the izoard

dimanche 24 juillet

The Col d’Izoard is a shifty bastard. Gradients change constantly and ruin the rhythm essential for long and arduous climbing. False flats flatter: you ride up what looks like it goes down, and down what goes up.

Twenty kilometres makes ascent hors categorie, the Tour de France’s toughest rating. It doesn’t look so steep when climbing, although your legs say different. Turn around and look down and its precipitousness is obvious.

The hard grind, the hallmark of alpine cycling, is no different here. The triumph is not man over machine or man over mountain, but man over mind—his own. Every sinew, every fibre of your being, urges you to ease off the pedals, lift a leg over the top bar, and rest. But the only peace you’ll have is to crest the summit.

And, of course, the summit gives nothing—no fancy restaurant, no soft place to lie, no warm welcome. Fingers chill quickly at 2360 metres as the wind rips over the pass. Thinner men than me chill to the bone. The sun shines but it’s ten degrees.

Tick-tight hairpins erode brake pads and wheel rims glow on the descent. Motorcyclists rule this route: they leave less space on corners and curves than the cars. Letting the beast under you loose in not on.

Jackets billow and flap in the air-rush. A headwind blows all other sound away. An overtaking moto startles the living piss out of me. Still descending into Briancon, I miraculously miss a mottled moggy by a whisker, both of us equally terrified of cat and bike colliding.

We break our trip back to Le Verney by hopping into gondolas strung on cables that haul us from the valley floor 3200 metres into the glaciers. We wander round saying WOW! and point cameras at impossible-to-capture panoramas. We’re on the roof of the world, the only things above us rock and ice.

Back on earth The Iceman hares us back to the chalet for the final moments of le Tour. Cadel mounts the podium, tears up, and we all swell a bit because we’re Aussies in France and saw him grimly preserve his chance at victory on Alpe d’Huez.

The packing begins. Exhausted legs trudge up and down the stone stairs as parts and paraphernalia are retrieved. Bikes are dismantled and tucked into small spaces.

Robocop is gone with his Dutch uncle Harry. The Pirate departs soon after for his native Germany. The rest of us depart in the morning, for London, Holland, Switzerland, the Isle of Wight, Greece, Barcelona and the Pyrenees.

We gather one lst time after dinner and utter thankyous and goodbyes. Our fellowship is broken but will linger long in memory.