Fair Weather Bikers

It was a cooler night and I got a very good nights sleep - I also figured out why my air bed was going down. I was inflating it when it was very hot during the day, and as the air cooled down, the air compressed leaving me with an under-inflated air bed. The night before I had waited until it was cooler and put a lot of air in, and it stayed up all night.

We didn't have that many miles to do today, just under 100 miles, so there was no hurry setting off. I awoke at around 9am, had a coffee and had a natter with Dave who was packing up. He was planning on carrying on south through France, across the Pyrenees and then back north through France. He set off at around 10:30 - I hope he got good weather for the rest of his trip.

Nig got up at around 11am. We packed the bikes then went for a nice breakfast in the on-site restaurant. This consisted of coffee, orange juice, bread and honey and was very nice.

We set off and followed the N90 towards the Alps. This was a very nice fast flowing road which went on for around 50 miles. We had a short rest stop and then headed up into the Alps.

The road up was amazing with stunning views. Even after all the fantastic roads and amazing sights we'd seen over the previous days, we were still being impressed every day. As the road climbed it got colder and colder. Eventually we reached the top and we saw we were just above the snow line. I was still wearing my jeans and it was quite nippy!

After taking a few pictures at the top, we dropped down the other side into Italy. The traffic was quite heavy and we stopped for a coffee at the bottom in a nice little village.

Then we headed towards Aosta, avoiding the toll motorway. The road we took ran alongside the motorway and was lots of fun - I don't know why anybody pays to use the motorway!

Before very long we were in Aosta and at our camp-site, Camping Monte Bianco. It was very hot when we were checking in and we were hoping our pitch was in the shade. Luckily I had pre-booked this camp-site and because of that we were allowed in the reservations only area of the site. This was very well shaded under pine trees and along two sides ran the water flow from the local hydro-electricity station. Because of this the temperature was considerably lower in this area and very comfortable!

We pitched the tents then jumped on the bikes to find a supermarket. There was one just down the road so we got stuff for breakfast and some beer, we didn't get anything for the evening as we planned on finding a local pizza place.

After chilling out around the tents for a while we went for a walk to find a pizza. We were amazed at how much warmer it was out of our little camping area. We walked to the local restaurants, most of them were shut, and the couple that were open were very expensive and did not sell pizzas. So we returned the the camp-site and jumped on the bikes. We found a pizza place around 2 miles away from the camp-site. It was on another camp-site that was shut down, but the pizza place looked very nice and they were very friendly.

We ordered a beer and a pizza each - and the pizza came surprisingly fast; very shortly after the beers. Our pizzas were very nice and we returned to the camp-site. A large group of German bikers had turned up, but they didn't seem keen on talking to us, so we left them to their own devices.

The temperature remained very comfortable all night, and we finished off the night with a few beers by the tents and then turned in - expecting to have a good nights sleep. Unfortunately this was not to be...