Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2017

What guides do between work in the peak of July

Summer is here, and after fantastic spring riding in Southern France and then all over Valais, Aosta and Haute Savoie with good friends it's been time to get back to summer guiding, taking hikers around the Tour du Mont Blanc circuit.  There's much worse things to do, but with three weeks off the bike I was itching to get back on some trails. With a carefully planned week between tours I was excited and made some plans to hit up some classic lines, and some new stuff too. It's mid July now, so in Chamonix valley you have to think carefully about where to go to miss the crowds, and to avoid going on the bike ban trails (July & August).  Luckily it's still easy to find quiet trails in nearby resorts, or to simply drop round the back of a hill away from the frontside lifts. It went a little like this: Day 1- La Thuile with Wayne of newly qualified French legal mountain bike guiding service  Chamonixmtb.com  . Enduro race venue at it's best, rough and raw.

Diois & Barcelonnette

Family trip to the flow zones of France Die, pronounced Dee, home to a delicious sweet smooth sparkling alcoholic drink called Clairette, is also home to some of the sweetest smoothest trails around. A few years ago some mates did a race organised by the Bivouac Enduro team and came back raving about it.  More so the pairs racing format, but they said that the trails were great fun to ride with the company of a mate. Back in spring before my summer guiding season kicked off I met my parents there for our annual holiday together.  The day I met my Dad he was turning a couple of years into his  60's.  All winter he had told me stories that him and his 'crew' had got into out riding there bikes in the Shire's, Boarders and Mid Wales area's. With this preparation in mind I knew he'd love the potential that lay ahead of us: After a few days in the Diois we moved onto Barcelonnette in the Ubaye region of the southern French Alps.  Luckily