The muscleproblems Derk complained about yesterday are mostly gone. He’s brought to the spot were he stopped yesterday and moves on to Col du Glandon.

We follow with the cars and the camper. The ride up is, again, amazingly beautiful, but scary too! While going upwards the area changes dramatically. The trees disappear and nice green grass with an abundance of flowers appear. The distant mountains are covered with snow, around us the snow hasn’t disappeared completely too.

Because Derk already did most of the Col du Glandon he’s at the top in no-time. After a brief stop to look at the surrounding landscape he speeds down again.

And now the famous ‘l Alp d’Huez! After a lunch break in Bourg d’Oisans Derk starts the long climb up. From inside all following cars we make a lot of pictures, especially of Derk situated in the magnificent landscape. Eric Rotte, from the local television in Zeeland, makes several nice video shots.

Derk rows really relaxed uphill, he has some experience now with long climbs and takes time to look around and tries to keep his heart rate as low as possible.

On top of l’Alp d’Huez Derk takes a couple of minutes to cool down, after which Eric interviews Derk about his efforts during the last one and a half week.

But the day isn’t over yet. We bring Derk to the next start, near Grenoble, were he does another stage. The ride isn’t really long (32 km), but it’s almost constant climbing to an altitude of 1730 metres. Normally this should not be a too big problem, but Derk notes at a certain point he hasn’t eaten enough earlier. He gets to Chamrosse, but just a little later than anticipated. Well, he can reload tomorrow, while driving to the next start: Perpignan, several hundred kilometres to the south west. No rowingbiking tomorrow.