Col Bagging 2015 - part three

Day Three:  29^th June 2015

Le Bourg-d’Oisans to Montaimont

We had a very bright start to Day 3 which refers not to the weather, but to the latest sartorial offering from Maxwell House. Ahead of us that day was Alpe d’Huez, legendary in the Tour de France for its swarming orange clad supporters at ‘Dutch Corner’. In homage to the Nederlanders, Max was adorned in his Boldmere Bullets shirt and matching orange trimmed shorts. Maintaining the theme of not quite matching ensembles from the previous day, he wore some socks that we suspect he’d borrowed from his grandfather. The designer in Keelan was most perturbed by the clashing Pantone colours and dug in his day bag for a colour wheel to provide some elementary instruction to Max in how best to avoid catastrophic couture faux pas.
 

It was notable too that, despite offending the entire United Nations the evening before, Lord T had succeeded in delivering an elementary lesson in the mechanics of thermos dynamics; his warm milk was dutifully presented to him by the charming Irish waitress who so patiently looked after our breakfast needs.

A quick glance at our day cards for Day 3 reveals a rather vertiginous start to the day. Just 500 metres from the door of the hotel was the base of Alpe d’Huez, a climb I believe we were all looking forward to tackling. The Alpe has 21 hairpin bends, numbered in descending numerical order from the bottom and each of them carries the name of a former conqueror of the mountain from Tour de France history.

Unlike most other roads up which we traverse, the Alpe is not a col; it leads instead to an alpine village which plays host to some of Europe’s finest ski fields. In the winter, those that reach its lofty heights do so in a coach, the engine whining as it crawls its way up the steep gradient, often for prolonged stretches of 10% to 12%, particularly near the bottom. It is little wonder when one considers the terrain that it is a mountain up which the Tour de France has often been won and lost.

The 15km from the base at 715m to its final elevation of 1,815m leads to an average climb of 7.3%. Blessedly, we began early in the day, before the blistering heat of the afternoon would have an opportunity to affect our ride, but the climb was no less challenging for the cooler temperature.

I settled in to my customary spot at the back of the pack and allowed my breakfast of eggs, croissant, baguette, ham and cheese, with an added bowl of muesli and yoghurt to remind me that I am an idiot, and lumbered up the hill.

The countdown of the corners was a tortuous affair, 21 slowly eked into 20, 20 to 19. At each corner my speed, or lack thereof, was sufficiently sluggish to grant me enough time to read each sign, noting that in some instances, more than one rider’s name appeared; mine is never likely to join theirs, unless perchance a namesake should astound the Tour with his exploits in the future.

As the corner numbers whittled down, I whittled up, ever conscious of the fatigue I was feeling. My preparations for this year’s trip left a little to be desired and it was beginning to tell on me in the early part of Day 3.

Passing through the sprawling lower reaches of the ski resort, I spotted the rest of our party already tucking into coffee and cake, their morning’s effort complete. Gentle encouragement from the touring party was offered, I satisfied myself that I was near the last of the hairpins, although to my annoyance I discovered that the numbering began at 0 rather than 1; I momentarily joined Turton in a spot of French bashing.

Caroline very kindly escorted me to the ‘summit’ of Alpe d’Huez, a somewhat innocuous

sign proclaiming ‘Arrivée’. Notably, the road continues up for another few hundred metres to a higher plane but not the finish point for this ride, a fact that was lost on Max and Keelan who, in taking a slightly different route through the town, managed to scale to a loftier height but, alas, did not reach the ‘Summit’. It is a sad fact which must be recorded, that despite cycling 90 minutes up an iconic mountain, that they failed to complete the ride, a circumstance that they will vigorously deny, but which equally, Lord Turton of Teddington, will remind them of for the rest of the trip, and I am quite certain, in future years. I too shall remind them that, although it took me 2 hours, I did finish the route, which is rather more than can be said for the rest of the day.

From Alpe d’Huez we descended towards Allemond and a lunch stop. Our route saw us clinging to the mountainside as we meandered gently down the valley through yet more inspiring topography. Man’s contribution to nature was again on display with yet another lake formed from damming of the river by EDF. We paused beneath the road bridge that ran on one side of the dam for lunch in one of the few places offering respite from the sun.
 

Many people argue that cycling is as much a state of mind as it is of physical fitness. I’m inclined to agree, because what lay before us was a 27km ascent of the Col de la Croix de Fer and, at 2,067m, the highest point we would reach this year. For much of lunch I was telling myself that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it. The heat of the day, the weariness from the preceding two and a half days’ riding and a stomach that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to contain its lunch, were all weighing heavily on my thoughts.

As lunch concluded I decided that I would keep going for as long as I could, doing my level best to reach the summit, but knowing in my heart that I wouldn’t make it. Wearily I set off, the first three kilometres from our lunch break providing a steady, yet gentle climb. We passed the power generation plant at the end of the lake and as the road curled around it, the steady incline dramatically pitched, to an extent that my Garmin responded with an ‘autopause’ moment - seemingly it believed I had stopped. Normally at this juncture, for it has occurred on more than one occasion, I utter a string of profanity aimed at the inanimate object on my handle bars, imploring it to recognise that, whilst I might be proceeding at an unutterably slow pace, I am still nevertheless moving; there is momentum, it is forward and not, as Garmin would lead me to believe, sideways, falling into the road.

In this instance, however, no such outburst occurred, instead I thought to myself, “You know what Garmin, you have a point.” I decided then, just one ninth into the afternoon’s journey, that I need not do any more. I quickly reasoned that it was unlikely I would finish and that I would therefore not have a Croix de la Fer shaped notch in the bedpost. If I wasn’t going to be able to bag the mountain, what was the need to prolong the agony? In the time I had to think this through, I drew nearer to the van and the waiting Caroline. I drew a hand across my neck. “I’m done”, I said, and with that my day got infinitely better.

Further proving my point that a lot of cycling is in the mind, my fatigue lifted, my stomach ailment vanished and my spirits soared – not so much that I contemplated, even for a moment, getting back on the bike, but I was a considerably happier chap. Departing from the ranks of a cyclist, I joined those of the support crew and took to my duties with aplomb.

Although I’ve been in the van before, this was the first occasion on which I had done so on a calculated, voluntary basis. Last year the cold on the Iseran and the lateness of the hour on Izoard conspired against me, and my misery that first time left me incapable of feeling supportive to my fellow riders. This time was altogether different and I bounded about the van filling water buckets, dousing riders, providing sustenance and enthusiastic encouragement. My joy may have given Richard pause to think a day spent in the comfort of the van, rather than on the saddle of a bike, was an alternative worth considering. To his great credit, his resolve and stoicism shone through and he ploughed on up the mountain.
 

The view from the van provided me with a curious insight into this sport of ours. Universally, the party looked weary, all seemingly tired, pained and suffering. Yet still they powered on, grinding up mountains, fiercely determined to complete the day’s challenge. People have often asked me why I do it; I’ve often enough asked myself the same question, and never been able to satisfactorily answer it, but as I witnessed one rider after another inching ever higher up the mountain, I realised why I do it. Standing at the top of each col, having photos taken beneath summit markers, looking back down the mountain at the wending road up which one has just ridden; powered only by the legs, the lungs and the mind. I recognise that for me at least, it’s the sense of achievement.  What we do is hard, we may all go at different paces, but as Greg Lemond said, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.” For each of us it’s painful, but at the end of the day, when one looks back at what has been accomplished, it is deeply satisfying – or it would have been if I wasn’t sponging down seven blokes from the back of the van.

Prior to our trip, Max had circulated a YouTube clip of a wiry young cyclist making an ascent up the Col de la Croix de Fer with barely a pause to draw breath. He narrated the climb as though sitting in an armchair rather than on the back of a bike up a brutal 27km long incline. He made it look ridiculously easy, a lesson in cycling that I could only marvel at. He was as fresh at the top as he’d been at the bottom, showing no notable fatigue at what he’d just done. By contrast, our party looked a little jaded and indeed, possibly addled; no one more so than Stuart who, ever keen to evidence his prowess in descending, set off to enjoy the spoils of his labour. Happily for Stuart, due to my somewhat more relaxed afternoon, I was a little sharper than I might otherwise have been as I noticed him head off in the wrong direction.

I spent considerable time as an errant youth mastering the art of whistling and as I watched him disappear, I put my fingers to my mouth and blew. The ear piercing screech that followed registered with Stuart and he turned back to see me waving violently in his direction. Cue taken, he returned to us, to his undeniable shame. Stuart is a master when heading downhill and had he gone, even though we’d spied him, there would have been no way of catching him until the bottom of the mountain. Suffice to say, Stuart topped the points table that evening for his near miss and tales of an unscheduled visit to Andorra once more prevailed.

It had been a tough day and having ridden two massive mountains, it was determined that the day, if not the overall journey, be foreshortened.  Our hotel, the fabulously sited Hôtel Le Beauséjour, was a further 600 metres up the Col de la Madeleine, the first of tomorrow’s climbs.  Had the group climbed that 600 metres, the following day’s ride would have begun halfway up the col.  It was agreed that by beginning at elevation, the climb would not be completed in a single attempt and we would therefore be ‘cheating’.  Instead of making the final climb of the day as planned, the group dismounted and bikes were put into the van for a drive to the hotel, a prudent enough decision, but one that  Max and Keelan thought was a bit soft. After all, they were still fresh from not having completed Alpe d’Huez.

Cycling aside, the day was made by the team at the hotel. The welcome from Isabelle, our maître d’, was generous and the service superb, all delivered with a healthy bon viveur, flowing beer and delicious food. The dog on reception, as Lord T declared in what we thought was yet another of his slurs, proved to be just that; a terrier whose preferred resting spot was on the top of the reception desk, adding to a very quirky air, and the setting, on the side of a mountain with majestic views, was unparalleled and for once I wasn’t too knackered to enjoy it.