Climbing vs. Posing

In 2006, while riding sections of the Tour de France route and watching the race, we came across the immaculately-dressed cyclists who had signed up with Trek Tours for big $$$ to be there as well.  Not only did they all have matching jerseys and Trek Madones, but as the Trek van rolled up alongside, the driver passed them water bottles!  I suspected that they were eating somewhat better than we were and staying in much nicer hotels.  I did persuade Udo, our minibus driver, to pass us bottles though.

In 2010, Trek Travel has taken this degree of service even further and is offering participants the chance to ride electrically-assisted bikes!  These will give you an additional 350W of power so that when you make it to the top of the Izoard, you will feel just like Fausto Coppi did.  Except, of course, he didn't use a motor scooter.  With a baguette on the rack.

I don't want to sound like too much of a curmudgeon, but doesn't this dilute the meaning of the whole project?  I have to admit I was always a bit annoyed by the motorcyclists who were posing for photos in front of col signs on the famous climbs in the Alps, making us wait to take our own pictures, since, basically, all they had to do was twist a throttle to get to the top.  Nothing has given me a greater sense of accomplishment than getting to the top of a legendary climb under my own power, just like Jacques, and Eddy and Bernard and Miguel and Mario did.  Well, maybe not Mario, who, when the road went up, usually went to the beach instead.  But I bet he didn't use an electrically-assisted bike there either.

The Izoard

photo by the estimable Will, Creative Commons

Tour d'Enfer Day 6: A Long Day Indeed (Part Two)

Now for the second task of the day: the Col de Vars. This pass has been included in the Tour de France some 33 times, so a lot of exciting action has taken place on it but it seems to be overlooked when considering the “great” climbs. As we were to learn, this was no pushover.




Riding with the Badger

Leaving Guillestre full of coffee and looking forward to riding on into the sunshine, we soon joined up with some of the other Tour d’Enfer crew and began our gradual climb. The incline was fairly reasonable for the first kilometre but then we were suddenly going up on an 8.5 percent grade. The road twisted and turned and we had good views of Guillestre, soon far below us.




At one curve we stopped and admired the view, but also noticed a small memorial stone. It was dedicated to the memory of a postal employee, Monsieur Court, who apparently went over the edge with fatal consequences in January 1938. Considering most of these passes are closed in winter, it was surprising that he would have been out there at that time of year, but neither rain, nor sleet nor hail etc.


We continued to make our way upwards. The road was not sheltered by trees and it was becoming quite warm, and the road showed no sign of flattening out anywhere. Michelle asked me how far we had to go and I said “not much further,” but of course it turned out I was totally wrong. Relief did come around Kilometre 8, when the grade dropped down to a more manageable 4 percent and then we found ourselves on a plateau. As we came into the village of St-Marcellin, we discovered some other Tourists d’Enfer sitting down for lunch and we joined them.

The waitress was clearly having a good time with the boisterous cyclists and we contributed to the confusion. The menu was somewhat limited, with mainly local specialities. As a vegetarian, France was not always the most appealing destination to me at lunchtime but the waitress was happy to get the cook to make up a cheese omelette with frites for me, a meal in which I was joined by Ralph the Badger. Most of the others ordered steak/frites, but Tim the Tornado said he would go with the burger. I was surprised that a hamburger would be on the menu and when I looked I saw he was referring to the “Assiette Berger,” which translates out to “the Shepherd’s Plate” and was a cheese-and-bread collection. Foreign travel is full of discoveries...

Refuge Napoleon

Dr. Chef and Michelle rolled up but decided to forego lunch and keep going up the climb. After enjoying a nice piece of blueberry tart, we got back on the bikes and began to climb again. I was riding with Indiana Greg and we set a nice pace going up the climb, which was not as steep as it had been closer to Guillestre but was still hard since we were feeling a bit stuffed from the meal. We passed a small ski area, Ste-Marie-de-Vars, and saw a sign inviting us to a restaurant inviting us in for “fooding and drinking.”

The road continued to be around 7 percent grade as we came up to Vars Station and I was getting tired in the heat. Greg rode on ahead and Ralph soon came up to me and we rode together, passing the next Refuge Napoleon and the little lake in front of it before finally coming to the col sign. I think that I had underestimated how hard this climb would be as the profile looked reasonable compared to some of the other climbs we had done on the trip. But in the end we had ridden 19.4 km (12.4 miles) from Guillestre, climbing 1111 metres (3645 feet) to the summit at an altitude of 2109 m (6925 feet). Having a full stomache and adding in the heat probably made it all that much harder, without forgetting that we had already begun the day with an Hors Categorie climb!

Me descending (photo by the Badger)

I felt better having reached the top and looked forward to the fantastic descent ahead of us. This was an excellent one, with lots of nice, open curves and great scenery all around. It was cooler now as we descended into the valley, dropping quickly down the road, which is much steeper on this side. We were finding sections of well over 10 percent and the cool air really revived me. Ralph was close behind me and when we came to St-Paul-sur-Ubaye, a small village that apparently featured a 12th Century church, I suggested that we turn off the road and look around.



The baker at the St-Paul market

St-Paul was enjoying market day and we looked at the stalls in the village, set up in the square beside the church. There was a range of meat products, cheeses, liquers and bread. We tried some of the baker’s olive bread and then he persuaded me to buy some of his special high-energy cyclist’s bread. This was like very hard gingerbread and he suggested breaking off small pieces of it during a ride and washing it down with some water. It would provide an energy replenishment and supposedly will be good for months. We shall see.

The Badger and I looked into the church, which is an excellent example of a mountain-style church begun in the Middle Ages and featuring a shingled roof and a Romanesque bell tower. We walked around the tiny village for a few minutes and I took a picture of the Badger in front of the 1714 fountain. Then we got back onto the main road and aimed our bicycles towards Barcelonnette and our hotel.


Fort Tournoux

After leaving St-Paul we came to a short tunnel but after a week in the mountains I had lost my fear of them and thought nothing about riding straight through it. The road was very quiet, and we found ourselves riding past the Berwick Redoubt, a massive stone citadel. Our route continued downhill, running alongside the Ubaye River. Ralph was clearly fading so I went out front and pulled. As we joined up with the D900 the traffic, which was coming from Italy, was getting heavier but the road was good, with probably a 1-2 percent drop. I went into time trial mode, going steadily along at 44 km/h or so. Well, that worked until we passed the impressive Fort de Tournoux, which was built from 1843 over twenty years and saw action in both World Wars, and ran smack into a brutal headwind.

The last stretch of D900 took us past La Condamine-Châtelard and on through Jausiers. The wind was dry and hot and peppering us with nasty bits of sand or gravel. We finally saw Barcelonnette ahead and immediately found the sign for Le Sauze, where our hotel was, and turned left on the straight road, getting out of the wind.

While it was nice to get out of the wind, we discovered now that we had a very nasty climb ahead of us: 2 kms that appeared to be going straight up. Ralph and I dragged ourselves in the summer heat up hairpin turns at a snail-like pace and finally pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel l’Équipe. We were met by some of the others and made our way in for a cool shower and a well-deserved beer.

Several of the other cyclists had ridden into Barcelonnette and were picked up by Udo and the bus rather than ride this last brutal hill. This was probably a good idea as they enjoyed ice cream in the town square!

Today's profile, with a sting in the tail

Over dinner we had a great time, reliving our individual adventures for the day. Day 6 of the Tour d’Enfer had been a classic, with 103 km (64 miles) and 3,120 m of climbing (10,236 feet), incredible scenery and one good workout.

Tour d'Enfer Day 6: A Long Day Indeed (Part One)

Briançon is the hub for a lot of rides over great climbs. With our time ended in the town, we packed up the bags and loaded them on the bus and then began to ride out into the bright morning sunshine. The plan for today was to do the longest ride of the Tour d’Enfer, around 100 kms, and include two more famous climbs.

Our first climb was the Col de l’Izoard. A part of the Tour de France since 1922, it has appeared in the itinerary more than 30 times, and the first men over the top are legends of the Tour: in 1923, it was the mercurial Henri Pélissier, whose stormy life eventually came to an end when his girlfriend shot him, apparently with some justification. Sylvère Maes, Gino Bartali, Jean Robic, Fausto Coppi and Louison Bobet crossed first multiple times, and other great names included Bahamontes, Merckx, Thévenet, van Impe and Chiappucci. The last man to cross the Izoard first was Stefano Garzelli in 2006.

The ascent begins right in Briançon proper, as you pass by a big sign for the col and then start climbing almost immediately up a steep little grade. This was a bit of a nasty surprise but the road levelled off somewhat and we began a steady climb up from the town, with a view of the valley to the left. The route was wooded and green and the road was marked with milestones indicating the distance covered and the grade.

The climb is considered a Hors Categorie (HC) and is 20 km (12.43 miles) in length, with an average grade of 5.7 percent. From Briançon’s altitude of 1220 m you climb to 2361 m (7746 feet) ASL , a vertical gain of 1141 m (3743 feet).

The first six kilometers or so were actually fairly easy. Today would be special in that the road over the Izoard was going to be closed to vehicular traffic and we saw a considerable number of cyclists on the road, although the majority of them would be leaving Briançon en masse after us. I was feeling very refreshed in the coolish morning air and we made good progress. We passed a number of local cyclists but looking back down the valley we could see the fast guys on their way.

We came up to the fork in the D902, with the left turn taking you to the village of Cervieres (1636 m). Off to the right we saw a bicycle propped up next to a sleeping bag. This was a lazy cyclist who was still asleep but obviously wanted to start partway up the climb. We left him to his dozing and soon came to a small rustic hotel, compromised of a number of rural buildings. It was just beyond this that we came to the “Route Barée” sign, with a barrier blocking the road to cars, no that there had been many cars up to this point anyway.

It was now starting to get pretty warm and the climbing was beginning to get more serious, with the next 7 kms (4.3 miles) averaging more than 8 percent. The horseflies now made their appearance, which was most unwelcome. It ruins your rhythm to try and speed up and drop them but they are not only irritating when they fly around you, they inflict nasty bites. The fast guys were now catching up to us, and I discovered the simple expedient of riding close to them as they passed and the flies all went over to them!

A number of serpentines took us above the tree line and past the Refuge Napoleon, a small inn not far from the top of the pass. We soon arrived in front of the impressive monument at the top of the col and our first pass of the day was accomplished. Of course, this called for the usual variation of col sign photos. Greg took a nice picture of me, and then one with me and Heike and Frank and our Specialized bicycles. This was the first day when I saw a number of French riders with Specialized bikes as well; the brand is not nearly as visible as a supplier to two pro teams would be expected to be in Europe.

Local riders congregate in front of the museum
The cyclotouristique riders had assembled in large numbers and were consuming rather odd and unlikely food, such as cold cuts. It did not look much like the kind of food you get on a ride in Germany or the US but everyone looked pretty fit so I guess it works.



Making my way through the hordes of eating cyclists, I was able to get into the little cycling museum at the top of the Izoard. With an 86 year long presence at the Tour de France, the Izoard features in many legendary battles. The museum, which was staffed by one very bored looking man (presumably from the local tourism office), had some interesting bicycles. The best was a velocipede, the kind of iron bike with the pedals attached to the front wheel and which nobody would have ever been able to ride up the pass. There were a lot of posters (“The History of Brakes,” “The Role of Clermont-Ferrand in the Bicycle Industry,” and so forth) but it seemed that nothing had been added since the pass was crossed by Pascal Richard of Switzerland in the 1989 Tour de France. Since the museum looked like a volunteer effort by a regional cycling club they will probably get around to it someday.

The descent was quite entertaining, with an average gradient of 6.9 percent all the way down to Guillestre, 16 km (10 miles) away, but the first half of the drop must be closer to 9-10 percent. The D902 took us through the Casse Déserte, “the Broken Desert,” which is a region of steep, barren eroded sandstone, familiar as a backdrop in old photos of the Tour de France. Just below the summit there is a small monument to Fausto Coppi and Louison Bobet that I looked for but I ended up riding right past it, to my immense irritation. I saw some cyclists turning off the road but did not see a reason for it, but at least some of group had the chance to visit it. Bobet had the measure of the Izoard, being the first across it on three occasions, while il Campionissimo did it twice.

The road plunged downwards, with nice steady curves that I could really open up the speed on, and we tore past the village of Brunissard, entering the Queyras Valley, and travelling through dramatic narrow rock canyons that make up the Guil River gorge. This region of the Alps was one of the last to be opened to tourism and is not very built-up.





We rolled into Guillestre, a small town that had once been the scene of many border conflicts between the French and the Italians. We turned into the town proper, which required a brief descent, and came to the central square where we stopped for a coffee. Several of the other Tour d’Enfer participants joined us and then we started up the road for the second climb of the day, the Col de Vars.



The first climb of the day, completed
(profile from climbbybike.com)