Legendary Giant of The Tour de France: Arreau to Luz Saint Sauveur.

August 10, 2015

He was leading the race on the afternoon of the ninth of July 1913 while descending the Tourmalet, when misfortune strikes and his forks break. He does what anyone would do, carries on pushing the bike to the next village for help, to Saint Marie Campan, where he enters a blacksmiths and has the forks repaired. This was regarded as outside help and there he was disqualified.

Well today on my fully loaded bike unlike Eugene Christophe, there would be no outside help as I cross both Col du Aspin then Col du Tourmalet. But let me begin camped in a hayfield. there is cloudless blue sky and the sun rays beam horizonally across the valley. I've just finished breakfast, nice to see it's a good clear day for the mountain, and have begun packing panniers a while before eight, thinking I'll be out of there before anyone is about; when, I hear a car labouring up the slope from the road into the field towards my hiding place behind the row of round bales. I'm instantly full of foreboding that I've been discover and they in the car are coming to ask what I'm doing here in their field. But the car continues lurching uphill upon the regular used vehicle track diagonally across the sloping field above my tent to an outhouse by the woodland topside of the field. No doubt they saw my tent, but obviously don't care.

I continue breaking camp with greater hast, while hearing the occupancies of the car above at the house hammering, and ride across the grass aftermath of the hay crop to the gateway down onto the road.

It is only seven kilometres ride to Arreau, a village with the charm of a mountain stream through it's middle where I sit down to coffee at a terrace café upon the embankment. I look at my Michelin map studying todays route and write my diary. Then having had a second coffee and paid the bill of five euros, ride around looking for a supermarket. All the shops in the narrow streets off the square are artisan food shops selling local cheeses and pork, all very expensive. I need to stock up for the day and cheaply with many things I can only find in a supermarket, so I stop a matron and ask "excuse m voir, un supermarche?" She replied "Le sorte du village et droit." Just out of the village on the opposite side I entered.

Fully stocked up with whatever food and water I'll need for the day, I ride back to the turnoff, a steep ramp at an angle to D929 road into town. Now at about seven-hundred metres, I would climb to fifteen-hundred over twelve kilometres to Col du Aspin. Once up the initial steep bit, the gradient is pretty mild, then winding up further tilts up to seven per cent in the steeper places, not overly steep, so I'm able to churn away in my lowest gear without pause. I'm constantly passed by riders on light racing bikes, many of whom shout encouragement and give thumbs up.

But as I churn away, there starts an annoying sharp click sound from my front hub. The ball-bearings. Seems Saturday's rain has gotten into the bearings and now that it has dried out is causing friction.

There are signboards every kilometre showing altitude, average gradient in the next kilometre and distance to summit, which is a real help in pacing and it becomes a moral boast once in low figures, when the sign has only 4 km to go. At this point the road can be seem winding its way up a fern clad slope to a saddle where windows of parked vehicles glitter like mirrors in the sun.

I buy an expensive crepe and coffee from a van and sit and eat at the picnic tables in front with other cyclists and holidaymakers. This snack will see me through to a late lunch. Then having taken photographs, I check the bike tyres and brakes, which is well, the descend is very twisty and seems way steeper than the way I come up. Many of the other unloaded cyclists take their life in their hands by flying pass me, even though there's lots of traffic; especially, when hitting a sharp hairpin bend, there's always a car coming up.

The road soon bottoms out at a ski-resort in a level hollow, more cafes, accommodation cabins, hotels and an Intersport as well as ski-lifts. Then continues losing altitude along a narrow pastoral valley, where I descend faster and the bike develops a wobble, perhaps due to uneven loading, to the village of Saint Marie Campan, wherein I turn sharp left uphill again, starting the climb of Co du Tourmalet.

I passed and was passed by this cycle-tourer and I meet him again the next day on Col d Aubisque.

In the village I pause and read a plact on a recently erected monument to an historic instant in the 1913 Tour de France. It was in this village Joseph Bayle, the blacksmith repaired Eugene Christophe broken forks having walked eleven kilometres from where they broke. It become history because he was leading the race at this point, but getting his forks welded at the village blacksmiths was consider then as outside help, so he was disqualified.

Another rider on a very upright touring bike, I saw him set off down Aspin, then I pass him in the valley approaching the village, now rides pass.

This climb isn't as easy and I some find both legs and staminer running out and end up stopping to rest a minute offen. It is also warmer and I'm glad when I come to a stream and gorge down a whole bottle of cold water.

Once the road leaves the valley it really tilts up, most is ten per cent or more in gradient as I pass up above the tree-line to rough grassy mountain and grey rocky escarpment off on either side. There are concrete galleries to keep rockfall off the road, just before one I stop feeling crushed, but after a minute go again with renewed vigour which lasts only a few hundred metres up the sharp incline and I'm reduced to a wavering zig-zag as painful legs churn the bike's lowest gear.

The street up through the ski-resort of Monge passes cafes serving tempting cold beer, hotels, an Intersport and Carrefour, a small city, is particularly steep where I stop again with only five more kilometres to the summit. Looking down the street appears even steeper than looking up.

In the final few kilometres it does not help the amount of cars on the road, it being high Summer and Tourmalet is a big tourist attraction. A car up ahead of me has to stop until a donkey gets off the road and the road is totally blocked by descending cars stopped also for the same donkey. My legs are burning with exhaustion and I hope the donkey has cleared off and traffic is moving again when I reach the stopped car's bumper, which is the case. Then a campervan cuts sharply up a steep hairpin bend with me on the inside. The gradient on the bend is fifteen per cent and I could've done with space to waver out crossways instead of being pressed in and forced to ride directly up.

The last kilometre is the hardest yet, where the road is painted in names: the point during the tour where the way is reduced to a narrow corridor between walls of fans cheering and running behind riders grimacing in agony. Today I'm not noticed by such as I pass the parked cars to the side and chatter which have spread from the top. Then somehow it gets easier in the last hundred or so metres although like riding up an apex roof. Crossing the permanently painted finishline, a group shout "bravo! Bravo!"

I lean forward and slump over the handlebars exhaling deeply, trying to get my breath and feeling almost dizzy, even nausea. It is lunchtime, five in the afternoon, but if I eat or drink at this moment, I think I would bring it up again.

Once I've settled I lunch leant against a track excavator up a walking trail from the crowd down by a two-storey restaurant to the side of the finishline on the road which passes through a narrow cutting in an apex ridge between two rocky peaks. That's as best I can describe it. Tourmalet, the steep roof on the mountain. Now I can appreciate the enormity of the mountain and the Tour de France. The hardship of climbing on a full-loaded bike up is nothing to what it must be like to have to race up it.

I still feel an uneasiness in the stomach as I eat dry baguette and jambon and it takes a while before I can face getting back on the bike for the descend which gives me vertigo looking at how steep it drops down the screed.

I return down to the finshline and take some photos, watch others take photos beneath the monument cyclist and enjoy being among people for a while before checking my brakes and everything else, then I'm ready.

The descend as seen from above is extremely steep the first few kilometres of switch-backs until dropping into a hollow where it continues less abruptly down a river valley.

I reach Luz Saint Sauveur where I find a bank and a supermarket, a bikeshop; looking for tyres, I find only lightweight tyres. And when all is done, it's getting too late to go further, there's a campsite where I'm charged a reasonable nine euros. Something at least is cheap in France. In Italy the one time I stayed in a campsite I's charged twenty euros.

I have a well overdue shower to end a very satisfying day.

Tomorrow, looking at the map, I've the Col d Aubisque to climb and after that there's one more big climb over the mountain to Spain.

Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 8,402 km (5,218 miles)

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