Day 2 - Tarare to Clermont-Ferrand 145 kms

The day started off straight away with a 10km col, and then they kept on coming until about lunchtime. At least it stayed dry until then (more or less). We had a great lunch at an Auberge at the top of the last col, consisting of home-made paté, large slices of dried ham, followed by omelette & a crepe (all home made).

The afternoon was a bit wetter. There aren't many pictures of that, because there was water everywhere! It wasn't too bumpy however, so we made pretty good time - apart from a bit of confusion in Clermont-Ferrand, where we saw the Stade Marcel Michelin several times (you can see the confusion if you zoom into the Garmin map).

Everything is wet, so we're trying all sorts of tricks to dry things out, including a coat hanger in the entrance to the restaurant with overhead heating pointing at it. We're going to get wet again tomorrow, so it almost seems pointless; at least we'll start off dry though!

Anyway, we've just had an excellent dinner at a Campanille restaurant, and we're about to crash because it's an early start tomorrow and rumour has it that there are even more hills than today. Everyone's fine, although it wasn't a great day for Fred - but he always bounces back!

Photos from today are here. Some of the pictures are geo-tagged (we're getting there), but wireless and local disk access seem to be mutually exclusive on the PC so everything's a little tedious - so no embedded pictures today.

Anyway, here's today's map (from my GPS watch - I was able to recharge it at lunchtime while we ate!):