Jun 2007

Distance - 14.51miles (23.3 km).
Distance cycled by the people who didn't wimp out after said 14.51miles - 90.23miles (144.36 km)
Max Speed - On the bike, not very much. In the van, more than was legal

I really shouldn't have. I know. So did everybody else. But even though I said so, nobody believed it. By now, I had form. For reasons that have nothing to do with logic or common sense, and lots to do with me being a suborn moron, I decided to cycle. It was the final day and I just couldn't not ride. I knew that I wouldn't last the whole day, so said beforehand that i would cycle the first half and then drive into the finish. But by now, everybody was used to me saying that i would just go a bit and see how far it made it, and subsequently cycling a whole day.

I knew that I shouldn't have started, but I just had to. Besides. We were heading to Cassis, on the coast. And were at several hundred metres. Surely, therefore, it was just a case of a nice leisurely roll down to the coast? In addition to that, Göran and Torbe had left early that morning to catch their flight back, so we were down 2 of the fast guys. Easy!

But none of that made any difference. Within 5km, I knew that it was going to be a hard day. I spent the the sitting at the back, struggling to keep up with a not particularly fast pace and in pain. For the first real time, I was in significantly more pain on a bike than off it. Another few km and I barely made over up a road bridge without collapsing in pain, and I knew that I wasn't in for a good day.
Lunch was looking like a significant stretch of suffering and any vague lingering plans I had to cycle the whole way were eztinguished. Shortly afterwards we hit a section of roadworks. The road surface had been stripped and for maybe 1500metres we went over a bouncy, pot-holed unsurfaced painfest and I finally admitted to myself that I was being a stuborn arsehole, and with a brief comment, let the others disappear for good.

Each day we had been given a small route list of towns/villages and distance. When they had been put together, spelling hadn't been highest on the list of priorities, and so some of them had come out slightly strange. Showing itself to be roughly 10km ahead was somewhere written as "La Tour". It seemed a fitting end, and i thus phoned the support van for collection, and slowly and one leggedly rolled into La Thor.

My cycling efforts were over.

La Thor is actually quite a nice little town if you aren't a half dead crippled ex-cyclist. I never want to see this bike (below) again

Though I didn't realise it, the easy part of the day was over. The real fun was just beginning.

A coffee later and Emil picked me up, and off we then headed off to try and catch the peloton. It wasn't long afterwards that we managed to drive straight into a speed trap and get stopped by the police. Have you ever been stopped by the police when in a rental van full of lots of peoples stuff and without having any idea where the heck the papers are?

If not, I can highly recommend it. Especially when your French is less than fluent and their English is nil.
On the plus point, we managed to escape without any financial settlement, due in part to the French police's bizarre insistence on being paid with a cheque. They would not accept cash or credit card, only a cheque. Even in the UK where cheques are still reasonably common, few people actually carry a cheque book around with them, yet in Sweden they have been obsolete for donkeys years. Somehow we managed to convey that. And headed on our way.

I sat glumly watching as we headed along almost entirely perfectly paved and gentle downhill (with, naturally, the wind behind us) roads for the next hour or so, cursing my knee's inability to manage a simple road bridge, when i could have spent the next couple of hours one legged and still surviving due to the wonders of this gravity thing that I've started to hear about.

Inventions these days never cease to amaze me.

It was after lunch that I started to regret, well, only having one leg. With everybody else happily on their bikes on the way to the bar (or coats, same thing), within 2km of heading off, I made the interesting discovery that flashing red lights on the fuel gauge aren't always conducive to forward motion. In the most amazing and unlikely piece of luck I've had in years, i half spluttered around a corner, and rolled down the slope into a wonderfully obliging petrol station. 200Metres further or less of a slope, and I'd have been pushing.

Some of you may recall that on Day 3, somebody had decided to liberate the GPS from our van, leaving us one window down. Thus, an hour or so later, after a pit stop with the guys, I then headed off to try and find a specific glass shop. After a couple of strange slingshots, I managed to get onto the motorway, and made it to the Airport, which was my sole point of reference. I picked a hotel at random, and found a lovely and amazingly helpful English speaking old lady who old me that it was easy but really difficult to find, and gave me instructions. It was perfect until the last 300m. It then took me a good 45mins of wandering in dispair around Marignane getting helplessly lost. I was finally put on track, to discover that I had been within 100m of the damned place on probably 6 different occassions. Yay.

The first issues to be confronted were that (a) they apparently weren’t expecting a Swedish van to appear and (b) Nobody spoke anything other than French. Oddly enough, It wasn’t just me that was having a problem with that – every other customer in the place was foreign, and thus using an entirely not understandable mixture of English, Spanish, German, Swedish, Italian and French we somehow all managed to help each other out and get our problems understood. Or, at least, we hoped so.

I then had 45mins or so to kill, so did what everey normal person would do in the same situation and went and sat in a bit of scrubland, eating a baguette and watching old people play boulles whilst Air France jets and assorted helicopters (Eurocopter are made here) passed overhead on route to Marseille airport. Magically, when I returned, the window had been fixed, and I received the keys back for the correct vehicle. More curiously, despite fully expecting and having been told to beforehand, they refused payment from me, saying it had been paid pre by a “Swedish card”. To this day, I have no idea who paid for the window.

I finally I had a window. Surely it had to be easy from here?

Whilst waiting, I had also done a little pre-planning, having suddenly realised that it I would be leaving in late afternoon on a Friday (with a long weekend coming) in rush hour traffic and that my shortest route involved ploughing right through the centre of Marseille, something that didn’t necessarily appeal to me greatly. And in trying to be clever, I plotted a different route and inadvertently dumped myself into a whole lot of new problems. And this tim, there wasn't a pschotic Japanes girl anywhere to be seen.

I won’t bore you with details [though I will note that there were a large number of stunning Mediterranean beauties wandering around in Mini’s], but suffice to say that as well as the discovery that nobody in France on a Friday afternoon cares in the slightest about speed limits (at times i was going 20 or 30kmh over the limit of 110 or 130 [it varied] on motorways and barely keeping up with articulated lorries, let alone the rest of the traffic) i got caught up in delays due to several accidents, 2 motorway closures, numerous traffic jams a second police stop of the day (they seemed to be stopping only foreign vehicles, and whilst were perfectly pleasant about it all and spoke good English, they empted the van entirely -over the motorway – and went through things thoroughly. And then said, “ok, you can go” without helping me put anything back) and finished by a wildly unhelpful diversion over a mountain half way to Toulon.

Finally, several hours later than anybody expected, and a good 4hours or so after everybody else had arrived, I crawled into Cassis, and with unexpected luck and a strange symmetry (I had started the trip driving as well), I finally rolled up to the hotel. Happy to have somehow survived the whole way, and also to have ridden as much as I did, although it would have been great to have been able to do a bit more. Of the 13cyclists, only B-G had cycled every km.

Cassis. End of the line, kind of. The castle and bits of the harbour, what would have been a more relaxing way to arrive and (bottom) the whole reason we had done this.

After all that, it might have been time for a well earned celebration dinner and the odd glass of local wine (and maybe a dozen or so beers). The following day, after a bit of touristy stuff, and, inevitably, watching the cycling in a bar in Marseille, it was just time to go home. For everybody else, it was an early flight on Sunday. For me, it was a multi-purpose week long journey via Nice, Milano, Zurich (for the same reasons as why I went that way to Paris), Belgrade, Bucuresti, the staggeringly inevitable Sopron, Wien, Nurnberg, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford and London due to a mixture of stupid Americans, problem solving, work, catching up with friends and people getting married, before the finally the normal trek back to Sweden.

Plans are already being formulated for next year’s trip. Thus, I fear that you may be hearing more of my complaints soon.

For now, I’m going to go and lie through my teeth to my surgeon and try in the hope of convincing him that I have not been on a bike (I did promise, after all), but that I have a current slight pain, and maybe he can help me out?

See the itinerary of this trip, and details about each destination.

Distance - 74.8miles (120 km)
Max speed - 42.6 mph (68.1kmh)

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"PUT me back on my bike" said Tom Simpson*. 500metres later, and barely a kilometre from the summit, he collapsed - still holding his handlebars - for second and final time. Despite the best efforts of medical personel, he was dead before the air ambulance arrived came to try and help him. Evidence of alcohol and Amphetamines, frequently used by cyclists in the 50's and 60's tohelp them get through long grueling days, were found. It was the 13th stage of the 1967 Tour de France, and Tom was heading for the summit of Mt Ventoux .

Less than 2 years earlier, Tom Simpson had become the first (and so far only) British world cycling road champion, and as well as winning Olympic and Commonwealth medals he had also won a number of one day classics, including 3 of the 5 monuments in our sport. Thats a number which outscores all otehr British cyclists combined, by 3-0. For a cyclist to die in any race is both tragic and rare, but for a big name to die on a major mountain in the Tour de France (only two riders had previously died during the Tour de France, one of whom had drowned on a rest day swim. A fourth, Fabio Casartelli, sadly died in 1995), the worlds most prestigious cycling race, was a huge loss.

Thus, Tom's death raised Mt. Ventoux from already legendary status, to that of mythical. Of other mountains, only L'Alpe d'Huez comes close to Mt. Ventoux for what it means to cyclists, and because of Tom's sad death, it has long been a place of pilgrimage, and a memorial has long existed at the spot where he died. On a daily basis, thousands of cyclists spend hours trying to work out why it seemed a good idea beforehand, whilst struggling to cycle to the top.

Even by standards of mountains used in professional cycling, Mt. Ventoux is evil. An extinct volcano, the "classic" route from Bedoiun is roughly 22km long and rises some 1600m+, with the last 16km rise at an average gradient of over 10%. Even including the relatively easy lower slopes, the total 22km averages an incline of over 7.5%. In addition, the last 7km or so are above the tree-line, and entirely exposed both to the normally fearsome heat and supreme wind. Summit winds of over 250km/h are not uncommon, and over 300 have been recorded more than once. It's a fearsome place.

Mt. Ventoux stands alone. There are no mountain's of a similar size anywhere around, meaning that it is both obvious, and viewable from a long way off. We had first seen it - and seen it properly - on scaling the second 300m pass of the previous day, with the mountain some 60km+ away. Even from such a distance, in the clear sunny sky, it looked an evil and foreboding sight.

Mt. Ventoux, taken the previous day, from a distance. It's a happy photo becasue i'm not climbing up the damned thing

I should probably note here that this long and rambling. Quit now and go and do something interesting and less painful, such as watching paint dry, or using tweezers to pluck your eyebrows.

I'm sure by now, some of you have realised that i'm not just giving you a history lesson for the fun of it. For reasons unknown, a day ride over M. Ventoux had been added to the trip's schedule early on. We aren't going anywhere. Just to the mountain and back. Our total progress is 0km, yet still we're going. I have been up the mountain in the past, and thus more than anybody else involved, had some idea of what was to come. I was hoping to convince them that it wasn't worth it. I tried bribery.

I even threatened to get Kiki involved. It didn't work.

Thus it was that on a depressingly grey day, we set out from Chateauneuf for the mountain. Actually, thats not even true. It had been designed as a day trip from our Chateauneuf base, and meaning that it was at least vaguely optional. As such, two of our motley 13 had declined to even consider the effort, and pulled out the day beforehand, in order to offer their services as support in the van. A third decided to quit that morning, whilst a fourth cheated slightly by getting a lift to the start in the van. Two more, feeling slightly panicked, switched from their normal bikes to the two bikes from the drop outs, in search of ever lower gears and some kind of salvation.

For the 9 of us that started off by bike, the ride to the start was almost the hardest part. Only 25miles, but 25miles which had me in deep trouble, and with a deep feeling of foreboding. We could see the mountain for virtually our entire trip there. Or, rather, we could see all of the mountain that was visable on our trip over. The top 3rd or so was well covered in a fairly grim and thick looking layer of low misty clouds.

This was going to hurt, and would be unpleasant into the bargain.

The previous evening, over a couple of wonderful, if not exactly Tesco value range, bottles of wine, we had come up with the idea of handicapping. Even on small climbs, as a group we had tended to split up dramatically, and gaps of many minutes were not uncommon. Thus, the idea was to start with the slowest person off first, and quickest last, with the rough idea that we would all arrive at the summit together. That way, as well as suffering like crazed wombats all day, we could suffer like crazed wombats in a kind of race.

Entering Bedoiun, the town at the base of the mountain

The Kaizer was to set off first, a minute from Frederik, whilst our former Swedish champ Goran was given an hour and Hasse would be last to start, a full 90minutes after the Kazier. I was plopped in at 45mins alongside Emil - the only two to start together - just ahead of B-G and behind Torbe, in what would probably have been reasonably fair if I hadn't been struggling to stand unaided, let alone walk. The idea being that I would take roughly 2hrs 15 to scale the mountain, Hasse 90minutes and the Kazier about 3hours.

Thus, after cheering off the Kaizer and Frederik, then going for a coffee, then cheering off Christer, Mats and Torbjorn, refilling my bottles, leaving my helmet in the van, uttering an oath at the realisation that i had no bananas, putting in my MP3 player and converting to all known religions at once, in search of divine anything (except Brown), it was time to go.

The first 3 or 4 km are reasonably easy, the next 2 or 3 OK. Actually, that's a lie, but it serves it's purpose. In fact there is even a very slight downhill section at one point. But then, it starts to go uphill with increasing rapidity, then suddenly, brutally. Even on the relatively shallow first parts (5% or so), I was passing cyclists really struggling. Some of them would be taking 4 or 5hours + to reach the top, if, in fact, they ever did.

The MP3 player in question is not the famous one from a previous blog, but a newer smaller one. But it did seem to share the same wicked humour as it's bigger brother. I realised this just as i turned the hairpin corner which more or less launches into the evil 15km or so section, and was instantly treated to a French song called "La Precipice". I didn't even know I owned such a song, let alone where it had come from. I also had the almost inevitable "Misty Mountain Hop", "up where we belong" and "Baby I love your way [sung by Big Mountain]" amongst any others.

There are certain good things about Mt. Ventoux from a cyclists point of view, if you can call anything that you have to suffer for 2hours and 12% inclines on "good". The first of these is that whilst there is a road over the top and down the other side, the climb doesn't actually go anywhere useful. It's not a major mountain pass, thus there is very little vehicular traffic. In addition, what traffic there is, 90% of it is Dutch, Belgian and German cycle fans or families of cyclists along to watch their loved ones suffer and offer support. Thus, there was a constant smattering of people to cheer you along, offer you water, laugh at you, or at the very least, not mow you down in their cars as they pass. And of course, lots of other cyclists both struggling up, or relieved to be coming back down. The other bonus is that because of it's status as both a major cycling pilgramage site and regular feature in races, the French keep the surface more or less perfect. You can (and do) complain and swear about many things on your asscent, but the smooth tarmac surface can't really be amongst them.

From that first hairpin, the climb twists steeply up through the trees. It's windy enough that you never have more than maybe 300m of road heading up in your sight, but that's a small bonus. After about 8km or so, i was forced to stop for a nature break, during which Emil, who had been roughly 200m behind me since about the 500m mark, passed me, not to be seen again until the summit. From then, I was in real trouble. The following 5km or so, at 9-12%, were by far the worst for me. My Knee was not happy, and mean't I was forced to stop roughly every km to rest for a minute or so (when i also tried to eat and drink), just so i had a little less pain. With about 9km to go, and having just caught Christer for 15minutes, i took a rest stop at the van for a few minutes and to spray my knee with evil stuff, which helped greatly (and during which time, a boy of maybe 14 shot past us at maybe 3times the speed I had been struggling up at, and with an entire chain ring of lower gears still to go)

A kilometre or so later, and I was past Chalet Reynard, and rapidly - well, not rapidly, but in a short distance - entered thick layers of fog, with which came both drizzle and a sharp drop in temperature. In some respects, the weather was actually not bad for climbing. I was sweating like a pig and hot enough anyway, and the fog and rain removed two of the normal major problems of the upper sections of Ventoux - namely the fearsome sun and temperatures, plus the fact that because it is entirely barren that high, you can see exactly where you have to go, which can be somewhat soul destroying. With things as it were, at most you had glimpses of road 100m ahead (and, admittedly, 15 or 20m up) but never got to see the scope of the remainder of the climb.

In the closing kilometres, the French have helpfully put up posts along the road with a decreasing number of metres still to climb on them, allowing you to have some useful scale of your progress or lack of. It is actually a very useful pscyhological aid, as realising that you only have 200m to climb can be a godsend. Having said that, whichever b*stard thought it funny to put a 80m advance in them (310, 300, 290, 370, 360, What the ****?!) is not, shall we say, going to be on my Christmas Card list this year.

Mt Ventoux is probably the only hill i have ever climbed on my - or anybody else's, for that matter - bicycle where I have actually been truly happy to see a sign saying "next 1000m, 8.1% gradient". That is still monstrously steep, but after several kilometres of steeper stuff, almost makes it feel like you are going downhill.

With just a few km remaining, i suddenly started catching people at regular intervals - Torbe, Frederik, the Kaizer. And then we came to Tom's memorial. Most people don't stop, simply because they can't face then having to get back on the bike and continue climbing, but despite the cold wet fog and patches of snow on the ground, I had to pay my respects. Leaving the bike, and limping up the 5m or so to Tom's memorial, just to look, remember and pay my respects. The effort almost crippled me. From a physical point of view it wasn't a clever idea [though it certainly wasn't as stupid as deciding to climb the damned mountain in the first place], but I just had to do it.

Torbe at Tom Simpson's memorial. Rest in peace, Tom

I remounted, spurred on by the knowledge that it wasn't far to go now, and that I might actually somehow make it. By the top, visability was 3 or 4 metres at most, and the last 100m (which only Hasse and I had known about beforehand) are not fun. You think you have reached the summit, and then suddenly you round an evil hairpin, straight into a roughly 20% section, from which the wind is blasting straight down into your face, and slowing you down below walking pace [and in many cases, off bikes and actually walking].

But, somehow, I had made it, and I more or less fell into the side of the van at the top in celebration/exhaustion.

Surprisingly, our handicapping had worked out reasonably well, and we all arrived inside about a 15minute window of each other. I came in about 2minutes under my predicted handicap time, good enough for both 4th to the summit and 4th fastest. Emil had come up first, ahead of B-G and Mats P. The Kazier made it in 3hr 2, and Hasse, although not seeing any of us on the way up at all, in 1h 35. Göran had pulled out and been collected by the van after about 15km, struggling too much with the conditions.

The Kaizer drying off, and with Hasse on top of Mt. Ventoux. Feck me, i made it!

From there, it was but an easy ride home. In theory. Though I had been clever enough to chuck all my extra clothing into the van, which I enthusiastically chucked on as fast as my frostbitten and shaking hands would allow, i still had to get down again. And there were still no bananas.

My clear glasses, planned as a cunning aid to help me decend were useless - There was just too much mist and rain and they fooged up. We were then swiftly treated to freezing hail stones, meaning my visability changed from about 4metres to maybe 1. Thus, at as slow a speed as possible when you are in a really hurry to get somewhere - anywhere - else, reduced to using one squinting eye and only one leg, and with gravity enthusiastially doing what it does best, the few idiots of us stupid enough to try and ride off the mountain (some decided that a van ride made much more sense) we made our way slowly off the mountain. Frederik, someway behind, punctured on the way down.

But in the end, 6 of us ended up back in Bedoiun, shivering like hell and trying to hold whiskey and hot coffee cups enough to enable them to be drunk from, whilst awaiting the van. In typical events, a slight misunderstanding meant that the remaining riders then left without us, leaving B-G and myself to cycle the 25miles back to base alone, an event which got increasingly miserable (due to the increased need for more food and less clothing to be worn, amongst other insignificant things like pain) and involved us getting slightly lost twice into the bargain, before my knee finally gave out for good about 3km from home. For the third consecutive day, i trailed in last, alone and one legged and in slight pain...

I plan to ride half of tomorrow, but at the moment, that seems unlikely.

Waiting for a pizza, reward for a hard days cycle and a way of avoiding the flippin' huge thunderstorm going on outside

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Iban Mayo, a Spanish professional and mountain goat, holds the record with an ascent a shade under 56minutes. I was more than double that, at 2hrs 11 (though i'd guess my actual climbing time, as opposed to resting time, was probably about 1.55-2hrs), but I had conquered the mountain, without any illegal drugs [we'd tried hard to find the before we started, but had failed...] and that was more than good enough for me.

• Actually, he never said that. The words were made up by a journalist who wasn't actually there, but they certainly encompased his feelings at the time and have gone down in legend, if not truth, as his final words.

START IDEAL 14,8KM TOP TIME PLACE
KAIZER 12:00 3:00 1:52 15:02 3:02 (-2) 8
FREDRIK 12:01 2:59 1:56 (1:55) 15:00 2:59 (+1) 6
CHRISTER 12:30 2:30 2:08 (1:38) 15:01 2:31 (+1) 7
MATS P 12:35 2:25 2:02 (1:27) 14:49 2:14 (-11) 2
TORBE 12:40 2:20 2:06 (1:26) 14:58 2:18 (-2) 5
RICH 12:45 2:15 2:07 (1:23) 14:56 2:11 (-4) 4
EMIL 12:45 2:15 2:04 (1:19) 14:43 1:58 (-17) 1
BG 12:50 2:10 2:07 (1:13) 14:49 1:59 (-11) 2
GÖRAN 13:00 2:00 2:31 (1:31) - - - DNF
HANS J 13:30 1:30 2:32 (1:02) 15:05 1:35 (+5) 9

Distance - 101.1 miles (163 km)
Max Speed - 38.9mph (62.25 kph)

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You know the feeling you get when you wake up on a Monday morning and think, oh **** not again? If we ignore the fact that I actually have that same feeling every day of my entire life, that’s how I felt waking up that lovely morning. Breakfast, some painkillers, half a can of deep heat, half a jar of Tiger Balm and an assortment of bandages later, and I made the sort of decision that I knew that I shouldn’t but equally, was bound to make. I was going to (attempt) to ride.

My overriding goal before I started this trip was to complete an entire day. I’ve already achieved that. Twice. And yet for some strange reason, I seemed to be intent upon destroying the last remnants of ligament and cartilage and riding even when I don’t have to, and despite virtually everybody else telling me not to.

But I figured that I couldn’t quit just like that, and should at least attempt a bit.

I’m a bl00dy muppet sometimes.

Cycling through French vineyards and fruit trees in teh early morning sun. What could be better?

But, finally, the weather gods had decided to offer some relief, and it was a lovely hot day. I realised that whilst it was still impossible for me to walk of stand in any kind of comfort, cycling was actually possible, and so I just sat near the back and tried to avoid any kind of hard work. It was one of those days when I remember very little except that it just got hotter and hotter, and for reasons that I can’t really remember, we didn’t stop for coffee until well after half way. I’m used to drinking lots and lots of coffee (and tea and coke), and thus it’s possible that I may have become slightly grumpy due to a lack of caffeine…

We had a mostly flat morning, followed by a leisurely 300m or so climb and roll down to our coffee pause in La Begude. I was originally planning to maybe quit there, but wa still feeling ok, and thus in my stupidity, decided to continue to cycle to the end. That was followed directly by a slightly longer climb which more or less told me what I needed to know for the following day. Due to a slight technical issue that need not concern us, I was the last person to start the climb by a few minutes. I then swept past everybody up to the front duo, and then even passed them for a bit, before my knee decided that it wasn’t going to allow me to do anything more, thereby I was reduced to a slow pedal on my twiddling ring, whilst a succession of people then caught and passed me at speed.

I was also privilaged to have a power-gel sachet explode in my pocket, thus cunningly both (a) sticking everything together and making a right old mess, but perhaps more importantly (b) depriving my body of it’s contents.

Hint: Taking photos of stunning villages and towns one handed, whilst heading down the side of a mountain on a bicycle isn't really all that clever, though it does sometimes kind of work

As we came down the other side, we were treated to a sight which is both wonderful and scary. In the lovely hot clear skies, the imposing sight of Mt Ventoux, a legendary cycling mountain some 50km + away, was clearly visible, jutting up from nothing, and dominating the area for miles around.

The legendary Mt. Ventoux appears out of nowhere, and is suddenly right there, impossing on everything

It was another couple of Swedish miles later that the inevitable occurred. My knee was already starting to struggle a bit with the pace, when we made a turning down a narrow road. Not too bad in itself, but the surface was far from pristine, and the constant bouncing around through small potholes jarred my knee to the point that it decided to finish the days shift there and then. Sadly, we were still almost 50km from the days finish.

Thus the one legged cyclist made a less than triumphant return appearance

And definitely not by popular demand.

Frederik and Christer still looking surprisingly happy, and with the support van in tow. I really need to find out what is in Frederiks water bottle and get some

I was partly helped by a decision to go off course and find a place to stop for more important matters. It’s the queen stage of the Giro d’Italia, and they are finishing today on top of the Monte Zoncolan, a desperately fearsome Mountain which gains 1203metres in only 10.1km, at an average of almost 12%. But that’s only half the story. The first 8km are relatively sedate and easy at “only” 8% or so average. The final 2km however, average almost 20% gradient and reach almost 25% for almost half a kilometre.

Rather them than me.

Above - If my timing had been better, that would have a been a picture of us watching cyclists struggling whilst having a beer in a pub. Sadly, it's not. Below - The Kaizer (Jan Ullrich) is well known for his love of cream cakes in the off season, but perhaps took it to extremes last winter...

So a pub was found, beer was ordered, and we watched – in sympathetic pain, or in my case, just pain in general - as some of the biggest names in sport fought their ay to the top, at times (and this was for the leaders) at speeds of barely 5mph. Everybody then shot off leaving me to negotiate the final 20km or so one legged, alone and sweltering in the heat, hoping like heck that my memory of the area was enough for me to find the town we were staying in, and that my luck would enable me to find a useful hotel. Preferably the one everybody else was in.

On the third attempt, and after being reduced to a sedate 10kmh struggle up something which can’t even really be called a hill, I did.

One lovely feature of Swedish people is their ability to get burnt quickly. And today, it has been hot. I have a vague brown tan. The Swedish guys spent the evening comparing sun burn, and the stunning contrasts between red and pink where their jersey/shorts lines were.

Tomorrow won’t be fun.

And not just because of my knee.

Emil has a strange sense of humour, and has added a nice little extra for us

The T-Kartor team diligently protecting the yellow jersey from an attack by the Kaizer. Or something

Distance – 110.5 miles (176.8 km)
Max speed – 48.6mph ( 77.6 kmh)

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Hard at work... But it has finally stopped raining

I'll say one thing about fancy French Chateauxs. They really know how to put on a breakfast spread. A happy stomach and bulging pockets later, it was time to attempt the impossible. I had to somehow get on my bike. It was a serious challenge. The interesting discovery that it was for the longest day, over 50km further than the previous day didn't necessarily help my mood either. 165km was scheduled. Torbe, the second half of team-Bianchi (with the Kaizer) was stuck searching for a bike store after his bike come down with sympathy for the Kaizer's Bianchi, when it's rear dérailleur had decided that it was time to retire...

After a less than exciting start, with the weather still overcast we eventually found our way onto a handful of decent roads, and I began to realise that it was actually easier to ride a bicycle than it was to do other physical exertions, such as standing or walking. And my back seemed to be fine as well. And just like that, the miles started to roll past. Almost without realising it, we had passed Lyon, skirted the logistics warehouses by Satolas airport. Then as it started to rain and get a bit grim again, we got lost trying to find a road out of Heyrieux, and a feeling of dread started to encompass me.

Sometimes, you've just got to go...

Then, whilst taking a comfort break under some trees, we were passed by two lovely scantily clad girls out jogging, and suddenly, everything started to work again. Kind of. After about 5minutes. We left Heyrieux via a lovely little 14% back road. Only 200m or so, but in retrospect, perhaps trying to sprint up it wasn't my cleverest idea. But after then lying on the concrete for a few minutes in pain, something happened. I have no idea what.

But the rain stopped, the sun started making occasional fleeting appearances, and i finally worked out how to sit to minimise pain as we sped towards Vienne. Two were blown out the back, and then as happens periodically with lunchtime on the horizon, Hasse and Göran started slowly winding things up. On a small rise, we spread right out before hitting a long rolling downhill section, which turned into a good 10km descent. By the time we had hit the bottom a while later, there were only 5 of is left. Probably this was because we hadn't actually looked at the map, and had thus gone the wrong way....

A long wait followed before phone contact established that they had all been waiting in the town centre for several minutes, had met the van and were happily eating lunch. But on our attempts at then finding the town centre, we even found a real bike shop. Which was lucky, as as we then rolled down to the river and on to the bike path into centre trying to find the others, the Kaizer's bike gave out properly, and Team Bianchi was no more.

We walked the last few hundred metres into town in glorious summer sunshine, and joined the rest basking in the sun on the steps to the cathedral. Vienne really is a lovely town, a former Roman town and home to an important Archbishop-ry. Quite what it is thus doing being twinned with Port Talbot, I’m not quite sure. But it worked. A couple of hours later, spirits were good, Team Bianchi were both on there way to getting fixed and we were well over half way, though it was suddenly realised that time was passing fast.

Having lunch in Vienne on the steps of the lovely cathedral

I like hills, I always have. And short Steep ones have always been a particular favourite of mine. However, I’m not a big fan having climbs without any kind of warm up. Thus, as a handful of us headed off after lunch (the rest would follow when Team Bianchi were up and running), and we got about 120metres through Vienne, I was slightly perturbed to see it suddenly go up. Sharply. Vienne is on the Rhone in the river valley, situated at roughly 160metres altitude. Barely 2kilometres later, we had risen to almost 400m, up a steep and narrow (if lovely) hair-pined road. It was slightly perturbing to see the 4 guys behind me after the first 50metres, then 100m later, nobody at all. By the time it had levelled out near the top, I decided I had to stop and wait, simply to make sure that I had gone the correct way. When i realised that I had, i could at least get to watch people suffering if looking surprisingly happy as they passed me.

B-G (reading the map as always), Christer and Mats (behind) and Frederik, after the steep parts and near the top of the climb out of Vienne, looking surprisingly happy

Some days are characterised by certain themes. Today’s theme is barking dogs. Lots and lots of f*cking barking dogs. Large ones. Oh, and getting lost. Every few hundred metres we seemed to come upon an even louder and larger barking dogs. And we got lost. A while later, just as everybody had caught up and we were back together as one, Christer managed to puncture and then fall off in the process of stopping. Cunningly, the puncture was fixed, but without anybody checking the tyre. Muppets. Thus, five metres later, the same thing that had punctured it first time around, punctured it again. But of course, by then, all bar three had continued without realising. And we’d gone the wrong way.

A couple of pictures telling a familiar story. Yup, we're lost again... (before lunch trying to work our way around Satolas Airport, and then in the afternoon, down to 7 after the puncture and having lost people in all directions - who all arrived before us)

What followed was an ever increasing number of backtracks, and loosing of people. Retrospectively, it was thus probably unlucky that I ended up in a strong group of 7, which then whittled down to 5 as the scorching heat, distance, and in particular speed. The speed was partly due to some fantastic roads, partly due to Hasse and Göran deciding they wanted some fun, and partly in trying to get to the finish before it got dark. For the last 90mins or so, we average well over 25mph (40 kmh), and were often significantly higher. It was great. I started feeling like a cyclist again. Flying through great Foreign scenery with serious and good company, and feeling good despite having already come 100miles that day. It was pure magic. And the closer we got, the faster we went. We had even just about lost Team Bianchi and were down to the last 3 when I suddenly heard the most amazing cracking sound and was treated to a wonderful sensation of, well, lots and lots of pain, as my (good) right knee decided to go on instant strike and more or less disintegrated there and then. It wasn’t fun.

1980 Swedish national champion, Göran Bakfors, resplendant in his yellow jersey, on the charge after lunch, but before it started to go slightly pear shaped

As Team Bianchi then passed me, I was left to reflect on the fact that I could have done something easy like be a brain surgeon, raise a dozen kids with Kiki, become a Nuclear weapons inspector in North Korea or have been Turkmenbashi the greats right hand man, but oh no, I had to try and recreate my youthful stupidity and get on a damned bike again. I was reduced to a combination of rolling-cycling on just one leg (my left, and yes, my left is the one which historically has the worst knee and the one whose ankle I had utterly b*ggered once and for all in the curious stair falling incident years ago, which had more or less finally ended any cycling exploits which could even be considered vaguely serious) with my right one hanging free, slightly comically looking.

Thank god for clipless pedals is all I can say.

My spirits were only marginally improved by the fact that the road was perfectly surfaced and rolling slowly downhill. Yes, it helped me continue (and keep up a decent-ish speed), but it was a great stretch to be going down at full-tilt. Maybe 20mins later, I reached a village near the bottom where the guys were waiting to tell me the good news that we were lost and nobody actually knew which chateau we were suppose to be going to. A few phone calls later, and opinion was still divided. Some rolled back up the hill, some stood around. I lay on the floor and pondered superstring theory. Or something. Then, having received news from somewhere, everybody headed back the way we had come for a few km.

And this time in it’s fickeltyness (I have no idea if that’s a word or not, but I like it) gravity wasn’t going to help me. As I watched them head off, Mats and Frederik, the two we had jettisoned off the back on our run down suddenly appeared, convinced that we were actually in the right place [the village had a large and suspiciously obvious chateaux like building on the cliff above us], and went to investigate. I did the only thing I possibly could in the situation, and lay down again. At that point, the support van appeared, confirming that we were indeed supposed to be somewhere else, and trying to get me to quit and get a lift. Sometimes I can be a stupid stubborn MF, and thus declined. I couldn’t possibly quit only 4km from the end, however much I would have liked to. Thus I embarked on an agonizing, uphill, one leg struggle to reach the chateau. 1km from the end, the van again tried to get me to quit. Apparently, I looked as though I was in a small amount of pain.

Somehow though, I made it, and rolled in alone, although not quite last. It later transpired that only B-G and Christer had actually arrived together at the front. Everybody else having arrived in dribs and drabs over the next 90minutes having taken a variety of wrong turns. Mats mentioned that the other chateau actually had looked very nice

A hospital would have been a clever idea. I settled for booze.

Then, just to top off my afternoon, I cunningly, managed to get completely lost inside the chateau searching for a room whose number I didn’t know, and in the corridors of which had no mobile phone coverage. Oh yes. Whilst cartographers can – and do - get lost out in the open from time to time, I am proud of my ability to get lost inside a building which I am reduced to hopping around.

Sadly for Greg, the day wasn’t topped off with an impressive display of flying cars or even F1 vehicles. Instead we got police. Whilst in a restaurant in a nearby town that evening, some presumably bored (and lost) kid had decided that he liked the look of the GPS machine on the windscreen of the van so much, that it should be his. A broken Swedish van window later and it indeed was.

Distance - 77.4 miles (124 km)
Top speed - 39.3 mph (63 kmh)

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Some days you kind of know that you could be in trouble. While awaiting people to get ready, I went for a slight spin around the yard and had a slight problem. On discovering that one of my cleats was full of cr*p and wouldn't clip in, and thus bent down to clean it up. Wrenched my back out completely and then watched, still half bent over trying to work out how to get up again, as the rest of the guys rolled out on day 2.

I knew then it wouldn't be a good day.

A few km down the road and the Kaizer's chain snapped. We'd managed the first day with only one puncture, and that was more or less too good to last. Things were rapidly going downhill.

This isn't very helpful when it happens to you in the middle of nowhere....

After fudging a repair, the mornings festivities included a collection of littering on to the road, where we dispersed random items such as a map, sun glasses and credit card and 50euro note, all of which we somehow managed to recover through a combination of luck and dumb luck, and wind blowing the correct things at peoples faces as it was removed from pockets. God only knows what we weren't lucky enough to save.

They then degenerated into interesting knee pains (it was coming, i was just amazed it took so long to appear) which did at least have the benefit of taking my mind of my back pains, and took on their inevitable end in a miserable couple of hours before lunch which were windy and raining. And then very raining. Yay. At lunch, I was then privileged to pay 13euros for a salad and water.

An SMS talking about Kiki didn't help my mood.

At least by the afternoon things had dried up a bit and it was at least not raining. Sadly, however, it was all uphill. The first hill was one of those kind of rambling ones that just drags on and drags on, sapping energy and constantly gnawing at your morale, but never really being all that difficult, and thus making you feel even worse about it. Hasse even managed to fall off at the top, though nobody is particularly sure how.

In typical fashion, we then shot downhill for a few km, just to be confronted with another hill, going back over the same damned ridge we had just gone up and then come back down from. Sometimes, as a cyclists, you can't help but just dispair. The Col du Fut d'Avenas is a 737m high summit in the Bourgogne, with about 500metres of climbing. It was our first "major" climb, though obviously, by Alpine standards, it would barely register. It was a strange climb for me, with different bits of my body objecting at different times. I struggled with the attritional drag at the bottom and paid no interest when the front trio shot off, struggling as I was just to keep up with the next group. Then as it started to rise a little more, i shot up the road, and almost bridged across, before it flattened out a bit more and I fell right back to the next group, after realising that I was stuck in no mans land. Within 30seconds of falling back, the climb suddenly started again, and i turned around to discover that i'd already gained about 300metres, the last I saw of anybody, baring B-G flying past me about 3/4 of the way up.

By now it was actually warming up a bit and I was over dressed, alternating between decent sensations and evil knee pains. It was steep enough and the pain bad enough that I was depressed at having to drop onto my small front ring, something I always try to avoid. Then, maybe 3km from the top, it suddenly got awfully grey and then rainy. I rolled up to the top just as the leading 4 were about to head down. After a few minutes at the van, route checking (i'd hoped to learn from yesterday's balls up) and redressing to the conditions, i started down. By now it was pissing it down, increasingly chilly and visibility was fast becoming, well, a pipedream. 200metres later, and the horizontal hail storms started. Now, i don't mind rain, and I enjoy descending, but falling off a mountainside in freezing hailstones and low visibility is not my idea of fun. It was odd in that i could see 15km away reasonably well. But b*llocks could I see what was 15m ahead.

I'm not entirely sure why we seem to be ending each day with a climb, but i sure as heck hope it's not a habit we're going to get into.

A combination of a desire to be somewhere - anywhere - else, a surprisingly steep decent, strong tail [mostly] wind, some slightly manic descending and, essentially, the fact that my fingers were just too cold to be able to grip the breaks as much as I needed to slow me enough mean't I came off the mountain faster than was probably safe, and my line through one or two corners perhaps wasn't quite as planned as i would have liked and might have been interesting had a car suddenly appeared... I shot past B-G who was going very slowly (he had working brakes) and caught the front trio, and then stayed behind slightly just to give myself some chance of avoiding all the spray. Which mean't I was just that bit far away when they took off, leaving me with a maniacal chase hanging about 100m off the back and thus using more energy than any of them. We then hit then inevitable 100 short uphill stretch near the bottom and trying to keep the momentum/speed up, more or less did for my knee and back simultaneously, though it did suddenly stop rain/hailing.

We entered a small town with narrow twisting roads near at bottom, and in my surprise at the sudden emergence of a both a Ferrari and a rather large lorry headed straight towards me, caused me to loose concentration. Thus i rounded a corner to realise that there were no other cyclists anywhere in sight. This is becoming a habit I don't wish to retain. Happily, a quick 180 head swivel saw them disappear down a side road I had missed and I was able to rectify matters. 500m and we turned right, into a fearsome headwind which reduced me to a painful crawl, onto the approach road to a wonderful looking Chateau.

We thus rolled up, cold, soaked through and not entirely un-miserable looking to a fantastic chateau, where we were greeted by a slightly amused manager, and two rabbits and a peacock who were getting worryingly friendly with each other. We shortly realised that the chateaus other guests had arrived both drier, and in a slightly different (and some may say classier) style - a party of some 50+ Dutch Ferrari drivers. Cheating b*stards! I am wondering how the daily BMW-Porsche-Ferrari curve can continue tomorrow though.

Some of us arrived on bikes, tired and drenched, having just scaled two mountain passes in first pissing rain and then freezing horizontal hail stones. The rest of them arrived in Ferrari's.

By nature i tend to travel at the budget end of the spectrum, and am thus not entirely accustomed to the sorts of luxuries provided at such locales, let alone the prices one pays for the privilege. But at that point, i really couldn't care less. I needed a hot shower, somewhere to dry my clothes/shoes, and, of course, food and booze, and a large area to limp around in hope of a miraculous recovery.

To rub it in, we then went back up the mountain (now in lovely clear-ish weather) for dinner at a summit restaurant, though at least by then we got a chance to see a bit of the view. Not too bad, either.

Before I got roped into this mugs game of a trip, I said that if i could manage to complete a single day cycling (ideally without embarrassing myself by coming in many hours down) I would be delighted. It's only the end of Day 2, and i've met that goal. Anything more that I manage now is a bonus, though by how I currently feel, that seems unlikely to be much.

Being able to stand unaided or walk would be a major help at this point.

Bits of the view from the summit of the Col de Fut d'Avernas on our evening return