Stage 9: Villiers Le Lac to Besancon

The old gite (the house, not dad) provided Team Probert with a rare comfortable, warm night and we woke up feeling refreshed. Then Greg went back to sleep again, as usual.

Tom was so excited to be in France, and the prospect of the town's boulangerie that he volunteered to cycle down for the breakfast run, returning with a pannier bulging with sweet pastries and a telling smile. We ate at the huge wooden dining table and discussed the day's route with French kids tv blaring in the background (more our level of language).

After a brief coffee stop in the Chamelion bar to update the blog and see the dog, the familiar caravan of bikes struck out again into the gloriously sunny day, and we were soon engaged in another slow crawl up the side of a hill. The morning was spent ironing out the last few ripples of the Jura, adding another 3500ft of climbing to yesterday's 4000, so in total more climbing than the Alps! What goes up, as they say...must come down and we were rewarded with some white-knuckle slaloming down hill sections that saw us start to rack up the mileage.

We'd spent most of the day with only dairy cows and the odd tractor to contend with, but as the terrain levelled out, we found ourselves on busier roads. When the GPS sent us hurtling towards a motorway however, we knew it had gone a step too far and reverting to old school technology we got the map out to re-assess.

The historic city of Besancon was now in our sights but after a day in the wilderness with nowhere to get good, the younger team members (who had been putting in all the work) were near starvation. Just in time a road-side restaurant provided a brilliantly French meal full of strange meats and potatoes which we demolished in the sun kissed courtyard. Dad followed up with a Ricard, perhaps explaining his drop in performance over the final 10 miles!

Soon we were cycling through the ancient fortress walls of Besancon, but with the sun now getting low in the sky we had to forego sightseeing for a dash through the city's back streets to the campsite. Another fine erection (the tent) saw us tucked up and desperately trying to sleep under the glare of a light that stayed on all night (why?!) and with a deafening bird happily squawking away into the early hours!