Grenoble Day 13 - Mont St Martin on Bastille Day

Day 13 in Grenoble was Bastille day in France which is pretty much the equivalent of Australia day back home. What better way to spend it than climbing one of the more local climbs in Mont St Martin, often referred to by the locals as the baby to Alpe d'Huez. With it's 17 hairpins and average gradient of 9.8% the climb definitely lives up to this reputation. 

The climb itself is just on the outskirts of a small little town called Le Fontanil-Cornillon which is approximately 13kms from the centre of Grenoble on the northern side of the river. The town was nice and quite and was a cool little town to pass through. It was a lot cleaner than the rest of the area around it which currently has a lot of construction work happening. 

The climb itself is a lot shorter than most of the climbs we have done to date at approximately 5kms (hence much more suited to my climbing abilities). As a result I decided to have a bit of a dig up this one, unfortunately my legs didn't quite agree with this decision and I blew up pretty badly with around 2 kms to go after going out a little bit to hard. Despite this the climb is very similar to Alpe d'Huez with several sections around the 11% gradient mark and the hairpin corners providing a very brief but welcome chance to recover in between the straights. 

At the top there is a very small town with plenty of walking tracks leading further up the mountain for the hikers. The pinnacle of the town is the nice little church at the top and plenty of large fields that would be perfect for a picnic with views back down into the valley.

Overall a short but good day in the saddle and a good way to spend Bastille day. 

Upon returning to the apartment, we decided to take a walk down to Parc Paul Mistral to check out the Bastille day celebrations and we are so glad we did. The park was completely packed out and we now understood why the city had been such a ghost town all day. We got a nice hearty feed at one of the food stores and sat around on the grass taking in the atmosphere for a while with a couple of bands playing in the park. Once it finally got dark we made our way over to the large tower (which i believe is linked to the Fort de la Bastille) in the centre of the park for the fireworks display. The display was hands down one of the best fireworks display any of us had ever witnessed and despite a significant amount of shrapnel falling from the sky onto us, it was well worth the wait. Unfortunately none of the photos we took do the show any justice what so ever.

A great day out was had by us all and we are all grateful we happened to be in France to experience the celebration that is Bastille day.