

We found a bakery open and had some breadsticks and a lemon meringue tart to get the sour taste out of the system. It worked. Also because we were too exhausted to waste energy on stuff we should have checked beforehand. So we turned around and cycled back up to the hotel, cause that’s what we do, cycle up up up. We still had to wait for half an hour before we could check in but we planted our butts in these sun seats 💺 outside the hotel so it wasn’t too bad.

We are in a really tiny room, but it’s kind of cute and big enough for us and all our stuff so who cares. After a much needed shower we went to a take away pizza 🍕 place next door, ordered two pizzas and ate the whole thing while playing gin rummy, what else. Afterwards we chilled in our room, made some tea on our one-pit cooker and watched a show until it was bedtime.