Stage 9 – Chateauneuf – St George de Didonne        82km

Yippee – today was the last stage before our rest day.  I knew I could make it to Paris now.

We started our stage near the Cognac region where there were endless fields of sunflowers, grapevines, majestic castles and rolling hills.  It was really beautiful and I have put this area in my book as a place to come back and visit another time.

Our neutral start of 8km stretched out to 14km but what is a few km’s between friends.  Obviously the commissaire decided we needed to ride a little further today.  At the 15km mark, we climbed a category 4 climb which took us up to the highest point an old French village.  Amazingly, I was about 10^th rider over the top and was pleased that my legs felt good today.

There was one attack after another today and I featured in many of these, as I really hoped to get into a break when I felt good.  It was just fate as to which break had the right combination and eventually a group with Mette in it was the one that was allowed to get up the road.

So now, my job was to shut down any chasing riders by jumping on their wheel and not pulling through.  The rider will usually give up and be absorbed by the peloton.  A team mate Meredith chased a group of 4 riders that attacked and the peloton decided to let these riders escape up the road.  So now we had two team mates up the road.

Several km’s later, Christine attacked alone and the peleton let her go too.  A French rider then chased her, so I jumped on her wheel and got dragged across to Christine.  We had a big gap and were given the go ahead to try and get across to Meredith.  The French chick then refused to work and no matter how much I yelled at her, she just shook her head.

One of the twins from the Aurora team, who is high up in the General Classification became discontent in the peloton and started repeatedly attacking.  This eventually livened up the peloton and soon we were back in sight.

A twin (not sure which one as I can’t tell them apart) suddenly appeared on my wheel.  She sat there for a minute and then attacked me instead of pulling through and taking her turn.  I caught her and sat on.  The peloton had too many other GC riders that were not going to let the twin get away so soon we were swallowed up by the bunch.

With 10km to go, the pace picked up and with the cross headwind coming in from the ocean the peloton strung out into a single line.  I was riding hard against the edge of the road and leaning off to one side of my bike to get as much protection as I could from the wind.  It is quite skill to remain on the ride when riding off centre.

The profile never showed any climbs but we had two little steep climbs in the final 2km.  In the front group, Mette sprinted superbly to take 2^nd, Meredith won her bunch sprint in the next group to take 9^th while I finished 23^rd.  I was squeezed against the railing during the bunch kick and pulled on the brakes to avoid some crazy rider who cut me off.

Our stage finish was right on the coast, so after the stage presentation we headed for the sea in our cycling gear.  The water was cool but so nice and relaxing.  After a 2 hour drive to Niort I was happy that we had a rest day tomorrow.  Finally, a chance to sleep in!!