cols and gîtes

Lying on my bed late at night, trying to read between sneezing and nose-blowing. My eyes water. The phone rings—it could only be Serbia calling at this hour.

My good woman wants to be the first person to speak with me in 2011. “What time is it?” I ask, having no visible clock in my office where I’m now lying on the floor. She tells me it is 2pm in Belgrade. Fireworks rend what has otherwise been a silent night in Bendigo.

At 3:22am I wake into a new year and know there will be no more sleep as the contagion rages through my body. I can’t breathe. I wander the house, waiting for the dawn so I can ride. The BoM site says wind from the east so just before six I depart for the Kamarooka circuit.

Riding the undulating Tennyson Road I feel good. On the bike I can breathe, but have to be careful not to start coughing or I’ll have a lung dangling over the handlebars. The pedalling is easy till about 50kms, then the air mass comes from the southwest (easterly, indeed!) and I struggle the 28kms from Raywood back home to Bendigo. The loop is 100 metres short of 80kms at 27.3kph.

During the day I read the Croydon Cycleworks preliminary itinerary for the Tour des Alpes in detail and study maps. The cols of the Pyrénées have such evocative names—Tourmalet, Peyresourde, d’Aubisque, but the Alps are as good, if not better.

Right on our doorstep is the Col de la Croix de Fer—the col of the iron cross. We’ll pedal the Glandon, both ways, the Télégraphe, the Madeleine, the Izoard, the Galibier, and l’Alpe Duez. They are all marked with blue highlighter on a succession of maps spread on my desk.

The Cycleworks tour begins 15 July. I have nine days before I join it. I plan to be in the Massif Central but have forgotten the most obvious thing: le Tour. I check the route and find that stages nine and ten pass through while I’m there.

Into the night I pore over accommodation sites. Choosing the right gîte for a single Aussie eccentric for a week is impossible when the descriptions of what is offered are translated by a machine.

Lodging in small village overhangs river Allier Appartementau in closed garden ombrage (salon of garden) including/understanding small cuisine (minifour) stay, bathroom, large chamber lit of 140, village locates at the throats Allier on the path of …

And so on.