There are only two ‘one thousand feet of climbing’ stages left on Around The World and this is one of them: and as the other one has less ascent than this one, you can tick another milestone stage off your bucket list at the end of stage 787. It’s lumpy, it’s bumpy and it packs a real punch at the end. But instead of focusing on that, be thankful that (at least) two thirds of the climbing is in the first half so you’ll have the opportunity to save some energy for the finale.
The rollout from Angouleme is twisty, very lumpy and north/north eastish. Each of those lumps typically carries a climb or a descent of between fifty and a hundred feet so to get three or four of them in the first three miles is challenging, especially when the bigger ones are straight out of the pen. The route is twisty courtesy of the route having to navigate from the south of Angouleme to the the north eastern suburbs from which it departs into open countryside.
After passing by Gond-Pontovre at three miles, the D910 Route de Paris (that’s an encouraging name) negotiates a quick up/down before crossing the the La Touvre river on the outskirts of town. The river flows into the larger La Charente west of Gond-Pontovre and it (La Charente) subsequently heads west before flowing into the Bay of Biscay at Rochefort.
Beyond the river, the road crosses the N-141 autoroute at five miles before heading north east into open terrain and starting the first proper climb of the stage. It’s a three mile, three hundred foot challenge that tops out east of Champniers on the first of a pair of switchback bends. The road then embarks on a three mile section that can best be described as ‘very lumpy’ but without water being involved. The next summit, indeed the highest elevation on the stage at the end of those undulations, is east of Angouleme-Brie-Champniers Airport at twelve miles, just before the road passes by Brie itself.
Beyond Brie, the road begins a six mile descent that takes in Les Roulis, Les Boussas and Les Rigalloux either side of ten miles before crossing the D88 at twelve miles (it heads north west to Glange and south east to La Moussiere) and the junctions to Villemalet (north) and Agris (south) at fourteen miles. The descent finally bottoms out at the Foret de Quatre Vaux (forest) after sixteen miles and after a quick up/down through Les Granges and onto the D942 Route de Angouleme, the final climb starts in earnest at twenty miles.
It’s a three mile affair that initially runs alongside the La Bonnieure river (that’s flowing in the opposite direction down the hill): the road then runs through Chasseneuil sur Bonniure at twenty one miles before crossing the river (which is flowing right to left under the road) a mile later. The end of the stage is after the junction to Chez Dieu on the right and is just over halfway from there to Lussac, a mile away, and it will feature at the start of stage 788.
Distance: 24 miles / 38 kilometres
Ascent: 1191 feet / 363 metres
RGT Magic Road: YiGJWLXXe5Dx
Max elevation: 253 ft
Min elevation: -90 ft
Total climbing: 1191 ft
Total descent: -1162 ft
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