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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Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Five and a half hours of climbing and no sign 😞
Tuesday, 21 June 2016
Following the purple line
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 😞
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.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
Sunday, 19 June 2016
Ventoux puts up its defenses
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.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
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.
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/100-cols-for-cancer
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
