port de balès

vendredi 29 juillet

My final ride in France, this trip, maybe forever. The ascent of the Port de Balès reminds me—as if I didn’t need it—that big boys shouldn’t climb hills. They can, slowly, but mountains are for skinny young men. My legs are knackered after weeks of clambering up incredibly steep slopes.

The Iceman and I saunter down the main road from Luchon, first along the valley of le Pique, the valley of la Garonne. At Salanche-Siridan we hang a left up the valley of the Ourse to Mauléon-Barousse. We have 19.7kms to climb: the sign says so.

I have no computer today—it’s on my bed, left behind in my haste to be on the road. I am naked without it: no gradients (maybe a good thing), no distance to the top (ditto), no temperature changes as we hit the clouds (ditto, ditto).

The beauty of this climb eases its agony. From Mauléon-Barousse we sidle up the Ferrère valley, idyllic scenery and a glorious river burbling right beside the bitumen. The gradient is benign enough for me to enjoy every second.

After six point five kilometres of three and four percent, the road crosses the river, the valley narrows to gorge, and the real stuff begins, the river further and further below in deep shade. No village, no house, no wayside shelter relieves the solitude and the final bleakness of this climb that tops out at 1755 metres.

The perilous descent south into the Oueil valley is goat-track narrow with the tightest chicanes. The final 5.88kms to the top was only sealed in 2005 so le Tour could come over here for the first time. Only way down in the lower reaches dare I release the brakes and flash through the corners.

 And then it’s done. I open the iron gate at Le Poujastou, our chambres d’hôtes, and lean the Cervélo against a wooden garden table. I remove my wrap-arounds with prescription inserts, my blood-red helmet, a dripping bandana, and unpeel two sticky mitts.

After trudging up four flights and stripping off my Alpe d’Huez jersey, my best bib-nicks and new socks on honour of the occasion, I lie down for a few minutes. My next task is to wheel the pod from the garage, unfurl my multi-tool’s Allen keys, and disassemble my machine.

There it lies, in pieces in a black box—wheels, seat-post, handlebars, derailleur—at strange angles, incapable, Alpe d’Huez, the Croix de Fer, the Glandon, the Télégraphe, the Galibier, the Izoard, the Portillon, Superbagnères, and the Balès behind it. Before them, the Tourmalet, the Peyresourde, the Aspin, the Agnes and the Aubisque.

There are a million mountains to climb: they’re everywhere, every day. In France only one remains for me: the Ventoux. It stands alone in a place I have not been.

superbangers

After lunch—salad Italienne for Mick and a crepe for me—and a siesta—thirty minutes with one eye shut, we tog up and assault Superbagnères. It’s not a mountain so much as a ski-field. But at 1800 metres it’s a major ascent.

No easy climbs in France, and Superbangers as I christen it, is no exception. It’s warm and I ride sans casquette, wrapping my helmet straps round the handlebars. In no time sweat drips of the peak of my cap, streams down the lenses of my glasses, and makes a shimmering lake of the face of my computer.

It’s an 18-kilometre ascent, the last three into cloud so heavy I can see only five metres ahead. Cows with bells clanging fade into tiers above the road. The bike wants to keel over; it seems as tired of this heavy haulage as I am. It’s twelve degrees at the summit.

Unfortunately the cloud lowers itself into the valley of the Lys and the descent is as cool as the climb was the opposite. The final ten kays snakes back into Luchon: it’s high-speed exhilaration all the way.

[73.81kms @ 18.8kph. Montage 1757m, Max alt 1800m, max climb 16%]

stairway to heaven

jeudi 28 juillet

The Iceman takes the car to do research for the 2012 trip so I pedal to Gare Luchon, then ride to Gouaux de Luchon via Bagnères de Luchon, Montauban de Luchon and Juzet de Luchon. Cier de Luchon is over the road but I don’t go there.

Gouaux de Luchon village perches on the side of the mountain up a hammy-twanging five-kilometre climb. The usual thoughts assail me: how do people live up here? They can’t all be farmers: what do they do for a living? A small, but new, car sits in a nook outside every house: how do they make an income?

The village at first seems dead. I sit at the well. The road outside is littered with free range barkers' eggs. Fat ones. An old woman emerges from a doorway and totters down the chemin with a plastic bag of garbage in her hand. The shutters on a doorway fold back, the door opens and a sleepy young bloke steps out as though half past ten on a bright sunny day is simply too much for him.

A woman is chatting garrulously to a neighbour over a stone wall. Two blokes are working in the cimitière in the churchyard. Bright flowers clutter every grave. A walled garden is full of beans, tomotoes, herbs and other legumes. A sage older man strolls down the road, decides all is as it should be at the village boundary, then strolls back.

As I wheel the bike along a narrow lane the garrulous woman’s whippet rushes the fence to warn me off. She coos at it, bonjours me. In the yard of every house is a perfectly stacked woodpile ready for the snowy months to come.

I can’t help but think that life here might be slow and sleepy, but it’s good.

the portillon

mercredi 27 juillet

Every river—la Garonne, le Salat, le Pique—gushes furiously. But finally after three days the rain gives up its relentless descent. But first …

Monday we travel all day, by car and train and car again. It’s a nightmare. The train kills two people, the hire car is sequestered in an impenetrable dungeon at Gare Matabiau, and Toulouse is one grand bouchon—a monster traffic jam. It rains, and keeps right on raining into Tuesday.

We abandon the bikes, wander the streets of St Girons, encounter the slowest postal worker in France, motor over the Col de Portet d’Aspet, dash from dripping shop canopy to dripping shop canopy in Aspet, and return to the gîte.

We sneak out from Figarol in the late afternoon between downpours for a 31km jaunt along the Garonne valley, up through Aspet, and back to the gîte, black clouds circling like vultures. We’re almost back when the sky opens and we take refuge in a bus shelter.

We quit Figarol early this morning and drive across to Luchon, poking our noses up various roads out of various towns to occupy the time. Rain falls. Luchon’s main street teems with piétons (pedestrians). At 12:30 on the dot every rack of cheap clothing, and postcards is hauled in, doors are bolted and it’s a ghost town.

Le Poujastou, our chambres d’hôtes in the adjacent village of Juzet de Luchon only accepts its guests from four till seven. Ringing the gate-bell at two proves pointless. So at two thirty The Iceman and I extract our bikes from the hire car on the roadside near Luchon.

On the climb to the Col du Portillon we figure the rain is over, we have time, so we go over the top and just keep going into Espagne. The nine-kilometre climb features a nasty ramp at 16 per cent and plenty of hard slog.

We wind down a broken road into Spain to the touristy town of Bossost. Traffic is not enjoyable along the valley of la Garona (the Garonne). In a blink we’re back in France and cruise into St Béat. A fast 20km ever-so-slightly uphill drag with a tailwind sees us back in Luchon.

[61.15kms @ 22.5kph. Montage 920m, Max alt 1320m, max climb 16%]

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.   

the impossible road

vendredi 22 juillet

Michelin publish astoundingly detailed maps of France. Roads come in different colours, red and yellow for major and connecting roads, green bordered for scenic routes, a broken red and white line for difficult and dangerous ways. The D219 that sneaks out the back of Bourg d’Oisans is red and white.

I like to study maps, and wonder what it’s like up this squiggly line on the paper? Each day in France I set out to find the answer. Five of us set off for Villarde Notre Dame, the only place the D219 takes you. And what a journey it is.

As in so many places, the road seems impossible: this one doubly so. A sign tells us the road is closed, but nothing is closed to determined men on bikes. It kicks quickly up to ten per cent—and stays there—as it literally hangs onto the cliff-face heading south-east away from Bourg above the Romanche valley.

Four tunnels punctuate our progress, the first a mere hole in the rock. Beyond this the road is carved into the cliff, overhung at the top and falling away into an abyss on the open side.

The second tunnel is 250 to 300 metres long, curved, and pitch dark, our lights mere glow-worms in the impenetrable gloom. The bike wobbles beneath me, my sense of left and right, of up and down, utterly discombobulated. Walking into total blackness is one thing; riding into it is eerie. Palpable relief greets the light at the end of the tunnel.

The third and fourth tunnels are not so long but the last is curved and water showers from the unseen roof onto the unseen rider.

Small rocks and rubble litter the narrow cracked bitumen from bottom to top. The views stop us in our tracks.

Eventually the road cuts back on itself and leaves the face of the cliff, turning into an unseen fold of mountain away from the main valley below. Villarde Notre Dame is snugged away at over 1500 metres. It’s tiny but has an open café-cum-bar for weary travellers.

A German cyclist sits on the terrace, maps spread on the table. His English is heavily accented but fluent and accurate. We reveal our secret way into Huez for the afternoon to see the tour riders sweep up to the arrivée at Alpe d’Huez.

The impossible road blows my front tyre not far into the descent. The German and some Americans sweep past, tut-tutting my bad luck. Further down I pass one of the Yanks removing his tube. “My turn,” he says.

Wingnut, Robocop and Rambo sit on the parapet between tunnels four and three, waiting. The German told them of my puncture. Rambo notices a split in the sidewall, removes the tyre, patches it from the inside, and slips my €20 note in for insurance.

From Bourg we cane it back to Allemont and change hastily for the ride up to Huez through Villarde Reculas to see le Tour. Rambo replaces my dead tyre with the new carbon Michelin I brought with me from Australia. Michelin: maps, tyres. Is there anything they don’t do?

The morning’s adventure ends and the afternoon’s begins.

[83.66kms @ 19.9kph. Montage 1963m, Max alt 1567m, max climb 13%]

the big one

mercredi 20 juillet

Andy Schleck says Alpe d’Huez is mythic. The Tourmalet is a giant. What word can possibly describe the magnificent monster, the beautiful beast that is the Galibier?

From the north it’s a 34km ascent in two parts: the 12kms of the Col du Télégraphe and the 18kms to a bleak point on a ridge that is the Galibier. In between the road descends gently for four kms into Valloire.

Not all of the 16 of us attempt it; not all who attempt it make it. This is the climb I have wanted to test myself against for as long as I've been cycling seriously.

Rain falls all night. I have an aching tooth. My back hurts, and I feel generally crap. I slither out of the top bunk like a slug. Will we ride today? The prospect of the Galibier in sleety rain or snow is hellish.

We drive to the start point at St Michel de Maurienne (90 minutes). The wipers swish rain off the windscreen all the way. The cloud is low; it tells us nothing. Each individual will decide whether or not to ride. We extract the bikes from the van and assemble, grease and tweak them at the base of the climb to the Télégraphe.

Expectancy and apprehension mount. Riders don slickers as a shower hits. We depart. The treed road to the Télégraphe twists its way at a consistent grade on a good surface. It’s hard in its own right, and a fine warm-up for the big grind to come. And what a grind it is.

I begrudge evey metre lost on the four km descent to the ski resort of Valloire. Finding the road through towns is often a mystery. Only the stream of bikes guides me out of Valloire. The valley of the Valloirette River is shallow and easy going, until it isn’t, about three clicks up the valley.

No tree breaks the rock ramparts, the scree slopes or the alpine pasture above Valloire. Above Plan Lachat the climb gets serious: steep, switchbacked, without guardrails, vertiginous drops. Each cyclist must find a way to overcome this climb. The aloneness is serious, and profoundly personal.

The weather clears and we climb in 18-degree sun, sweating and grunting, each pedal-stroke propelling us a metre or so closer to the Holy Grail. Postcard peaks clad in sunlit snow surround us, pilgrims on a sacred mission; upward and upward,stroke by stroke, inch by inch up the final gruelling kilometre.

It might be midsummer but snow lines the road and chills the wind whistling off the Grand Galibier at 3229 metres. The we aspire to is at 2645 metres. Tomorrow it will witness the highest ever stage finish in the history of the Tour de France.

The temperature at the top is seven degrees. My fingers freeze in the breeze before I get back on the bike after the obligatory photo under the Galibier sign.

The descent is perilous, the road lumpy, your safety entirely in your own hands. Hulk stops every kilometre because he can’t grip the bars. I descend alone, just as I climbed alone.

The final descent from the Télégraphe is a fabulous blast on a wide clear road with sweeping curves and tight hairpins and only a taxi in front of me prevents me getting to the bottom faster.

What a day!

[73.16kms @ 15.6kph. Montage 2297m, Max alt 2660m, max climb 15%]

drowned rats

mardi 19 juillet

Robocop nudges me at breakfast. “I know. She’s damned sexy, isn’t she,” I whisper. Gail, our breakfast waitress flits from kitchen to table with jugs of juice and milk, then slippery omelettes. Every man in the room thinks it; none will say it.

Guiltily we wonder how old she is—sixteen, 23—there’s no guessing. The ponytail swings, two wisps of hair tickle her brow, flawless skin, and Buddy Holly glasses that add to the allure. I watch Robo’s head swivel silently as she moves about the room.

Saturday is beautiful; Sunday it rains all day; Monday we ascend the Alpe in perfect conditions; today we wake to more grey. Three set out on Rambo’s wilderness ride around the face of the mountain, through tunnels, and up a goat track to the Col de Sarenne at the back of Alpe d’Huez.

Five set out for the Croix de Fer. Some of us—older, wiser—bide our time. Rambo and Wingnut return within the hour, soaked. Robocop’s need to bag something takes him up to the ski station at Oz-en-Oisans. The Croix de Fer group return as well after only six kilometres, punctured, grizzling of failed brakes and cold.

The rain loosens its grip and departs just after lunch. Virgil returns from the Col de la Croix de Fer and says he’s never been colder in his life. This is my target for today.

I set off, solo, skirting the lake down to Allemont, then up through the old village on the hill and around the far side of the lake, joining the D526, the Route des Cols, a kilometre above our lodgings.

I walked down this from dinner two nights ago. It frightened me then. I battle up the six clicks to the village, having a yack with two young Germans before they motor steadily away. The threatening rain holds off. Through the village is a corkscrew descent into the Defile of Maupas.

The defile is a geological wonder, with steep screes on one side, and pillars of towering rock on the other. A cascade freefalls hundreds of metres, touching nothing, before hitting the rocks again. No sunlight penetrates here on bright days. The descent is scary; the climb out is at 12 and 14 per cent. Two submersible fords add to the danger.

Another German guy catches and passes me as I struggle on the steepest sections. When it eases off—to nine per cent!—I catch him and we ride side by side for over half an hour. The trees end and we weave our way up open slopes to the col. Without warning the rain hits us.

The grade increases and my German friend reaches the col two hundred metres ahead of me. He huddles behind a small stone shed with six Belgians in team colours while the horizontal rain lashes around us on all sides. My yellow slicker billows and threatens to blow away before I can get it over my head.

The Belgians head off the other way. I eat two cereal bars but the German says it’s too cold and he must go. My thermometer is at five degrees. The whipping rain and wind up the chill factor exponentially.

In less then five minutes my hands and feet freeze. I get the camera out to prove I was here but can barely press the buttons. On the bike I can’t change gears. My hands can’t manipulate the levers; they slide off. I can’t feel the shifters. I clamp my thumbs and forefingers around the brake hoods and start my descent, never taking my hands off the bars. Wet and fogged specs limit vision, but high-powered prescription lenses can’t be taken off.

The steeper sections of the descent are perilous and the chill bores deeper into me. My hands are frozen around the bars and when I take one off to push my glasses back up my nose I cannot get a grip on the bar again.

The 14 per cent drop into the defile is the scariest part. The German cowers on one of the hairpins. I stop beside him and he mutters something unintelligible in any language. I indicate that I’m pressing on and he follows.

I enjoy the 12 per cent climb out of the defile. It ‘warms’ me, makes my legs work at something other than simply wrapping themselves grimly around the frame. A short flat section is a huge reward. Through the village is the six-kilometre descent I have walked.

It’s scary fast, especially with little hand control. I let it go on some straighter sections, but always pull back well before any tightish curve. Two days ago two young bucks hit the wall here and smashed legs and bodies. My German companion sags back.

What relief to reach the bottom, yell “Auf wiedersehen!” and sink onto the deck in front of the chalet. Virgil and Wingnut are sitting out in the cold having a beer. I say FUCK six times, louder each time, and slump to my knees. I struggle like a chrysalis out of layers of sodden gear. Each foot is numb and feels like it has a piece of wood clamped under it.

I thaw quickly. Another adventure, raw and elemental, is over. Tomorrow we climb the Galibier.

[57.94kms @ 16.5kph. Montage 1769m, Max alt 2083m, max climb 14%]

a night on the town

We pile into the VW and the Black Maria and snake up the D526 to Le Riviere d’Allemond to a bar-restaurant of cuious renown. Mine host reputedly dresses in dresses and the entertainment is duelling accordions.

Les Favets looks pretty. The village itself nestles into a crook at the top of the D526 before it plunges ominously into the Defile de Maupas. We also are about to plunge, deep into the Valley of Gastronomic Despond.

Sixteen of us present ourselves at table, a long narrow plastic-covered plank, otherwise bare in all respects—no cutlery, flowers, glasses, water, or condiments. Ominous indeed. Our moustachioed host, sports a floral dress and an appalling black rug, his wife a garish pink mat, slightly askew.

A girl with bunny ears graces the bar. So too do fifteen thirsty cyclists after a big day in the saddle. Throats are wetted, stomachs rumble.

Wig slipping, our host deposits three desultory platters of cold meats before us, followed by salads, strange globs of shredded carrot, something that could be diced beets, some savagely sliced cucumbers, and hacked up tomatoes. Yesterday’s bread gets a second chance.

As a vegetarian I am presented with ten cigarellos of seafood extender on a small plate. They’re as slippery as butchers’ cocks and about as appealing. The meat and salad platters are emptied rapidly but not enthusiastically.

The duelling accordians start up a racket, the loudspeaker blocking the toilet door at the end of our table drowning out all social intercourse. We sit glumly, a bunch of famished Olivers, hoping for more, while the local villagers take to the boards for some slow dancing.

When it becomes obvious that dinner is over, our party either drowns its sorrows at the bar or slinks outside so the murmurs of discontent don’t spoil the music for the locals.

A bottle of Evian costs four times a round of reds for those not prostrate on the road outside hoping that passing motorists might take pity and deliver them elsewhere, while fifty metres up the hill a spigot belches gallons of free fresh spring water into a horse-trough. We should be so lucky.

Even with half of us outdoors, the place is chockers. As the English say: “There’s nowt as strange as folk.”

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.

samedi 17 juillet

First morning. We gather unbidden in the dining room between six and seven. Laptops are all over the big table. Dave is on Facebook, Hans retreats to the stairwell seeking a better connection.

Mick briefs us over breakfast and issues ‘call signs’. He is The Iceman, Kath is Doc, Peter is Hoags, Frank is Robocop. There’s Virgil, Hulk, Rambo, Dutch, Wingnut, Percy, Crash, Scarface, Mrs Tourette’s, Ink, and The Pirate. I am Legs.

At 9:30 we roll out of Le Verney in two groups. The slow group heads for Bourg d’Oisins, the main town and the gateway to Alpe d’Huez. Our ride today is a steady 12km climb at six per cent to the Col d’Ornon.

A section of the road is tacked onto the side of the mountain; at certain angles you can see the struts holding it onto the cliff-face. Flip over the low concrete barrier on a fast descent and there’s no return.

Vertical walls of rock thousands of metres high line every narrow valley. Surely no road can find its way out of such places, but they do, and we ride them, swarming ant-lines of cyclisti from everywhere on the planet. They ride to the col and back, or over the pass into the next impossible-to-exit valley.

On my slow steady way to the col I say bonjour to Germans, Niederlander, and a woman from Grenoble with strong brown legs and a twelve year-old son she is shepherding up the climb. The fast boys come past—Frank (Robocop), Stuart (Virgil), and Adrian (Rambo)—having set out 20 minutes after the rest of us.

We top out at 1371 metres. Coming rides will lift us at to the Col de la Croix de Fer (2067m), Alpe h’Huez (1860), and the Galibier (2645). Bourg d’Oisins sits in the valley at 730 metres, our chalet at Le Verney is at 825.

After lunch in Bourg d’Oisins the fast boys motor up to Villard-Reculas and the village of Huez. I set off solo to the ski staion at Oz-en-Oisins, seven and a half kilometres in double figures—gradient—and single figures—speed.

Second  morning. From tentative hellos in a bar at Grenoble station we form friendships and alliances. On the road we sort into compatible bunches, and by our second breakfast we banter raucously and reach across each other for rolls, pains chocolade, and plates of ham and salami.

Sunday’s forecast rain arrives straight after breakfast. Cycling gear is peeled off expectant bodies, the cloud thickens over the lake, rain spills out of gutters and the thunder is brontosaurian. Only Hans, HansSolo, mounts a cycle. The Shot Properties Group hop in a car and head for the Alpe.

The rest of us peer into the mist, read tour mags, and watch German Eurosports.

[ 73.01kms @ 21.2kph. Montage 1495m, Max alt 1371m, max climb 12%]

gypsy day

The train whistles towards Grenoble and the Rhone-Alpes. The day begins at seven in the squalid Hotel Moderne in the Avenue Charras in Clermont. I eat a peach and two stale chunks of sourdough bread for breakfast.


I’m killing time in my sour squat, stretching and doing push-ups while batteries charge—camera, phone, Macbook—and the minutes crawl by like anaesthetised ants, thousands of them.

I’m sure Clermont has its good side but I get to see none of it. Scum, bums and gutters full of butts is it for this gypsy boy. At 8:10 I can stand the place no longer. I lug the bike pod down four flights of sticky stairs and wobble it to the station.

Bon chance! The clean comfortable train for Lyon already stands at platform H and platform H is directly in front of me. No stairs to negotiate. It departs to the second and arrives in time in Lyon, giving me time to buy a proper breakfast—sandwich, pain des raisins, and Orangina.

I’m living on sandwiches. This one goes under the pseudonym Classic Atlantique because it allegedly contains tuna, but somewhere in the Atlantic is as close as a fish ever got to my sandwich.

Train 17625 from Lyon to Grenoble departs on time. This train has a piper, a coffee-coloured youth with in a white singlet with Sideshow-Bob hair. He is swaying in the bike compartment, next to the pod, amusing himself with a bamboo flute while outside the Alpes hove into hazy view.

At Voiron a man walks up the platform with his ginger tabby in a pink plastic cat-cage. The other day I saw a bloke scamper across a Paris intersection with his cat in a wicker basket. Meanwhile the Alpes loom—instead of looking at them as a horizon, now I must look up to see their bald rocky summits.

Holy shit. I have to ride a flimsy piece of two-wheeled carbon fibre up these suckers. Sacre bleu!

travel travail

My good woman says that sometimes when travelling you must be the gypsy. When things go wrong, sit under a tree and watch the world roll on by, or blow with the wind. Today is my gypsy day.

Madame drives me to the station just before five. She and Daniel and I have just had a cuppa together and a wonderful cake she has made in my honour. My French has deserted me today, but we converse well enough for forty minutes till it is time for me to load the bike pod and backpack into her car.

At the station I thank her profusely for her hospitality; she thanks me for staying in her chambre d’hôtes. Real affection flows between us. She is a lovely woman, beautiful face, a kind and pleasant nature. I tell her Vera calls me her good man and she says “D’accord. You are a gentleman!”

As the train whooshes us through the Massif Central to Clermont I reflect that the first part of my journey, mon voyage, is over. Tomorrow I join 16 people from a bike shop in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. We’ll speak Orstralian in broad accents and Langeac will recede into memory.

And suddenly, having left my private oasis in Langeac, the world turns and I feel its sullen weight upon me. Once more I push the bike pod before me. Clermont station has no ramps so I must lug the bastard up and down stairs.

Three young people are at the guichet when I enter to sort out a ticket problem. The automatic ticket machine will not issue my ticket for Grenoble because the credit card I paid with is no more, cancelled because of fraud. I did not, of course, commit the fraud, but I am about to pay for it.

“I cannot give you a ticket,” he tells me. “You will have to buy a new one.” The SNCF print-out I hand him has my reference number and surname on it. I suggest he need only look it up on his computer.

“And I can tell you the 16-digit number of the cancelled credit card, if that helps.” He consults the beautiful, delicate, slender young woman working with him. They agree that it is not possible. I must buy a new ticket. I will get a refund for the ticket I cannot use—minus 10 per cent.

The new ticket will cost more than the old ticket. Their hands are firmly round my remaining testicle and squeezing. I surrender; I have no choice.

My carefully chosen hotel and already booked room are 100 metres from the station in dirty, seedy Avenue Charras. A sign on the hotel door tells me it is closed—not the door, the whole hotel. And not for ten minutes till someone returns from having a fag, but closed indefinitely for ‘work’.

No way am I lugging the pod around this town that is treating me badly looking for another hotel. Across the Avenue Charras is the entrance to the Hotel Moderne. It looks rough as guts. Reception is up a dingy staircase on the first floor. A ravaged dowager emerges and slides open a hatch.

It’s €25 for a room without bath or shower. No way would I take a bath or shower in this place so I save sixpence and take a room without. The key is brass and big enough to knock the door down with, but I use the lock.

I expect the worst. No surprises, unless it’s the basin and toilet at the far end of the room. Like in a prison cell. But is it a toilet? It’s definitely not a bidet, or a bath. It had both hot and cold taps, and a plug. Perhaps it’s basin for midgets.

I throw my pack on the floor and go back down and haul the pod up four flights of stairs then step out immediately to get out of the place and to hunt up some food. I risk leaving my pack and the pod but dare not leave any money, the Macbook or my passport in the room.

I walk the length of Avenue Charras but greasy spoons are the only eateries on offer and sinister-looking dudes in tight sweaty tee-shirts with fags dangling from the corners of their down-turned gobs populate each dive.

The better part of town is only better because the gangsters up there have fat tattooed molls with them and the grease is higher octane. Eventually I retreat to the station foyer were a bright young thing sells me a stale sandwich, a muffin and an Orangina at inflated prices. I open my wallet and let her take whatever she pleases.   

I’m typing this over the high basin because there’s a small fluorescent globe supplementing the seven and a half watt ceiling globe. I think I’ll lie on the bed under a couple of paper napkins rather than get in it.

The 8:58 for Lyon and Grenoble leaves in ten hours. Rock on!

Oh, by the way, I rode 76kms this morning through St-Georges, St-Margueride, and Fix-St-Geneys. France has too many fucking saints if you ask me. But you didn’t, did you?

The 15% über-grunt up to the chateau ruins in Allègre is well worth the major effort involved.

mercredi 13 juillet

Last night on France 3, Le Météo, the French Bureau of Meteorology, informs me that rain will sweep across the Haute-Loire all morning. Some sun might interrupt the precipitation during the afternoon. It’s an accurate, but unfortunate call, for cyclists planning a big day out.

Rain wakes me several times during an unsettled night of strange dreaming. I eat le petit déjeuner at seven. Madame prepares crépes in honour of my big ride, the 110km route of La Pierre Chany: south to Saugues and Esplantas on the D585; north-east through Croisances and Alleyras to Bains on the D34; then north-west via St-Jean-de-Nay and Vissac to Langeac mostly on the D590.

We both know I might just as well eat breakfast at 3 pm today. Heavy showers drench the morning. Daniel, Madame’s partner, but I suspect not the father of her three adult children, waddles out and retreats. On the road there is no retreat, so I bide my time.

The sky lightens, gives hope of something better, then darkens again and rain resumes. I study the map, drink tea, and consider my fate. Can I ride La Pierre Chany 110 tomorrow and be back in time to dismantle the Cervélo and be on the 5:09 train to Clermont?

All morning I write: about the French language, French women. Having exhausted those words, I write down French preposotions and pronouns, the keys that unlock my ability to communicate here.

In the afternoon the rain intensifies and nothing relieves the sound of it on the canopy over my door. My consolation for not being on the road should be to watch stage 12 of le Tour but the weather is killing the signal and both picture and sound disintegrate—pas ou mauvais signal.

No more words today, no pictures, no sound, no winners. Pleuvoir et plus de pleuvoir.

dimanche 10 juillet

The day begins with thunder and a flash downpour at seven. Madame drops an umbrella outside my door to facilitate my getting to breakfast dry.

Again I have half a fresh baguette, butter, loganberry confiture, a glass of orange juice, a monster cup of tea, a succulent fresh peach, and a small bowel of sultanas. It’s the same as yesterday but for one item; the warm croissant is replaced with two burly slices of freshly baked plain cake.  

It’s prefect, but the Philistine in me craves a big bowl of weeties. French grocery stores don’t stock cereals.

Madame says the weather today will not be good; tomorrow will be better. Around nine the thunder booms again and more rain lashes the garden outside my door. I sit in the comfy chair and read and nod off and read some more.

Around midday the air is warm and Madame is in the garden snipping the heads off things. I put on my cycling knicks and the rain starts again, a soft steady patter. I fiddle with the bike computer, reset the home altitude to 550 metres, shift the time function back eight hours, and convert the language to French.

At two it’s now or never, but the finish of Stage 9 of le Tour at St-Flour is out of the question. I will ride to Saugues, departing Langeac on the D585 via Chanteuges, then taking a big loop with Saugues at the bottom of it.

It’s impossible to find words to describe the endlessly stunning sights in every French village. Chanteuges has a some sort of 12^th century religious edifice beetling overhead. I feel obliged to point the camera at it.

I duck off the main road to Saugues, under the railway, over La Desges, the river whose valley I am about to explore along the D30. It’s narrow, winding, lush, and dark. The valley is deep, then steep, especially when I turn onto the D32 to Venteuges. Surely there is no way out of this vertiginous place.

But the narrow road twists its way inexorably up the sheer side of the valley. Everything is deeply green and densely forested, except the floor, so far below, that looks like an exclusive golf club fairway. No buildings cling to these hillsides.

When I finally haul my carcass over the top I expect a rollicking descent, but to my surprise verdant farmlands extend in all directions. Four kilometres on at Venteuges an expansive pastoral vista unfolds with Saugues in the middle, a neat stone town—at this distance—with its pink tiled roofscape.

And now the descent begins, a fabulous five-kilometre open and sinuous high-speed blast through rouleaus of hay under a huge blue sky. I sing and yell unintelligible sounds for the sheer rapturous joy of it.

In Saugues I eat dried fruit, an apricot bar and a banana in the high street before remounting and pounding up the D589 out of town on my way to Monistrol, fourteen clicks away in the heart of the Allier gorges.

Another high-speed descent, this time through pine forest and marred by roadworks, but mostly exhilarating, lands me in Monistrol, another amazing village of ancient three- and four-storey dwellings perched over the Allier. Indeed, many seem to hang off the sides of the gorge.

The D589 goes on to the major town of Le Puy-en-Velay, but immediately over the bridge at Monistrol I turn left, then immediately 180 degrees right onto an impossibly small, bumpy, nondescript track. The sign says Langeac, otherwise I’d never have believed this was a road to anywhere.

The track points my nose to the heavens and the Cervélo and I slug it out to the D301 high above the gorge. For ten kilometres we rollercoaster our way around the gorges of the Allier, before a hair-raising descent to the river on the D48.

I haven’t gone fully sick on any descent, and just as well. Rounding a 180 degree blind curve, I hug the rocky embankment as a Porsche hisses around the arc and disappears behind me. F-u-u-c-c-c-k!

The last 12 kms to Langeac are torturous: my legs are empty. Two crossings of the Allier on long narrow bridges and several sharp corners under bridges of the tourist railway make a pleasant end to the ride.

It’s after seven and I’ve had no meal since le petit dejeuner, and it barely qualifies. It’s more like a morning snack; barely enough fuel for eleven hours sleep let alone for 80 kms on the treadly and over 1400 metres of arduous climbing.

The madame at Langeac’s swanky little pizzeria greets me with a sneer. She gabbles something at me. I tell her I don’t speak French and says d’acour—of course—in a tone that makes it clear that she picked me straight off as being from another planet.

Fortunately the waitress is a different story, gypsy-dark, with an arc of Roman nose that would span the Allier elegantly. Even though she’s typically Frenchly small-breasted, my gonads are incandescent.

I tell her I’m a vegetarian—Je suis végétarien—and ask if the forestrière pizza is végétarien. Yes, she says, it’s vegetarian.

The pizza arrives smothered in sliced ham and reeking of dead pig. Madame of the surly sneer has prepared it. My disgusted look tells her the pizza is not to my liking. Végétarien, she ventures. Sans jamon?

The French refuse to get vegetarianism. It’s wilfully perverse of them. I know. I have a degree in wilful perversity.  

[84.0kms @ 21.1kph. Montage 1420m, max 1094m, max grade 12%]

samedi 9 juillet

Ah, oui, I am speaking the language. Un peu—a little—francais. My host, Madame, is speaking un peu anglais. We get by.

She asks at what time—à quelle heure—I want le petit déjeuner. I ask for breakfast at 7. Later I tell her I am un peu fou (crazy), a bit too enthusiastic, and I will breakfast at 8. I have the dining room to myself; I am the only guest. This chambres d’hôtes has one chambre only.

Madame tells me of a special event in Langeac—La Pierre Chany, a road cycling event in honour of a famous French sports journalist, incredibly with the same name, who was born in Langeac in 1922.

The event will be on my sixtieth birthday, 6 août, over circuits of 51, 110 and 150 kilometres. I will be back in Melbourne for two days by then, but today I ride the 51km route. In reverse: the route, not the bike.

At ten past nine I roll out of 7 Résidence Lestival and immediately lose myself in Langeac’s residential side streets. I find my way back and start again.

I cruise out of town on the quiet D590, the road that could take me to tomorrow’s finish of stage 9 of le Tour in St-Flour. It’s cool and overcast, perfect for the solid 10km climb averaging about five per cent I’m immediately confronted with. Lucky I warmed up by getting lost.

The climb takes me from about 550m to 1050 and stays there after I turn into the even quieter D41 through the village of Ferrussac. The views along the Val d’Allier are brilliant, but would be better if the sun shone. Instead it rains a bit.

I lean the Cervélo on a post and take photos. A French farmer comes past on a behemoth-sized tractor loud enough to announce itself in the next valley. I wave; he scowls. Perhaps my bike is leaning on his rotten fence post.

I greet an oncoming cyclist all in black and get scant response before an all-too-rapid but glorious descent out of Ferrussac to Longprat where I pull into the car park of an auberge, Les Trois Vallées, to study my map.

Every building in this departement, the Haute-Loire, is Gallicly medieval, but the auberge looks like something the Nazis might have erected for the Führer’s skiing holiday. All is forgiven because the most amazingly enticing cooking smells waft out the door.

I hang a left onto the D585 and make for the extraordinarily beautiful, extraordinarily medieval town of Lavoute Chilhac, where I cross the Allier on an extraordinary bridge that rises to a pronounced point rather mounted on the traditional arch.

A short climb delivers me to a boulangerie-épicerie in the tiny village of Chilhac. Madame behind the counter fails to grasp the meaning of végétarien. It’s a concept the French just cannot grasp.

Sans jambon? Oui. Sans poulet? Oui. Sans bœuf? Oui. Sans viandes? Oui.

Finally we establish that I would like a baguette just with tomato and cheese. The boulangier will prepare it especially for moi. Which cheese would I like? Give them credit, for €3.60 I eventually emerge from the shop with a U-boat sized baguette bursting at the seams with Camembert that I can barely stuff into my backpack. The Camembert alone would be worth ten Australian dollars.

I cross the Allier again, this time on a long narrow bridge. An oncoming van spares me a handlebar’s-width of passing space. From here it’s seven clicks beside the river to Langeac, entering town under an impressive arched railway viaduct.

Each year’s Tour de France is an edition. This is my third French cycling e(xpe)dition. Each has a first ride, a first time on the wrong side of the road, a first time to marvel that you and your bicycle are in the premier cycling environment, in the premier cycling nation, on the globe.

Bring it on!

[56.3.kms @21.4kph. Montage 868m, max 1055m, max grade 12%]

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.           

the thousand steps

The Carmichael Training System’s intermediate level seven-week program (to the perfect ride) deems Mondays as rest (recovery) days. The logic escapes me, but beginner level rest days are Thursdays.  Advanced level riders get no rest. I work most Thursdays, but not Mondays, so Thursday is my rest day.

On this Thursday morning. I’m at the hospital getting my left wrist x-rayed. My good woman has come with me because the hospital is near the Ferntree Gully National Park. She wants to walk The Thousand Steps.

The forest is as beautiful as ever, the steps no less steep or slippery. It’s only 20 degrees but at the top I’m awash in perspiration; my heart rate recovers quickly.

Back in Bendigo later in the day I pass up the opportunity to do Thursday evening Pump class—it’s my recovery day—and do the Friday morning class instead.

Saturday morning I’m out early. My ride is a circuit around Bendigo’s outskirts. From Baxter Street I depart via East Bendigo, thence to White Hills, Ascot, Epsom, Eaglehawk, Myers Flat, Maiden Gully, Kangaroo Flat, Diamond Hill, Mandurang, Strathfieldsaye, Junortoun, Strathfield and back through Bendigo East. I cover 69.53kms at 28.2kph.

My current Bible, The Lance Armstrong performance program, features regular sidebars titled “What would Lance do?” I’m inclined to ignore them. Come on, the man’s won seven Tours de France. Only the most arrogant amateur would even consider attempting what Lance does.

Lance refers to any incline he can ride up in less than one minute as a sprinter hill. In other words, instead of grinding up the climb at a nice steady pace in a manageable gear, he attacks the hill and sprints up it. Lance, you’re the man.

Despite the name, White Hills is dead flat. The first serious incline is Lightning Hill. It’s like a small cube of vintage cheddar—it doesn’t last long but it makes you suck in the cheeks, arcing up to eight per cent. It’s a sprinter hill.

Not being Lance, I can either blow the hill away, or it’ll blow me away. I blow Lightning Hill to smithereens, then shrug off Specimen Hill, which strictly speaking is a bit longer than a sprinter hill. So is Diamond Hill, but I cruise it.

The whole ride I choose low gears and keep the highest cadence (and heart rate) that I can. Beyond 50kms it’s hard work but I keep the cadence in the high 70s and into the 80s all the way home.

The proverb says that the longest journey begins with one step. The French Alps remain a thousand steps away. Climbing them seems more like ten, twenty, fifty thousand steps.

The training began on 25 December, five weeks ago, but only now do I feel like I’ve taken the first step.