eight degrees of eight per cent

To say I promised myself the ride up Donna Buang is one way to look at it.

Nick at the bike shop says it’s harder than Buller. I disagree, then check the interweb: Buller averages six per cent, Donna is 6.4. Score one Nick. And he’s right. The climbs are of almost equal length at between 16 and 17 kms.

After days of fog, this day begins just the same. I roll out of the pub car park at Launching Place bang on midday. It’s eight degrees. A thermal base layer, my Ground Effect two-timer, and full-fingered gloves moderate the chill. Right on twelve thirty the sun finally burns off the fog.

For ten years at the start of each winter I had the free flu vaccine offered by my employer. The jab kept me cold- and flu-free. The past two years I’ve missed and had three respiratory malaises, the current disease featuring a dry cough with the power to turn me inside out.

At Warburton I unzip and remove the two-timer’s sleeves and swap the gloves for mitts. As soon as you swing into the road to the mountain, the gradient leaps to eight per cent and stays there till it arcs up to 12 just before the turntable at Cement Creek.

While the bottom seven kilometres is steeper, the long drag around the face of the mountain is tougher, ten tedious kilometres of long stretches of slick road. Grubby patches of snow fringe the bitumen above 1000 metres.

The sign at the summit says the mountain is 1250m tall. My computer has it at 1268m, but why quibble? The climb from Warburton is over a vertical kilometre and I add 40 or 50 metres by ascending the tower.

By meteorological happenstance the tower platform is windless, and warmer than any other place on this ride. I take two photos and email them to my good woman, and reply to a request for a quote to run some more training in Sydney.

A motorist, the only person also up here, comments that I have nothing more to do as it’s all downhill from here. I can’t be bothered disabusing him. I put the sleeves back on the two-timer, pull the hoodie over my bonce, and don the full fingers and gilet. The sun shines but the temperature is seven degrees.

The downhill chill factor is substantial. The road surface switches from slick wet to muddy wet to dry every fifty to a hundred metres. The bike wants to gallop off under me but I’m curbing my usual enthusiasm for the descent and keeping the rims warm. I want to go to France in one piece.

France is ever so close. My plane will lurch into the air at 2:05 pm on the fifth day of July.