Breakfast, despite a poor croissant (hard enough to use as a hammer for a bell), is good with an excellent fresh fruit selection. And it’s even warm enough at 7:45 for us to sit on the terrace. It’s an earlyish breakfast because I want to be at the Valrhona cité du chocolat in time for lunch before our visit.
The first section of this stage, from Condrieu to Sablons, is perfect. A good cycle path through the woods along the river bank. What’s more, although there’s still no Mistral helping me along, the south wind, still fairly strong yesterday, has eased off. I average over 20km/hr even without battery assistance and I’m in Sablons in just under an hour, so time for my usual break. Unfortunately, there is no easily available coffee…
Perhaps because of the lack of coffee, I’m a little disoriented setting off to Tournons. I think I’m on the right bank of the Rhône but the river is now to my right. I trust the GPS track, though, and head on. Looking at the map on one of my rest stops, I realise I crossed onto a long island at Saint-Pierre-de-Boeuf and crossed from one side of the island to the other at Sablons.
This section is not so pretty, with lots of industry to my left, including another nuclear power plant and, for no reason I can understand, a massive car park at Andancette. Just past this, though, there’s a view across the river to the pretty town of Andance.
The cycle track, apart from a very bumpy section where tree roots seem to be trying to invade the sawmill on the other side, is still pretty good, though, but there are, mysteriously, green lines across it every so often. I realise that I’ve crossed into Drome at some point and each kilometre is now marked. My scepticism about the utility of these bornes is, I feel, vindicated when I later cross into Ardeche and find completely different marker posts with a different numbering system (and a letter, rather than a number, to designate the section of the route).
Anyway, I make it to Tournons by 12:30. Crossing the pedestrian/cycle bridge to Tain L’Hermitage is then easy enough but the brief ride along the N7 to the Cité du Chocolat is a little hairier than I would have liked. Fortunately J. is waiting on the pavement to guide me to the bike shelter. Amusingly, as I pull up onto the pavement, a passerby stops to tell me about this; I say I that I know and that my wife is waiting to guide me to it. He continues to try to give me directions and I finally have to point to J., barely 20m along the road, to show that I will be able to find the shelter. Still, he was trying to be helpful.
Lunch at the Cité is interesting with all offerings having some Valrhona chocolate content. The best dish is probably my gazpacho starter and also the dark chocolate mousse. Unfortunately there is just one portion left of this. Fortunately, perhaps, it takes so long to arrive that J. has forgotten her annoyance at being beaten to the call when ordering (or maybe not…)
The tour itself turns out to be self-guided with lots of opportunities to taste different varieties of chocolate and some interesting films about sourcing the beans. That section of the tour is in a mocked-up jungle and J. is rather perturbed by the projection of spiders and scorpions crawling around on the floor! There’s also an excellent part that takes you through from the processing of the beans as they arrive in the factory to the production of the finished project—with an opportunity to taste pure, 100% cocoa paste (very bitter) and then sweetened but otherwise untreated paste (70% cocoa, 30% sugar; like dark chocolate but very grainy).
You don’t exit via the shop, but it is nearby and I buy some of the chocolate we used at Gastronomicom. Perhaps I do have to try tempering chocolate at home after all…
Our hotel, the Le Chateau, is just back across the river in Tournons and we both have easy enough journeys although I have to back the car into a rather tight hotel garage. The room is good with another great view across the Rhône but the Wi-Fi bandwidth leaves much to be desired.
As the networking connections are so poor, we head to a nearby bar with free Wi-Fi. Most of the terrace tables are taken—all with smokers—but I manage to upload and download photographs before we head to the nearby Le Cerisier. This is another serendipitous find. Unlike last night there are 3 menus and the main one has three choices for the starter, cheese and dessert with two for the main course. We hesitate over various options (the fish main comes with variations on corn which neither of us find attractive) but settle for each having the veal main course with me going for the tomato medley starter and J., despite some doubts, for the mi-cuit char. All is very good. And there is a cheese trolley which is evidently well used as both sides of all my choices are fresh. The slight disappointment is the “baked fig” dessert which has rather less of baked figs than we would like. Sometimes, simpler is better…
Food in Provence (and elsewhere) 
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