Wednesday I drove from Vienne to Valence where I stayed with family.

Leaving Vienne I passed by the old Tour des Valois on the Rhône river dating from 1330’s

On the way to Valence I went through some of the most famous wine region …

One of the typical bridges over the Rhône…

Tons of fruit plantations in this region – mostly peaches, nectarines, apricot …

Had to fight heavy headwind and ~95F heat getting into Valence in the afternoon…

Next morning I decided to leave Valence really early. It’s about a 100miles to Tarascon from there and I wanted to ride as much as possible while cool. Luckily the wind had died down and thunderstorms had just passed cooling things down ..

From Valence and on you are really in the south. Everything is more dry – trees are smaller – more oak and greenery is scarce. Building style changes …

Seems like every hilltop has an old castle in this region ..

Was making good progress through the morning so had time to stop for some refreshment. Croissant and “double café crème” = 2.60 Euro

In the afternoon I passed through Villeneuve-les-Avignon. By then it was getting really hot – about 101F

Made it to Tarascon just around 5pm …

I can recommend visiting the castle in Tarascon – really cool.

So many cool doors in the town

I’m going to take a few days rest here and recover before I take on the final ~450km ride to Barcelona …