September 6, 2024
Day Seven - Mont Ventoux
Well, I suppose this is just like any other day of riding at home right? No need to pack a tent, sleeping bag, and so on. Simple! Getting up when I wanted to was a bit more straight forward than previous days as I knew I had less admin to do before I can get riding. Mont Ventoux might be an obvious mountain on the horizon, but sometimes packing everything away can feel like a bit of a hill climb itself! There's little to enjoy about the process.
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All of that went pretty smoothly - I made sure to pack my full finger liner gloves and down jacket for the descent after the climb. Do I bring two full 950ml bottles of water? It did seem like it might be a bit excessive, so one and a quarter full is what I went with. In the end I don't think I drank a whole bottle. Getting out of Bedoin was a bit of a pain, I had to hike a bike down some steps. I thought that might happen - Komoot and indeed the Garmin itself don't seem to know what is cyclable. Maybe if you're Sam Pilgrim riding a stairset of doom, but I am not! See you in the next one, to the skyyyyyy.
Watch one of his videos on youtube and that might make more sense to you. Once I was out of Bedoin and there was a regular stream of cycliists ahead of me, it was clear that from this point on the routing would be rather simple!
Next question, how to pace the ride? I settled with my lowest or second to lowest gear, and cruised up. Getting out of breath in the earlier stages seemed counter-productive, so not worth getting in to that state. Pretty soon a guy in some sort of diabetes charity jersey overtook me. There was definitely a fleeting feeling of "Stay on his wheel", but I quickly let that go. I have a relatively good idea of what my body can handle and continuing at his pace seemed unwise given the ride ahead. He slowly drifted off in to the distance ahead of me. That's fine! As it happens I found I was overtaking more riders than I was being overtaken myself. I don't want to come across as bigheaded, but that's just a statement of fact!
As one might expect in France, the road surface was mostly excellent. The effort involved in cycling uphill was made slightly easier by the comparitively cool air, aided by the tree cover and altitude. It made for a relaxing ride almost, although towards the beginning I did find myself wondering "and I'm going to be doing this for how long"?
Maybe my soundtrack choice wasn't so great. I started with a rather on the nose option - Kraftwerk's Tour de France soundtrack. Yeah, I know. After that, Basement Jaxx. Recently I've moved away from the Shokz bone conduction headphones I was using, to some Oladance open ear buds. They work really well and have great battery life. Well, they do have one issue - when the space between the speaker and my ear gets wet, they go practically silent. The bass disappears and all you're left with is some tinny trebble. Usually this only happens with one side at a time, today it was the right bud's time to shine (or not). Is this a really esoteric heart rate zone measurement gauge? If my headphone gets wet and I can't hear it, I must be working hard! I really didnt want a one sided listening experience, so I found myself trying to dry out my skin with my mitts, and the bud with my shorts. It didn't work very well and I'm sure the riders behind me though I was going mad!
As expected the vast majority of riders I encountered were riding road bikes, but there were some other machines too. At least one fat bike, much to my surprise, eBikes too. It's great to see modern technology has made one of cycling's great climbs more accessible. I don't care whether you got to the top on all by your own power, people should be experience cycling up such a stunning landscape - whether they need help to do that is inconsequential. They're not racing!
On I continued, plodding along in my lowest gear. Eating a jam Madeleine every 15 or so minutes. I'm sure they're not the most common cycling fuel but they were readily available at the supermarket, and were moist and easy to eat. They worked for me - lots of sugar!
I must have been somewhere between two thirds to three quarters of the way up the climb, and what do I see in the distance? Aha, Mr 2023 Diabetes charity jersey - I was gaining on him, without even trying! Excellent. I took great delight in overtaking him. I assumed when he passed me that he was just a stronger rider than I and knew what he was doing...seemingly not :) Oh well!
As I passed the treeline, the top of Ventoux came in to view once more. I don't watch much pro cycling really but it is clearly an iconic summit amongst cycling fans. I don't think I've mentioned yet, there was some sort of sportive going on - those taking part were all wearing the same jersey. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I was overtaking most of them! This did mean that the sides of the road were busier than I assume they usually would be. Delightfully, every so often I'd encounter a group applauding riders going past. Wonderful! Honestly I'm welling up a bit thinking about it now. It's so easy to get lonely on these bikepacking trips and having complete strangers give up their time to give their support and encourage you means so much, to me at least anyway. Obviously they were not there for me specifically, but the good vibes were really appreciated.
The good vibes were probably appreciated a bit too much, the first time I managed to get a bunch of high fives, I put a bit of a sprint in pretty much! That didn't last long, I still had another 15-20 minutes to go.
A couple of people were riding up with speakers playing music attached to their bikes. I was not so appreciative of that - a bugbear of mine is hearing conflicting music tracks, it just becomes unpleasant noise. Another incentive to ride harder to get away from them!
Closer and closer to the summit now. I'd stopped looking at my Garmin a while ago as I decided it wasn't particularly helpful.
Much to my surprise, some of the people behind the sportive had erected a gazebo before the end of the climb! Why would you do that? I guess for people really struggling, but it did feel a bit cruel...a means of tempting people to stop before they'd finished. I didn't really care about the time I got up the hill (but a good time would be great!), but the one thing I did want to manage was not to stop. This gazebo was the antithesis of that goal. That said, it wasn't for me anyway, so it would not have been much use if I did stop.
As I approached the final corner it became obvious that the gradient to the very top was steeper than before the corner, so I put an extra spurt of power down just so I could press and hold the shifter lever to down shift all the way, ready for the steep section. Smooth as butter! As I turned the corner I realised the finish was essentially like a stage finale - inflatable gate thing and lots of people cheering and applauding. Nice! OK, well I have some energy left in my legs so time for another sprint then! I think I overtook everyone on the ramp at the same time as me! I did wonder how much cycling everyone else up that climb were doing compared to me. I assume not two weeks worth.
I got past the crowd and stopped. Success! The views were stunning, as expected. I had a brief look in the gift shop, but nothing appealed to me so much that I would either send it back or carry it with me. Just a little bottle of orange juice for me.
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Time to descend back down. Fortunately as the gradient was relatively shallow, at least compared to the descending I was doing a few days ago, it was not too honerous, which came as a relief. Besides my excellent disc brakes, I also had the dynamo help slow me down. I did encounter what appeared to be some sort of crash (others were already helping) which was sad, shortly after, as expected I witnessed an ambulance pass me coming the other way. I hope the rider is OK, I fear it's ruined their holiday however at the very least.
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I got back in to Bedoin pretty quickly as one might expect, my down jacket and liner gloves having served me well. First I looked at the Flandrien cafe for my lunch, but wasn't feeling it, so carried on to la Pista instead. What's this, a Bullitt Cargo bike just like mine parked outside with their branding? Well, if that's not a sign I don't know what is! La Pista it was.
I had a pulled pork toasted sandwich and fries - tasty! Sadly while eating I'd realised I had lost my RFID/NFC (I assume) wristband which is used to enter the campsite. Damn! This did spoil the meal somewhat. After finishing and paying up I rode around the corner to the Flandrien cafe just in case. As soon as I turned the corner, a glint of pink on the tarmac - there it was! Good mood restored. I wasn't relishing the idea of paying for another. I had a quick look in one of the cycling shops but didn't see anything of interest. Back to the campsite to write this log entry!
Tom, 4 months later: Seems I didn't write what else I got up to for the rest of the day, and I can't remember. Well, it can't have been that interesting. I think I went for another swim, ambled around Bedoin to see if much was going on, then bought my evening meal and the next day's breakfast.
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