Steve and I rose at 05:00 this morning. The lady at our hotel had given us some breakfast stuff in our room so we ate that and we were on the road just before 06:00. I think it took about 15 minutes to get out from the gravel track and lanes where the hotel was and then we will were on our way. The first col came up almost straight away and then there was one other slightly harder one later in the day. On the whole, though, we have had another day of good tandem roads and we were back in Saverne by about 14:00.
It was exiting when Saverne first appeared on the roadsigns but then our route kept turning us away from the town. Clearly the organisers thought we needed a few more km and an extra hill or two to make our day comlpete 😉. Joking aside, the 100 cols route is just brilliant. Definitely hard, but varied and interesting with stunning scenery. I will definitely strive to do sections or even all of it again (maybe not on a tandem 😃).
This afternoon we have driven part way back to the ferry port for the sailing home tomorrow. How strange it feels to have that little plastic pedal and to push it down and effortlessly accelerate up the hills on the motorway 😃. I expect the novelty will soon wear off.
Very sorry but I have tried everything to publish pictures and it just won't work - I will add them for this and the previous day when I am home tomorrow.
Pictures now added - there will be a couple more posts in the coming days.
Today we rode 127km and climbed 2162m.
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Thursday 30 June 2016
It is done 😃
Nearly there
Post for Wednesday 29th (sorry, no network available to publish on the day).
The people at the hotel on top of Col Du Ballon D'Alsace told us we could have breakfast early so we wandered down at 07:00. They had left serial flakes for us but had neglected to leave us any milk 😞. Steve tried his with yoghurt but it was the gelatinous set type of yoghurt so that didn't seem to go so well. There was a coffee machine which dispensed hot chocolate so we tried that. I'm not saying I'm going to switch to that instead of milk at home but it wasn't too bad 😃.
Not long into the day we came across another group of British cyclists. It turned out that three members of this group were also into the final throws of the 100 cols - the first other people we had come across doing the route. These guys had taken something like 40 days to do the tour on solo bikes with a support vehicle. They had been taking some rest days and were keeping the cost of their trip down by camping, which is clearly more feasible with a support vehicle to carry all of their kit. The most remarkable thing about bumping into these guys was that some of them had worked at an outdoor education college where Steve's estranged wife used to work so they had worked with her.
Curiously, the other people didn't stop at every col sign and take a picture of it - I guess that's just me then 😃.
Not far into our day we climbed the Grand Ballon. Since dropping down from that we seemed to spend a good part of the afternoon flirting with the 1,000m contour. The area we have cycled through today has mostly been wooded hillsides of conifers. Some of the villages we passed through have had Germanic names.
All was going well for our early finish for the day until we were close, or at least so we thought, to our booked accommodation. From the map on Booking.com we expected it to be just off to the side of our decent from the last col for the day. Using the grid reference for the place our GPS wanted to send us up a gravel track. The people at the hotel weren't answering the phone so that was no help. The app on my phone came up with some sort of error and then said it would take 40 minutes by car (it was only supposed to be a few km away). In the end we managed to get directions from the tourist office in the town. Once we had directions and we were riding to the place we were riding across white space (i.e. no roads) on the GPS map for quite a while. It added about 7km and quite a big climb to our day 😞.
Today we have ridden 145km and we climbed 2858m.
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Tuesday 28 June 2016
Back to Alsace
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| View from outside our hotel |
Our route takes us along some tiny roads
Thank you all for your generous donations to our Justgiving page 😃.
I have put some pictures on for yesterday.
Today we have made good progress along the kind of roads tandems are built for. The hills have been less steep so we have been able to keep up a decent pace even on the uphill sections. The countryside has been very pleasant and there has been a good mix of roads to keep things interesting. Tonight we are staying at the hotel on the (road) summit of Du Ballon D'Alsace. We have cycled 184km and climbed 2776m. From here we hope to finish with one full days ride tomorrow and a part day on Thursday.
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Monday 27 June 2016
Onwards through the Doubs
Some idiot has used the sign as a shotgun target 😞
Sorry about last night's blog - it was a literary masterpiece 😃. I must have tried at least 20 times to publish it last night. When we finally got to a place with a half decent phone signal this morning it said 'no drafts on phone' 😭.
Tonight is looking a bit tricky as well (no WiFi) so the pictures may have to be added later.
Today we have rolled through some nice countryside, initially through the Jura and latterly, according to the roadsigns, the Doubs. These are areas of mostly coniferous woodland and farmland but with interesting limestone outcrops, escarpments and gorges. The climbs are less severe than the ones we have become accustomed to in previous day's, although they still go on a bit! I think it was the climb to Col de Berentin which I characterised as the climb which just keeps giving - each time it seemed we were at the top it would drop a bit and then, around the next bend, carry on up 😞. This afternoon we followed one really nice tiny road beneath limestone cliffs for about 10km. The only other traffic we came across was one car and a couple of motorbikes.
Tonight we have stopped 18km short of our intended target because we could find no accommodation (with any kind of online presence) there. We decided we would stop if we spotted a hotel along the road after we had done 150km. So, here we are at Censeau after covering 156km and climbing 2447m. We have now done 90 cols and we are up to 3647km of our 4081km according to the routesheet.
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The last big one
Auberge near the top of the Colombier
Just a very short post because I lost what I drafted last night and was unable to publish owing to no WiFi or 4g service.
We made it over the Col de Grand Colombier yesterday (Sunday). This was the last of the really hard cols on our tour so it is good to have it behind us.
We covered 140km (more than intended because I screwed up reading the mileages off the routesheet 😠) and climbed 3181m. We spent the night near Lochieu.
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Saturday 25 June 2016
All hell breaks loose on the Roselend
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| I think Steve may be grimacing in the storm 😞 |
View from the Aravis
Breakfast was available unusually early in last night's hotel so we were on the road by about 07:30. We continued the descent to Bourg St Maurice where we just flirted with the outskirts of town before turning up towards the Cormet de Roselend. Conditions were pleasant enough with misty patches here and there. A few km from the top it started to rain. I made an executive decision to stop and put jackets on, not least because I had my phone in my back pocket and I depend on that far too much to allow it to get wet (e.g. no phone = no blog). By the time we got to the top the weather almost seemed a little better but it was soon raining hard again as we commenced our decent. There was a small bar a few km down so we called in there to put on more clothes and warm up a bit. While we in the bar various little groups of cyclists and motor bikers came and went. Most of them dripped on the floor in the process of putting more kit on 😞. In the meantime the storm raged outside with lightning and thunderclaps separated by just a couple of seconds.
One friendly cyclists who had chatted to us despite language difficulties and who came across as a really nice bloke went out but then reappeared a little while later with an older cyclist (maybe 70yrs plus) who looked in a bad way. This poor man only had the normal summer short sleeved cycling top and shorts. I feel the bar owner should have done something for him, like put some heat on or fetch some blankets but he didn't seem to take much notice. (he was more interested in charging us an arm and a leg for the world's smallest cakes 😞).
Steve and I left soon after, once the electric storm had abated leaving us with just ordinary rain. The storm had washed all manner of rocks and stones onto the road so we took it easy to show our new tyres due respect. Thankfully it wasn't long before we were back in sunshine and taking clothing off again.
Next came the Col des Saisies, which wasn't particularly spectacular, being just a high road through a ski resort village. Finally came the Col des Aravis, which is more what we have come to expect from a col. I have forgotten the date now but we saw banners advertising the Tour de France coming this way on into July.
Today we have pedalled, grunted and groaned 118km and climbed 2720m. Incidentally, Aravis is col number 83 so, since there are actually 103 cols on our 100 cols tour, we have just 20 left to do - how hard can it be? 😃
Tonight we are recuperating at Les Etages, between the Col des Aravis and the Col de la Croix Fry.
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Friday 24 June 2016
It's all lower after today
We did the modest climb to the top of the Col de Telegraphe first thing this morning and then dropped down to St Michel-de-Maurienne for the bike shop. The bike shop man rummaged through the tyres on the shelf and confidently concluded that he did not have the right size for us. We perused our routesheet together and the prognosis for further bike shops down the line was not good. He did mention one 10km off route but the concept of going off route is, to us, almost as distasteful as backtracking 😞. To any off route excursion around here you have to add the inevitability that at least one leg of the off route journey will involve a monster hill. With all of this in mind I was getting a bit desperate to find a suitable tyre so I started prowling around the shop looking for a bike with the right sized tyres, so we could negotiate to relieve it of its shodding. Not quite buy the bike, take the tyres and throw away the rest but you get my drift! By the time I had been around all of the bikes I reckon I was beginning to know my way around the place better than the lad working in there and it was at about this time that I found a little stack of new tyres hidden away in a corner. The happy outcome is that we now have new tyres front and back and our spare (folding) tyre that we have ridden for several days is now, once more, strapped to the frame as an emergency spare. Let's hope that is the end of our tyre problems.
There was a lot of climbing of one sort or another after leaving the bike shop, first taking in the Col de la Madeleine but culminating in the Col de L'Iseran. After the Col de L'Iseran all that remained was the rip roaring decent to Val d'Isere where we are resting our legs tonight. At 2770m Col de L'Iseran is our high point of the whole 100 cols circuit. We have had another day of great weather (although it is thundering this evening). I'm not sure I would want to be up at 2770m on a bad weather day 😞.
When we were quite high on the ascent of the L'Iseran we came around a bend to see a couple of marmot in the road - they scampered up the bank and looked down on us as we cycled slowly by.
Today we have covered 110km and climbed 2453m.
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Thursday 23 June 2016
The odd-ball pair 😃
Now we are in the heart of a cycling honeypot it is more clear than ever that people, particularly other cyclists, view us as a bit of a novelty act. You can count the other loaded tandems we have seen on the fingers of, let me think about this, no hands! We have seen precisely two other tandems: one descending Ventoux and one on D'Aubisque - both of these were bare with hardly a spare tube never mind a pile of overnight luggage like ours. The cyclists coming down whatever hill we are puffing and panting up seem to like to shout something along the lines of "allez, allez, allez" as they whiz past on their way down. They don't do this for ascending solo bikes. Earlier today we passed a bloke on a climb and he said something in French - Steve thought it was something to do with packhorses. Incidentally, how it is that two oldies on a loaded tandem can pass someone on a bare road bike (fancy carbon Wilier on this occasion) on a climb is completely beyond me. It doesn't happen often but this wasn't the first time.
Today we set ourselves two significant challenges in the shape of the Col D'Izoard this morning and then the Col Du Galibier in the heat of this afternoon. Neither seemed too bad to be honest - both are fine cols which I shall strive to repeat before I am too old and decrepit to swing a leg over a bike 😃.
We are resting up at Valloire tonight (betwixt the Galibier and the Telegraphe). Our plan was to get a new tyre for the bike but the shop here didn't have a single 700c28 tyre in stock (in fact I don't think they had any 700 tyres at all). Never mind, we are told there is another shop just down the valley - fingers crossed.
These last few days we have heard the whistle of the marmot quite a lot in the higher places. This afternoon there were, what I can only describe as a 'stack' of eagles, (not sure what type?) riding the thermals near the top of the Galibier.
Today we have pedalled 117km and climbed 2684m (it is pretty hilly around here).
Stop Press: Having typed all that stuff about other tandems at lunchtime we saw s couple descending the Galibier on a tandem this afternoon - they even had one small pannier 😞.
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Wednesday 22 June 2016
Five and a half hours of climbing and no sign 😞
Fantastic lunch 😃
The only sign at the top of the Bonette
Steve - head in hands "what is this you are making me do" (actually he is putting on sunscreen)
It has been another great day on the bike. We rose early and left the hotel in time to catch the opening of the village bakery for a quick brioche - enough to carry us through to the control village about 15km up the road. We had a proper breakfast there and then settled into the rest of the climb to the top of the Col de la Bonette. The top of the Bonette was 53km from our overnight place and the route was pretty much uphill all of the way. This was, by quite a big margin, our longest section of uphill to the top of our highest col so far. I was looking forward to getting a picture of the Col de la Bonette sign when we eventually arrived at the top but there wasn't one - maybe it has been taken away for refurbishment or maybe some low-life has nicked it for a souvenir. There was a little cycling sign - see pictures.
It seems that the Col de la Bonette has been altered because the roadsigns lower down suggested the col would be higher than it actually was. There was a road carrying on higher up than where our track turned back down. This higher road looped around the mountain and then came back to just the other side of a narrow ridge of rock which is now breached (these higher roads are now route barree and blocked with piles of rubble). My guess is that the Bonette has been reduced in stature by short cutting through what would have been a fairly insignificant rock wall to make the old higher section redundant. Anyway, we weren't complaining, we felt we had climbed enough 😃 - 2715m is pretty high in my book (as opposed to just over 2800m on the old signs).
This afternoon we climbed the much smaller Col de Vars. In some ways this seemed harder because it was hotter by then and, even trying our very hardest, we just couldn't out accelerate the cloud of flies which bothered us all the way up the mountain 😞.
This afternoon we called into a bar in a village where we needed to get a control stamp. The dog tied up outside seemed excited - I bet he was thinking "first customers in three weeks". We went inside and an old chap came through from out back. He had no food, the coffee machine was broken, etc., etc.. I took Steve to the loo and I could almost see the cogs in the old chaps head clattering around. He had noticed that Steve was blind and was clearly wondering how it was we were both in cycling kit. He walked slowly over to the door and peered outside to see the tandem and an expression of enlightenment appeared across his face.
Today we have covered 110km (most of that was uphill) and climbed 2892m. It has been a day of stunning alpine scenery in perfect conditions. Hopefully the weather will hold for a few more days until we have the really high cols behind us. We have now covered over 3000 of the 4081km on our sheets.
Tonight we are sleeping near Vars.
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Tuesday 21 June 2016
Following the purple line
A sea of sheep
Thanks so very much for the contributions to our Justgiving page everyone - maybe Steve and I won't need to go around a second time after all 😃.
The organisers of the Cent Cols provide entrants with a route sheet and a humongous gpx track file. I imagine our little GPS would have a hissy fit and expire in a blob of molten silicone if you tried to load a 4,000km track file (actually it would probably just ignore everything after the first few hundred km but I like my version better 😃). So, what I have done is to split the track file down from control to control (those of you who have been paying attention will remember that the controls are places where we have to get proof of passage in order to be accredited with having completed the route). My idea is that we can't inadvertently sail past a control without realising because each time the track will end at the control. The method of navigation is then simply to follow the purple track line which appears superimposed over the map on the GPS screen. There are no turn by turn directions like you get on a car satnav but the upside of this simpler approach is that you follow exactly the route the organisers intended. There is no nipping onto the motorway for a couple of stops because the GPS gets it into its tiny algorithmic head that that looks a better way (no artificial intelligence here). There have been a few places where the track tries to take us the wrong way down a one way street, presumably because things have been changed since the track was laid, but we can easily work around or live with that.
We just use the routesheet to look up the distances between places, the height of the cols etc.. I imagine some people might be shocked to hear that we are not carrying a single paper map. We do have a reserve GPS with all of the tracks loaded so hopefully they won't both fail, otherwise we will be hunting around for a map shop 😞.
Today's ride has been truly spectacular - I have done quite a bit of cycling around various parts of the world but the ride today has to have been one of my most spectacular days on the bike - ever 😃. We started out with a fairly ordinary but nice col this morning. After our first break, which was sort of elevenses / lunch combined, we dropped down a fairly ordinary alpine valley and then suddenly hung a left into the Gorges du Clans. This involved a lot of climbing up a gorge of mostly red rock towering above us with the road often cut into a ledge with a rock shelf above. There were a few tunnels where cyclists are directed onto the old road. On one of these 'old' sections I looked up to see that the spacing between the rock on either side of the gorge was only about 2 metres. A ledge had been cut for the road so that there was a passage wide enough for a narrow road alongside the small stream beneath this cleft in the rock.
Earlier in the day we came across a sea of wall to wall sheep, with a few goats mixed in for good measure (see picture). They were in no hurry and the dogs which were supposed to be chivvying them along seemed, frankly, disinterested. We decided our only option was to walk with the bike and push our way through them. This took quite a while but we eventually made our way to the front, re-mounted and left them behind. We hadn't gone very far before we had another front wheel blowout (rim tape issue this time). I had visions of trying to fix a puncture by the roadside in the midst of a sea of curious sheep and goats 😞. Thankfully the sheep must have turned off because we didn't see them again.
Today we have covered 114km and have climbed 2324m. We are now in the Alp Maritime - there are some big climbing days coming up. We have now cycled over 71 cols. Tonight we are resting up at St Sauveur.
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Monday 20 June 2016
100km with the brake on 😞
Lavender
The other day I told you about Steve's brilliant tandem parking brake invention - see pictures on 'Left, left, left, and left again...'. Well, if he had done a proper job he would have remembered the big red light on the dashboard and the irritating bleeper which makes it impossible to ignore the big red light 😞. This morning we stopped at a boulangery after about 20km because breakfast hadn't been that substantial. We parked the bike against a wall and Steve mentioned that it rolled back a bit when he took his stuff out. We put the parking brake on as a precaution. After that we carried on, had lunch, carried on again and, something like 120km into our ride we stopped for a roadside comfort break. I noticed the brake was on and, after a brief discussion, we realised it had been left on most of the day 😞. Now we have decided to leave the brake on every morning so that the afternoons will seem nice and easy 😃.
The wind of yesterday raged through the night and was still 'going for it' when we rose this morning. Fortunately, by the time we had breakfasted and were ready to leave the wind had died and we have had a lovely day, if a little on the warm side.
Today's route has taken us through some lovely countryside with plenty of limestone in evidence, stunted forests and the fields of lavender for which Provence is famous. As well as the lavender itself, which is coming into flower nicely, we have passed lavender museums, lavender distillerys and people selling lavender products by the roadside. Kind of lavender central really! This afternoon we passed through the gorges of Verdun - very impressive.
The ride today turned out about 10km more than we expecting, we think, because of a typo on our routesheet. If we are right, tomorrow's ride, which is already planned, will be 10km short. Today we have ridden 154km and have climbed 2234m. We knocked off a couple more easy cols today bringing our total up to 67. There were snowy mountains evident in the distance this afternoon - the Alps are just around the corner 😞.
Tonight we are resting our legs at Castellane. There is a church on top of a pillar of rock here. Although I had seen pictures, I was still awestruck at the height of it.
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