Stage 16. Guillestre to St Jean de-Maurienne: The cancelled stage !

The bus route today

Packing into the bus

Cold!

Colder !

Wednesday 1st June: The first official day of summer up here in Europe and for us the stage that was cancelled – due to the weather ! There was talk last night at dinner that it was closing in and this could be a problem as today we have scheduled three Col climbs – two over 2000 metres. The organization last night cancelled the first climb, the Col d’Izoard at 2361 metres as logistically it would be a problem in terms of having vehicle support on all three climbs for all the groups needs. So the Col d’Izoard was gone. This morning we woke to light rain but windy weather in Guillestre that was quite cold and during our early breakfast – it got worse. And the calls went out to the authorities in regard to the Col du Lautaret and Col du Galibier (at 2647m). In short the roads up the Cols were open but it was freezing and snowing. Not a good climate for cyclists! So the organization smartly cancelled the days riding and very quickly organized a bus transfer for us on to the next town to here at St Jean-de-Maurienne. Many of us were quite relieved. The bus trip was enjoyable and 100 km long and took us around the Cols as such via a tunnel from Briancon into Italy briefly (see the map above) and then back into France via a 13km long road tunnel. The snow started falling as we drove up out of Briancon at just 1300m so one can imagine what it would have been like at 2600 m! Brrrrrr… When we got here, it was drizzling and all of maybe 4 deg C!  The hotelier here told me just a few minutes ago that it was 31 deg C here just a few days ago and last time it was this cold was January 5^th ! And on the Col de Telegraph climb just near here (at some 1500m) – there was 15 cm of snow there this morning. Crikey!... what does tomorrow hold for us then? We have 135km’s and the Col de la Madeleine at 2000m on the menu to ride over in the morning. The forecast is better and we will review it later today and in the morning. So today we ended up with plenty of R & R time here at the hotel and I guess a surprise 3^rd rest day off the bike. So three days to go now. Looking forward to getting into Switzerland and catching up with our Swiss friends, Christoph, Claudia and their family and... Carol who as I type this is enroute up flying up to Zurich from Melbourne. Bonsoir for now!