lundi 18 juillet: alpe d’huez

I text my old cycling buddy—as he likes to refer to me—that Alpe d’Huez is in the bag. It’s in a million bags and now it’s in mine.

The day is perfect—little breeze, stark blue sky, temperature in the low 20s. Mick and I go for a massage, then he goes shopping at the supermarché and I circumnavigate town looking for the road to the alp. Amazing: it’s not well signposted.

Once over Les Ferrieres—what we would call a creek—the road takes off at eleven per cent and soon you’re at the first of the 21 hairpin bends that enumerate the way to the top. The gradient for the first three or four kilometres is deadly: some people don’t make the first bend before dismounting. At each hairpin huffing and wheezing riders line the parapet.

The gradient relaxes a little between some switchbacks but mostly it’s a solid eight, nine or ten percent. A stream of riders pump their way up the mountain and a stream fly past on the descent. Cars are patient and courteous: they’re outnumbered ten to one. Two wheels rule the world here.

Each aspirant must find his own motivation to continue. For some, like our own Robocop, it’s the best possible time he can achieve. For Doc and Mrs Tourette’s it’s just to get there any way they can, which means a couple of strategically placed rests along the way.

The fast boys do their thing, the slow inch their way up, ticking off the hairpins or counting off the altitude on the roadside indicators. Others find a physical rhythm or a mental mantra to push them through the pain. My aim is simply never to stop: no rests for food, drink or photographs. Just churn the legs.

Somewhere about a third of the way up a bloke all in blue and about my size comes alongside and moves steadily past. We exchange equally unconvincing bonjours, so I add “Hello from Australia.” Over his shoulder he says he’s English. I decide to try to keep him within ten metres.

Half way up I start to feel better, stronger, and punch it up a gear on the hairpins. Soon I ease past him and my motivation now is to stay ahead.  He hangs on my wheel now. I stay strong, keep my churn regular and eventually he sags off and is gone.

I pursue a slender Dutch girl, brown legs and swinging ponytail. I rise from the saddle to put slower riders firmly behind me. I am pleased to pass more riders than pass me. And then there’s a point where you know you’re going to make it.

The actual town of Alpe d’Huez is a sea of cyclery and lycrary. I am a mere atom in a nuclear maelstrom.

Each of us is triumphant but each keeps it inside. I came to France to ride the Alpe and the Galibier just as four years ago I came to ride the Tourmalet and the Peyresourde, the grand Pyrénéen climbs of the Tour de France.

Our group hangs a right at Huez village and traverses the face of the mountain, looking down on an aerial photography landscape in 3D with mountain roads snaking up the dark defiles of razor-sharp valleys. Bourg d’Oisens, like Toy-town, sits in the middle of the larger Romanche valley.