26 June 2025 (sun and clouds, hot) 60km

There are places in the world where God sends bad people. Not really bad, but those that haven't tried hard enough in the service of ol J.C. Or, haven't slipped enough in the collection plate.

The reason I know this is logical....well, at least to me.

Such is the village of Cognin les Gorges. A lovely little village and if you take our host, a delightful lady, as an example of others you would find there, you would honestly be surprised they were bad at all. 

But....it turns out that they are there, paying penance.

As we know, in villages the church clock chimes on the hour. Then there is a single chime on the half hour.

However, in this village the clock chimes the appropriate number at one minute to the hour and one minute after the hour??

All bloody night.

It's bad enough it chiming once on the hour, but we got double on the hour and then a half hour chime.

So, think about that when you don't load up the coffers on a Sunday. Or you just pretend to be singing the hymns, when you're not. Or you say "Good sermon vicar" when it was rubbish.

God is just waiting to send you to his little "out of the way" village in France, where you'll forever be hearing the chiming of clocks.

Woke at 5.20am. Seamless pack up and on the road by 6.10am, our earliest start of the tour. Lovely morning to be out and the country roads to kick it off were perfect. 

Walnut trees have been everywhere for the past few days.

Lots of shade this morning which has been greatly appreciated.

At the village of Rovon we rejoined the Bella Via cycle trail that would take us all the way to Grenoble. We had the main highway to Grenoble, and Turin, in Italy, on our left. Separating us virtually the whole time were two layers of trees.

Initially the first 5km we had the trail to ourselves, however that would change. Suddenly there were cyclists everywhere. Some riding to work, others training, but all were flying.

When we were about 30kms into the ride, an oncoming rider told us that the route was blocked. Sure enough not much further on a massive tree had fallen across the path.

Got Julia's bike over and just as we were about to attempt to get mine across, a cyclist coming the other way gave me a hand and we carried on to Saint E'greve. 

This place looks like a stopover for people going further on. Nothing feels homely, it's purely commercial.

Popped into a huge Carrefour to get breakfast before cycling on to find a shady park bench to eat it. Well none were about this morning and before we knew it we'd cycled another 8 kms and were in Grenoble.

On the way in, we passed old tents, old cars and homemade shacks in a collection amongst the bushes, which were all being lived in we assume, although we saw nobody. 

We would have stopped to take a photo, but it didn't feel safe. 

After we were cycling alongside the concrete walls of the motorway, and it was covered in graffiti (some, pretty damn good). 

However, Grenoble has nothing for me I'm afraid. It's biggest draw are the surrounding mountains and probably its cycle paths. If you didn't look too closely though, it did look nice.

Other than that, we found it dirty, covered in graffiti (everywhere) and tired.

After searching for about half an hour for a pleasant place to breakfast, we settled on a bench in a small park. It was just a bit close to the road for us but at least it was in the shade.

We cycled into the tourist info office to find the address of the campground. Thought there were three in town, as evidenced by the three tent triangles on Mapy. Turns out two of those are car parks where you can park up overnight. I'm afraid if you can't put a tent up there, don't use the bloody tent symbol!! Use a bloody campervan icon. We're just glad we didn't cycle all the way to these two non-camps to find this out.

The one proper camp in Grenoble was 5 km out of town in the opposite direction we want tomorrow, (typical!) but untypically, it wasn't up a hill!

It was closed until 2pm so we cycled a couple more kms to Maccas for the air conditioning and wifi. 

Bought a coke and some fries and began using the wifi in the nice cool room.

The bikes are parked right outside the window we are sitting next to, against a small tree.

Next thing, one of the staff comes up to us and says " You must come with me."

Thinking that we shouldn't have parked them there, I tag along.

Get outside and I see my bike has fallen on the floor.

But no....it hasn't....some dreg has tried to steal it.

Cut the bloody lock.

Jesus, he must have been quick.

We're forever watching the bikes.

A lot of people were keen to help.

Anyway, I'm outside and two guys on electric scooters are telling me that they saw the guy and have a couple of others trying to track him down. 

I thought, “Good luck with that."

But bugger me, next thing, the main hunter on an electric scooter (flash looking machine), flys into the entrance of a huge shopping complex.

Before you know it, he's escorting the dreg outside.

And what a waster he was. Looking at his mouthful of wasted teeth we would guess he was a drug user. Reckons he was stealing it to pay for medical bills and showed us a freshly stitched (about 10 stitches!) wound on the back of his neck.

Probably from someone else he's ripped off.

Sorry mate, but your sob story doesn't work on us.

Anyway, there was no point us going through the motions with the police, so we just thanked those who had helped find him. We certainly see the value in electric scooters in urban places and we think there's a new police TV series waiting to be made there.

Something along the line of the 70s series “Chips”. They could call it “Frittes”. And in a nod to Miami Vice and France itself, they could zip along in dark jeans and blazers, looking stylish and never raising a sweat.

We were well impressed with all the people that helped. The manager of McDonald's even brought our bikes inside his busy and clean restaurant while we finished packing up.

After that excitement, it was straight to an Intersport store, where we bought "a big arse lock"

Euro 40 = NZ 80 

There is a thick chain inside the soft sleeve.

Rode to the new camp for the night and found a nice pitch, with a cool breeze, but away from the areas where it was howling through.

Swam in the pool. Had it all to ourselves and fell asleep on the loungers.

Shaved, showered...beautiful.

Washed clothes, hung out to dry (which takes about two minutes ) and later on rode to the Intermarche where Julia bought a salad bowl (big mutha) which we ate with a beer back at camp. It was delicious!!

We had a little picnic bench by our tent which we made good use of.

Ju went and grabbed a cold shower and then we patched the punctured inner tube.

By then it was 10pm and time for bed.