Visiting my daughter in the South of France, near Nimes. In the Vaunage to be more precise. The Vaunage is a wide and flat valley with hills on three sides. They grow grapes and olives. I went for a ride with my son-in-law John. John rode his muscle bike, an XL carbon framed Trek with 100mm travel all round. He used to be in the British over 40's triathlon team and is still fitter than most. He was sweating a lot though.
I had rented a Kellys emtb with a Panasonic motor. The motor had Eco, Standard, Auto and High. I found that all modes except Auto were either full on or off, resulting in a pulsing power delivery that I found disconcerting. Auto was nice and smooth so I stuck to that. My XL son-in-law had booked me a size Medium bike (I'm a Large), so I felt as though I was about to go over the bars whenever we were descending.
We did 17.6 miles (28.2km) and climbed 1700 feet (517m). The winding and steep trails are covered in what looks and feels like shattered limestone. The surface slips and slides under the wheels and the larger pieces rock and shift your wheels around. The trails are narrow and winding with spiny scrub and spiny trees hemming you in. I came off three times, twice ending up in the spiny undergrowth and needed a hand up and out. Once I got hurled off the bike backwards when I hit a broken-off limb of a tree that had fallen across the trail. It was black, in shadow, and I just didn't see it. I was lucky, although the mark on my chest is large and red, with scratches, it didn't bleed much at all.
We aimed for the local firewatch lookout tower, the highest point for miles around. And then back down and climbed again to a redundant windmill, just the tower, no roof or sails.
John's Trek in the doorway of the Fire watch tower, my Kellys bottom left. You can see some evidence of the shattered limestone that I referred to.
The Kellys, overlooking the Vaunage. Not a bad bike, forks a bit spindly with 32mm stanchions. That is the village of Sinsans below us.
"You can see our house from here!"
This is me with the Kellys posing in front of the old windmill.
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randr-photo-14700333-3000px-by-bikestuffphotos by Steve Weeks, on Flickr
electricbikereport.com
running it.
...those emojis are for the dopey look on my face on pic4..
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It is still there I checked. Fitted the stabilisers, us old fat unfit blokes need them. 
