June 21, 2003
St. Michel-de-Maurienne - Briancon
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Well, what can I say, but that this morning was yet another perfect morning: Blue sky, still cool, not a breath of wind. Breakfast, on such a day, was again a joy to partake of. Juice, coffee, bread and jam, joy being in the mouth of the consumer. We extricated our bicycles from the storeroom, the Marseilles crew having long since disappeared into the early morning tranquillity. As we loaded the bikes, we spoke to two Americans, Scott and Greg whom we hadn't noticed the night before. They were also about to tackle the Télégraphe and the Galibier. I wasn't looking forward to this, in spite of the delights of the season. I was suffering from pre-match nerves, as I did when I played football. I had never previously felt like this when cycling. I hadn't slept that well, maybe I drank too much, smoked too much. I was beginning to feel rough. We rode up the main street for 200metres, then turned right for Valloire, over the river, under the motorway and then we were climbing out of the valley. Scott and Greg passed us, I wasn't enjoying this at all. This was going to be a hard gruesome day. We stopped for a rest and a drink after a few bends, set off again and came upon the Americans who seemed to be finding it equally hard. We stopped and started like this for a few kilometres, until, as we got closer to the summit, I rode alongside Greg, the quicker of the Americans and we just chatted for a while. I like to do this if I can. I think it takes your attention away from the task in hand and after a while you ride automatically without feeling the discomfort to the same extent. Other cyclists hate it, like my wife, Barbara, for example, who appears to need to concentrate fully on the task in hand and gets extremely irritated when asked to pass comment on anything at all. In any case, this was the first time we had shared the route with any of our fellow Freds [the name given to touring cyclists by competition riders] and swapping touring tales made a pleasant change. The two Americans had flown from San Francisco to Frankfurt, then on to Zürich and had started their tour there. The Télégraphe is shaded by trees almost all the way to the summit. That and the conversation put me in a better frame of mind and body. I found my wind and reached the top, at the front of our little ad hoc group.
We now had a short descent into Valloire, the village which marked the start of the ascent of the Galibier and the source of lunch. Just before the final bend into Valloire, I was overtaken by one of the many touring motorcyclists, followed by a club cyclist closely shadowing his rear wheel, as if to suggest that with all that power you should be going a bit quicker and not getting in my way. Today was the day that brought home to me the descending skills of the local club cyclists.
The Californians, Chris and I met up again at the supermarket at the far side of the village and Chris went in to make our usual purchases. We planned to eat about half way up the Galibier. We drank some water and then, without any noticeable fervour, started out towards our lofty goal. Let me put some figures on this: Le Col du Galibier, though not the highest of the alpine passes, is a true monster of a climb, hors de categorie in the Tour de France, the summit is at 2646 metres [8,820 feet] above sea level. In Valloire we were at around 1400m and at a distance of 19km. I quote below from a French web site:
Il faut tout d'abord affronter le col du Télégraphe (1566m) qui n'est pas en lui-même insurmontable, mais qui laisse des traces dans la montée finale. Après une courte descente sur Valloire, on suit une route avec des lignes droites interminables pour rejoindre Plan Lachat (1960m). A cet endroit, le calvaire commence avec des pentes à 9-10 % et des passages à plus de 12 %. Ce col est l'un des plus durs de France à la fois par sa longueur et par les pourcentages terribles sur de nombreux kilomètres.
This translates as: 'You first have to deal with le col du Télégraphe which is not in itself insurmountable, but it leaves its mark on you for the final climb. After a short descent into Valloire you follow a route of interminable straights to reach Plan Lachat. This is where Calvary begins, with gradients of 9 to 10% and some stretches at more than 12%. This pass is one of the hardest in France, both for its overall distance and its terrible gradients over kilometre after kilometre.'
Couldn't have put it better myself, although I'm going to try. Those interminable straights take you up the valley. There was no tree cover now, so true to our trip it was hot. On this section I stopped twice to throw water from mountain streams all over my face and neck. Suffering all the way, we stopped at Plan Lachat for lunch. There's a restaurant there and it was busy with Sunday trippers, both motorists and some of the hordes of motor cyclists who might have done the day trip from Lyon or Turin or a long weekend from a small town in Germany. Sitting outside the restaurant we ate our usual lunch, all the while watching the Sunday cyclists struggle up the slope on the opposite side of the valley, whose difficulty was only too obvious for anyone with a limited knowledge of trigonometry. We knew it would be our turn soon. Scott and Greg took to the road and eventually disappeared from sight, round the first of the hairpin bends.
We refilled the bottles outside the restaurant and moving oh so slowly, remounted the bikes and rode up to and then around the bend that slung the road across to the other side of the valley. We were now forcing our way up the feared hypotenuse, not genuflecting at this first station of the cross, heads bowed in prayer, but grunting, grinding and swearing, pumping out, between gritted teeth, exponential cocktails of profanity, blasphemy and obscenity. We turned the corner and the view ahead offered little comfort. I started to count the 10 metre increments on my bike computer. There would be 900 from Plan Lachat to us finally standing on the summit. There was soon to be some light relief. A club cyclist from La Grave, a small town at the western foot of the Col de Lauteret, had pulled off the road and was slumped over his handlebars. I pulled up behind him and said, 'I thought it was only we tourists who needed a rest, going up the pass.' ' I've done one too many,' he replied. 'How's that?' I asked. 'I left La Grave this morning, rode up the Lauteret, then the Galibier, dropped down into Valloire, then up and down the Télégraphe to St. Michel, then back up the Télégraphe and now here. I've done one too many.' I may have said, 'Je m'en fous.' This translates loosely, and too obscenely as 'Well I'll be f*cked.' Chris rode up and I explained what had happened. The cyclist laughed to hear his travails related with such relish in another language. This brief encounter seemed to give him a bit of heart and he took off up the slope in better humour. So did we and pedalled off happily for about 10metres before gravity wiped the smiles off our faces once more.
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I now refer you back to the quote from the website. This was so f*cking hard. And at this height the landscape was bleak, and rocky, only interrupted by patchy unmelted snow banks by the side of the road. When we left London, I had hoped for the best of both worlds in the Alps, on the one hand fine weather and clear roads [no problem there], but also a view of snow on the higher slopes. Mont Blanc might have lived up to its name, but at these lower levels the Saharan conditions had reduced the snow to small residues in shady hollows. We continued to drag ourselves upwards, occasionally stopping to rest our muscles, until eventually we arrived at the tunnel below the summit. Yes, a tunnel, unlit and banned to cyclists carries traffic underneath the final rocky pinnacle. We, therefore, were bound to gird our loins, stiffen our sinews, put our backs to the wall, our shoulders to the wheel and keep right on to the end of the road. Eyes cast upwards, we slowly embarked on the finale. Three hairpin bends with short straights would see us there. At the last hairpin before the top, a group of German motorcyclists clapped us round the bend and rather surprisingly, their encouragement powered us up the last stretch. We reached the top together. I was fighting back tears of joy and relief. It was several minutes before I was able to speak coherently.
The flat ground at the col was crowded. We had to queue to get position for the right photograph and took it in turns to photograph each other, bikes leaning against the altitude post, Mont Blanc's white bulk hazy in the distance. A German cyclist photographed Chris and me together. Two young, skinny lads, from the same La Grave cycling club as our man back down the mountain, were photographed, in self-congratulatory pose by a motorcyclist. A fat Italian, on an equally corpulent motorcycle, was asking directions back to the Po valley. I would describe all this as a zoo, but I've yet to see a gorilla on a Gold Wing.
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A tight bumpy descent took us off the top and into Hautes Alpes[05]. A little way past the southern end of the tunnel, off the road to the right, is a large stone monument [it wouldn't fit on the top?] to the memory of Henri Desgrange, the journalist, who launched the Tour de Franc in 1904. I stopped to read the inscription. The road took us further down to the summit of the Col du Lauteret, the high point on the RN96, from Grenoble to the Italian border. It was getting late so we didn't award ourselves a coffee in the restaurant. Truth to tell, there was no need for calorific reinforcement at this point. We were about to start the 27km downhill into Briançon.
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Within seconds we were freewheeling rapidly downwards, under the cover of a 1km long concrete avalanche shelter. This was a flat roofed, reinforced concrete structure with vertical slit openings on the valley side. A new experience for me; I had seen such constructions on TV, while watching a programme about global warming and the concomitant danger of avalanche in the Swiss Alps. Hurtling through one at70km/h on a bike was definitely better than the telly. Almost as soon as we were back in full daylight, we were leaning into the right hand curve that pointed us into the valley of the Guisane. The road surface was excellent RN blacktop, there was little moving traffic. There were no sharp turns and the still considerable gradient was with us. This was fantastic. We'd got what we deserved.
The Guisane valley is, I assume, better known to Ski enthusiasts as, Serre-Chevalier, each village has the tag Serre-Chevalier, followed by its altitude on its roadside signboard. We continued to descend. I had to brake once, when a car I was thinking of overtaking slowed at a pedestrian crossing. Later I chased and failed to catch a club cyclist, returning home ahead of me. Then we were on the edge of Briançon. Again, at first we followed the road sign for the town centre but after being directed partway up a stiff climb, we backtracked and found our way by eye. It was cloudy now, and the town had a grim, grey aspect to it, close, as we were, to the military barracks
Briançon claims to be the highest town in Europe at 1326m above sea level. We found a hotel in the town centre next door to a Pari-Mutuel bar. Chris showered, I went for a beer in the bar next door and then wandered down the pedestrianised street and into another bar, where I watched some football on TV. I went back to the hotel and showered while Chris went out for an investigative stroll. We decided to eat in a pizza restaurant, situated in the same street as our hotel. We left the hotel in the direction of dinner and within seconds we were running. It was raining, very heavily, the first rain of the trip. Over dinner we talked tactics. Should we spend another night here as we had planned originally? No. We didn't mention that. The main consideration was, should we tackle the Col d'Izoard? There was an alternative route following the valley road, route nationale 94 to Mont-Dauphin, where we would turn off for Guillestre and the Col de Vars. The Izoard is another of the Tour de France's alpine icons at 2360m.above sea level. The sense of achievement would be considerable. The view would be spectacular. Up and over from Briançon to Guillestre would be 51 km. We chose the valley route.
We left the restaurant and Chris went straight back to the hotel. The Pari-Mutuel bar was closed now, so I went back to the bar where I had earlier watched the football. I drank a couple of beers, then, by now ready for sleep, set off back to the room. It wasn't far, but far enough for me to have time to recollect that I had no key. Also, time enough to recollect that I had seen a notice, in the hotel, reminding guests to ensure that they had their keys with them if they were planning to be late back. Oh dear. In these circumstances, I try to make it easy for myself by making a mental list of facts and possibilities, so let's look at my situation here. 1. I am locked out 2. I don't want to sleep in the street. 3. The management sleep elsewhere, or they 're on Mogadon. [This has happened before] 4. I will throw small stones at the window of our room and hope that Chris will wake up. 5. I will have a look round the back and see if I can climb in. [I've done this before.] 6. I'm sure I'll think of something. I chose item four to begin with. There was a problem finding small stones. I had to scrabble around in municipal flower-beds to find any at all. I spent about ten minutes hitting and missing what I had worked out from memory, was the window of our room. Chris remained stubbornly asleep. Item five then; I climbed part way up the back wall and looked for a way in. There was a small yard on the other side of the gate, I was now hanging off. A door to what appeared to be a store-room led into the yard. The chance of the door being unlocked was remote. Above, there was no accessible outhouse roof from which I might find an open window. I dropped back to the ground and on to item six. I had to start thinking.
I decided not to hammer on the front door of the hotel [I can't remember if there was a bell] to keep the number of people disturbed by my forgetfulness to a minimum. Somebody was going to be woken up though, if I was going to spend the night with a roof over my head. I decided to go back to the bar to find the hotel phone number. I explained my situation to the barman and he found a tourist information list. I took the hotel number and dialled as I walked back to the hotel. I apologetically explained my situation over the phone and soon, a man I hadn't seen before, opened the door. I apologised, once more, in person and went up to bed.
Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 1,161 km (721 miles)
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