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The fourth day of our journey announced itself as a long and tough ride. With almost 170km and over 1500 heightmeters it was going to be a handful, or should I say footful, being cyclists? . After 2 days of almost continuous rain we were glad to be greeted by overcast but dry conditions when we zigzagged out of Troyes. The track had to be changed overnight because the valley of the Seine was inundated and we had to stay higher up. A big word of thanks to Jan, who spend half the night retracking, saving and resaving the GPS trail.
For the first hour the skies remained dry. Then the rain started to fall for the next couple of hours while we made our way through the valleys. We smiled when we passed through Coulmier le Sec (le Sec !) before reaching the pittoresque village of Villaines-sur-Desmois, where our reststop was planned. I had a look around in this village and took some pictures while eating and drinking to keep the strength for the rest of our ride.
     
Moving on it started to dry out and whilst we were gradually climbing higher and higher in the landscape, the small hills became bigger hills and nearing Dijon the landscape became Ardenesque. We passed close to the Source de la Seine and then followed a plateau for a very long time. It started raining again and we were briefly amused by a big hairy dog that followed us for a couple of kilometers along the road on one of the plateaus.
After a while the dog disappeared into the green fields and we were riding once again alone, accompanied from time to time by one or both of the accompanying vehicles , where friendly faces were cheering us on. Before reaching Dijon, we had another rest stop because there was still some climbing to be done. Again we were pampered by our followers. Following the big road to Dijon for a while we took a right turn towards de Foret Domianale de Plombieres where we descended into the beautiful and - surprise - dry valley of the river Ouche. We could see big hills before us and one of them we had to climb to Corcelles les Monts, before reaching a soaring and twisty descend into the suburbs of Dijon. Arriving in the sun at the Novotel was a pleasure and gave us good hope for the rest of the journey.
Endomondo
Ride Stats : 169K and 1560 heightmeters (Garmin) in 07h17mins
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