Yesterday there was a huge event taking place on Mont Ventoux with between 3 and 5 thousand (reports varied) Belgian's taking part. The Belgian cyclists at our B&B told us that the thunderstorm we experienced in the valley had fallen as hail on the summit and that the hailstones then froze on the road. They said cyclists had to be bussed from the summit because it was not possible to ride. This morning the rain had gone but it was very windy with significant gusts even down at valley level. I was horrified when I got my first glimpse of the summit - the top section, of 6 or 7km is just so completely bare. At times like these I wish I had chosen a life as a couch potato rather than pilot a tandem up a bare wind strafed mountain. I have been (perhaps overly) nervous of wind ever since Steve and I were blown right across the A6 at Shap by a counter gust one dark night back in November (a lorry was blown over on the M6 that night). As it turned out, most of the route up was shielded to some extent by the slope of the mountain - we were on the sheltered side if there is such a thing on Ventoux! The top was a bit hairy, and also the first part of the decent. It wasn't so far down the other side until we were getting some shelter from trees. There were lots of other cyclists taking their chances on the mountain today.
We have seen a few deer here and there on this trip but this afternoon a small ibex crossed the road just ahead of us and scrambled up the seemingly impossibly steep rock to the side of the road. A few small rocks were loosened by his hooves and clattered down onto the road.
Not long after that and I must have hit a stone in the road because we suddenly had a completely flat front tyre while descending at 25 mph or so. Luckily the road was straight or we would have been off. This was our first puncture of the trip so we shouldn't complain. We now have a tyre patch in the front tyre and I had to straighten some minor rim damage with my adjustable spanner.
Today we have covered 121km and climbed 2711m.
Tonight we are resting our heads near Simiane-la-Rotonde.
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Sunday, 19 June 2016
Ventoux puts up its defenses
Saturday, 18 June 2016
The wrong St Colombe!
We decided over dinner last night to make today a virtual rest day and tackle Mont Ventoux tomorrow. Ideally we would have slept at a place called Chalet Reynard, which is a good way up the mountain, but we phoned the restaurant there and they told us the nearest hotels to the summit were at a place called St Colombe. A bit of googling later and we found a hotel at St Colombe on the slopes of Ventoux. We made a reservation and looked forward to a short and uncomplicated day. We were only a couple of km away from where we expected to stumble across St. Colombe and it had not appeared on the signs so you can imagine my relief when we rolled into the place, pretty much where our route sheet said it would be. Two hotels were evident but neither matched the name of the one we had booked. To cut a long story short (yes, this really is the short version 😞) - A number of phone calls and various conversions later and we had cancelled our reservation the other side of the mountain and some lovely people at the hotel we had gone into to make our enquiries had booked us a place a little way down the mountain. They offered to look after the bike for us and give us a lift to and from this place so that we can carry on our bike journey in the morning from where we stopped this afternoon. A good part of our problem was caused by some sort of bike race on the mountain, resulting in all available accommodation being booked up - what a palava.
Today we have cycled 93km and climbed 985m - in hindsight, and taking into account our mistake with the accommodation, I think we are both thinking it would have been simpler to have just done Ventoux this afternoon. Can't be helped.
On the menu in the hotel last night (Best Western) the people spoke pretty good English, so we expected to have better than usual confidence in what we were ordering. The plat de jour had fish for both the starter and the main course so we asked what kind of fish it would be - after all, a bit of oily fish would be good to lubricate our joints. After what seemed like an age out back in the kitchen, the waiter reappeared and stated confidently that it would be fish from the sea - we had chicken 😃.
Don't forget our Justgiving page - we still have a way to go to achieve our target - I'm not sure either of us will want to go around a second time. 😞.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
Friday, 17 June 2016
Left, left, left and then left again....
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| This might look like an elastic band but it is, in fact, the very latest in tandem parking brake technology. I know it is state of the art because Steve only invented it yesterday. I told him it wouldn't work (so much for a formal education in engineering) but it actually does work a treat when we have to park the bike on a slope 😃 |
Would you believe - we had only gone about 5k from our hotel this morning when our route took us past more route barree signs! This time, though, it was just a case of our route taking the old road, now closed to traffic. We were outside the café on top of Mount Aigoual five minutes before it opened this morning, waiting to get inside to get our 'control' stamp to prove we have been there as part of the 100 cols route.
It has been another great day of cycling with a further 6 mainly easy cols ticked off, bringing our total up to 61. We have cycled 162km with 2216m of ascent.
This afternoon we did quite a long section where we seemed to do only left turns. I half expected to see somewhere I recognised from earlier in the afternoon, or even to see the back of our own tandem disappearing up the road ahead of us 😃. When we finally came to a place where the magic box instructed us to go right, after about a dozen lefts, it seemed strangely spooky and we wondered whether we should go left regardless 😞.
Tonight we are resting up at Uzes. We are within about 110km of the top of Mont Ventoux so we will need to discuss strategy over dinner - whether to knock it off tomorrow or whether to have a short day tomorrow and do it fresh the following morning. A lot will depend on what accommodation we can find. Mont Ventoux is the hardest (highest scoring) climb on our route.
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Thursday, 16 June 2016
Uh Oh, Route Barree!
I really ought to take more notice of these road closed signs! Usually they are no big deal for a bike, or even a tandem. We weaved around the bollards at the top of one about 85km into our day today. Within a km or so the road started to drop into a steep sided gorge leading to some concern that if we actually couldn't get through then we would have a big climb to get back up and follow the diversion route. Also, with the road being so steep and 'clinging to the hillside' in nature I started to get an uneasy feeling that to attempt to walk across any landslipped section might be dangerous, especially for Steve. After quite a bit of desending we came to the place where they were working on the road - it looked pretty major. The workmen didn't pay us any attention as we shifted the fence to gain access to their 'site', I think they were busy discussing what they were going to have for lunch. We took the bags off the bike and lifted everything across a pile of rubble (see pictures). We walked with the bike, now reloaded, down a rubbly ledge past the working digger. Then, at the eleventh hour, when I could have literally spat on the intact tarmac the other side, someone appeared and told us we would have to go back - back up the rubbly ledge, past the working digger, over the pile of rubble, back through the fence (which we had closed behind us like good children), back up several km of hill and then around the diversion route which was just bound to be further and more arduous than the route we were supposed to be on! And all of this within a yard and a half of the intact road beyond the closure 😭. Like I said before, backtracking isn't a word we entertain in our vocabulary so Steve brought his white cane to the fore and we appealed to the 'jobsworth's' better nature until he let us through. I noticed a dead car on it's roof in the pit below us as we walked through - it would have been nice to take more pictures but we thought it sensible to get the hell out of there and off down the mountain before anyone changed their mind.
Today we have had another great day of cycling covering 136km with a climb of 2657m. We would have liked to have ridden a bit further but, again, a dearth of accommodation precluded this. The people at last night's hotel told us to expect a wet day but it had been great.
Tonight we will rest up at L'Esperou, which is at over 1000m and has a bit of a 'frontier town' feel to it.
If you are enjoying this daily drivel please don't forget our Justgiving page - we still have a way to go to meet our target for Cancer Research UK. Thanks so much if you have already contributed.
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
Wednesday, 15 June 2016
Life beyond Limoux
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| This time the sign really is leaning! |
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| Steve, eating again, I don't know where he puts it... |
Up to the end of yesterday we have been focused on arriving at Limoux to a predictable schedule in order to meet with Steve's Lions Club contacts there. Unfortunately we were over ambitious in our original schedule and had to slip our arrival one day. We arrived to our revised schedule yesterday and had an excellent meal with a group of the Limoux Lions last night. This certainly set us up well for today's ride. Steve had sent some parts for the bike ahead so we fitted new chains (a tandem has two), tyres and brake pads.
The chat over dinner with the Lions was interesting and informative. One thing I had been musing over was the common appearance of 'NON OURS' painted on the road. This is, we found out, in protest to the reintroduction of bears to the Haute Pyrenean area we have been cycling through. We should have guessed really since, much earlier in our trip, we dined at the Three Bears restaurant so we had already come across the French word 'ours'.
We are now under way with our journey beyond Limoux - all we have to focus on is following the 100 cols route back to the car in Saverne - simples, as they say 😃. Tonight we are at 2148 of 4081km, according to our route sheets. From a climbing viewpoint we are at 31734m where the route sheet total is 67015m. (It's a long story but our actual climbing is much more than what appears on the sheets).
Today's ride of 160km with 2556m of ascent has been lovely, taking us over a further 8, mainly easy, cols bringing our total up to 51. The last 15km of the day brought us down a steep sided wooded valley with rocky outcrops. There were interesting villages, with the road threading through narrow passages between the buildings - no articulated lorries down here 😃.
Tonight we are resting our legs at Brusque.
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Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Au revoir Haute Pyrynes
The Pyrynes have made us toil and they have made us struggle. They have made us sweat and they have made us shiver. They have thrilled us and they have frightened us (depending on whether the decents were dry or wet and foggy). Above all they have made us stronger and we love them for that. I, for one, will return to these fine mountains and ride these roads again.
We left our hotel at 06:15 this morning and were at the top of our first col before 07:30. By the top of our third (and last significant) col for the day we had climbed 2095m in 57km.
There hasn't been a lot of idle time on this trip so far but with yesterday's ride being so short we had some spare time to look over the prioritised list of cols on the 100 cols website. I found it really encouraging to see that we have already done quite a few of the hardest cols, including No. 2 on the list, the Tourmalet. Only Mont Ventoux of our 100 cols is considered to be harder than the Tourmalet.
This afternoon we stopped at a bar for a coffee, as we often do and, as we were leaving, I asked the bar lady to top up my water bottle. There was a lot of 'exclaiming' coming from the far end of the bar, together with popping, hissing and squirting noises and when I looked across she was trying fill the bottle with one of those pressure taps (like they have for beer) through the little bite valve you use to drink through. Needless to say the water was going everywhere. I'm guessing this lady doesn't do much sporting stuff 😂.
Today we have cycled 156km and we have climbed 2751m.
So far Steve and I have been completely dry (alcohol wise, I mean). Tonight, resting up and meeting Steve's Lions Club contacts at Limoux, we are nominally halfway through our trip in distance (less so in climbing) - I think I might allow myself a beer 😃.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
Monday, 13 June 2016
Il pleut!
Again, thanks for the contributions folks - they keep coming In thick and fast. We are hopeful of reaching our £2,000 target for Cancer Research UK.
Today we thought we were being really lucky when a nasty storm passed by while we were in a bar having a morning coffee stop 😞. We knocked off the first two passes of the day without too much difficulty - we seem to be settling into a good rythm for winding ourselves up these things now.
Anyway, come the third and final pass it was hot as we started up the lower slopes so we stopped and stripped down to our short sleeved cycling jerseys.
Just a short while later it started to rain - not too much at first but then it just got heavier and heavier until we were fully in the midst of a torrential downpour. There followed one of those conversations which, between two women would be a 15-25 minute dialogue but between two blokes is condensed down into a few grunts. The jist of this was, should we stop and put jackets on; it will be hot; how much further is it? I considered the interchange to be fairly inconclusive so we pedalled on 😃.
Needless to say we were absolutely soaked and fairly cold by the time we had pedalled the 15km or so to the top of the Col de la Core at 1395m. No cafe or shelter so we found a nice cosy grassy bank to hide from the wind and put on all of our clothes for the decent. I noticed Steve's leg warmers seemed a bit baggy at the bottom and asked him if he had put them on the wrong way up (for our readers who are not familiar with cycling apparel, these are sleeves you pull over your legs to turn shorts into full length tights - they are tapered to take account of your thigh generally being fatter than your ankle). Steve muttered something along the lines of he didn't give a stuff so we hopped back on the bike and shot down the mountain as quickly as was safe on the wet roads. We had only been desending for about 10 minutes when the sun came out and everything started to steam.
We stopped very early today because we just couldn't find accommodation where we really wanted to stop and to go further than this ideal place would have involved doing another significant col - quite possibly a col too far for the day. We have only covered 82km and climbed 2223m. Once we progress away from these bigger mountains we hope to get back to some longer days (after all, we need to be home in time for Christmas😞). Tonight we are resting up at an auberge between Seix and Aulus-les-Bains.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
