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Published: August 3rd 2006
The real winner of the Tour de France
No blood packs or testosterone injections needed, just some pastry and a bit of wine! If a Danish guy can win the mountain jersey, so can I!!!Imagine this:
500,000 people ready to party
200 of the best riders in the world
1 mountain
Not only is Alp d’Huez famous for being one of the hardest climbs in the Tour but it is also renowned for having one of the most amazing crowds where everyone gets dressed up and parties all day. Normally you think those stories you hear are slightly exaggerated but this time I had not in my wildest fantasies imagined that a whole mountain could erupt in such a big party. Even from the soccer field where Christian and I had pitched our tent at the bottom of the mountain, we could hear the music and feel the vibrations of the party happening on the mountain several days before the tour reached the mountain. There were Dutch fans dressed up in Orange t-shirts and clogs, Danish supporters in Viking hats, German supporters in pink (!) T-mobile gear and of course the Australian supporters with their blow up kangaroos (seriously).
They say Alp d’Huez is one of the toughest mountains to climb and many riders dream of one day conquering this massive hill. You climb from Bourg d’Oisans which is the town at
Burgundy Beauty
I fell in love with all the beautiful flowers that decorated the stunning little French villages the foot of the mountain to the top over 13,8km rising from 730m to 1860m elevation through 21 hair pin turns with an average gradient of 12%. Bring on the challenge. We had planned to ride up the mountain on race day but realised we might need a bit of training before hand, so two days before the race we decided to ride half way up to get a feel for it. Needless to say that once you take on the mountain, you start a battle between yourself and the mountain. And there is no backing down once you have turned the first corner. You either give in and let the mountain beat you or you go on, give it everything you have, even when your legs are ready to give in, you keep going. And whatever you do, don’t look up. Nothing is more disheartening than seeing the road above you seem to continue all the way into the sky, as to say, this road will never end so just give up now. But I didn’t give up and as I turned the last corner 1 hour and 15min later, all tiredness seemed to disappear and was replaced by
On top of the world!
After 3 1/2h of climbing we finally reached the summit - 2,645m, what a feeling! a wonderful feeling of achievement and well-being. I stopped by the water fountain for some well-deserved cold alpine water and a couple of chocolate croissants and let out a big scream: “I did it” to the surprise of all the fat American tourists around me who obviously either had helicoptered or taken the limo up the mountain.
There is something remarkable about conquering a mountain. I mean, the feeling of achievement is always great whether it is a career, sports or just a personal goal. However, the symbolic notion of actually climbing up a mountain, slowly making progress, seeing the sky get nearer is absolutely amazing. And then when you finally stand on top of the mountain you have defeated, you are literally on top of the world touching the sky. Those are the rare moments in life when you feel invincible and you know there is nothing in the world that you cant do as long as you put your heart and mind to it. Moments when it is truly great to be alive.
Le Tour
But of course this blog is not all about me. There happened to be 200 so called pro-riders in the region
Stopping for a crepe on our way up Col de Galibier
Check out the back drop! Oh I could do this every day! who thought they could ride a bike too. The main difference between them and me is of course that they cant ride up the same hill without an extra blood pack and a band aid of testorone between their buttocks whereas for me it just took some baguettes with Nutella for breakfast and I was flying. Joke aside, I have great respect for le Tour and everyone involved and think it’s a damn shame that a few riders ruin it for everyone else.
So two days later, we climbed Alp d’Huez again (why stop at once?) however this time cheered on by the half a million people who had already found a spot on the mountain and who were waiting for the Tour. It was such a crazy experience as there were so many riders cycling up the mountain and people running all over the road. However, everyone yelled out their support and in particular I got big cheers from the Danish crowds wearing my Danish top. The good thing was that now I knew that I could actually do the climb I had all the time in the world to stop and take photos of the fantastic atmosphere. The
Gorges de l'Ardeche
Our first ride through the gorge ended up being the hardest ride of them all as the temperature soared to 44 degrees and my water start boiling (nearly) - but beautiful it was! best experience I had was when a very nice looking Italian man rode up next to me as we were climbing to the top and said : “Bella Ragazza” and took a photo of me. Obviously they don’t have chicks on bikes in Italy!!!
So after a great lunch on top of the mountain we decided to ride down a couple of turns to find a good spot to watch the tour from. Meanwhile the gendarmes had closed off the road, so we had to carry our bikes a couple of kilometres through bush and other obstacles till we found a spot where we could watch the race. And boy, was it worth the hardship. About an hour before the riders come through, the so called caravan passes by. It is essential advertising on wheels with every sponsor of the Tour having some sort of float or vehicle with very loud music passing by. They all through free merchandise at spectators and let me tell you a couple of French sausages come in handy when you have been waiting for three hours on a mountain so both Christian and I got in there knocking over a few kids in
Dinner on the bike
When cycling becomes a life style. We stopped by a supermarket on our way back from a ride and luckily our Pasta Cabonara dinner fitted in our back pockets - including the baguette!!! order to secure ourselves some freebies. Survival of the fittest is all I can say. The most amazing thing that happened was when the first rider came near where we were. You start seeing a couple of helicopters hovering further down the mountain and then you start hearing the roar of the crowd getting closer and closer and all of a sudden everyone around you erupts in euphoria when they see the first rider. Wicked.
The first rider in this case was of course the DANISH team, CSC rider, Frank Schleck who won this stage to the delight of all the Danish fans on the mountain. However, what was so cool about being so close to the riders, I could have reached out and touched them if I wanted to, was to see the look on their faces. They had just ridden 200km (that day only) and were climbing one of the hardest mountains in the world and were only a couple of km’s from the finish line. The look of exhaustion, pain, suffering, concentration and determination was remarkable. Every single rider as they turned the corner looked to the top of the mountain to assess the remaining distance
Party on a mountain
Stopping to say hello to some country fellowmen on my way up Alp d'Huez on race day. and every one of them had the same look of exhaustion. On one side it makes you truly appreciate and respect the monstrous achievement that is le Tour de France, on the other hand, it makes you feel really good about yourself that even these fine tuned human cycling machines suffer too.
Naturally it took us a day to recover from the amazing experience that is the Alp d’Huez. Everyone on our campsite were all fanatic bike enthusiast and I don’t think I have ever seen so many cyclists in the world as in Bourg d’Oisans during the Tour days. Whenever you went for a ride, cyclists far outnumbered cars and you had to constantly overtake (or once in a while you were overtaken by some skinny Italian boy) other cyclists which was quite a strange feeling. It was all a big mixture of people with mountain bikes, road bikes and of course the hard core people who had ridden on their touring bikes from Holland, German or wherever. Respect. The funniest story from our campsite however was waking up in the middle of the night to the some rather peculiar sounds from the tent next door. The tent
Vive Alp d'Huez
Only a snap shot of the hundreds of thousands of people cheering us on as we headed up the mountain. was a one-person tent but slept two rather feminine looking German touring cyclists. All I can say is that the peculiar sounds definitely involved slapping of some sort! The joys of camping, eh?
From our friendly German neighbours we learnt that another mountain pass a bit further away was actually a much harder climb than Alp d’Huez, so naturally we decided to give this a go. Col de Galibier is 2,645m high and it is a continuous climb for 45km. Yes, that’s 45km. And let me tell you the climbing is not the worst part of it. That’s the tunnels. Imagine riding through a 500m tunnel with no lights on and just listening to the roar of a truck entering the tunnel behind you and looking at the oncoming traffic knowing there is no room for the truck, the car and you. And I wonder who would lose? The worst part is of course that you are climbing up hill so you are going so slow and there is no little stop area along the way. Scary let me tell you. Luckily I only had one very close call but somehow it helped closing my eyes and not breathing
So French!
More Burgundy beauty - this is Avalon the most beautiful French village you can imagine. We rode along the river most of the way. until the truck had passed me. On the other hand, the best part about the Galibier is the amazing scenary. The entire ride was full of beautiful views of mountains, glaciers, green fields, valleys, lakes and little pretty villages. Absolutely stunning and in fact so stunning that it distracted me from the fact that three hours later I was still climbing! The last 8km of the climb to the peak was unfortunately steeper than Alp d’Huez and I was beginning to truly hurt when I said to Christian: Wouldn’t it be great with some music. Lucky for me, Christian thought the ride was like a little joy ride down Tamaki Drive so he decided to sing all the way to the top while I was spitting and gasping for air. 3 1/2 hours of continuous climbing I finally reached the top of the world. 2,645m, what a view and what an achievement. Meanwhile Christian thought that it was a great warm up, so while I started the hairy 1 1/2h descent back to camp he continued on to climb another two mountain passes to get back to the camp site 10 ½ hours and 210km later. Show off!!! So for
le Tour
thought I better add a picture of some of the so called pro riders to prove we actually did see the Tour!!! However most of our pictures of the riders are actually movie clips, so I cant attach the close ups here. This is from the Montelimar stage where Jens Voigt (CSC) won - you can just make him out in the pic. both of us it became the longest ride of our lifetime, definitely worth a 2 Euro bottle of wine to celebrate!
France is more than le Tour
Although the main objective of our trip was to watch a few of the Tour stages and climb Alp d’Huez we actually managed to see a lot more than just skinny guys in lycra and one mountain. In fact, we drove 2,700km around France in our rental car and rode nearly 600km (I think Christian doubled that!) in just 17 days. So you can say we “got around”. For a detailed map of our tour, click on the map on top of the page. Although I have been to France quite a few times before, I must admit that riding a bike through the country side gives you a much more in-depth experience of the country. You really feel that you become one with nature as you slowly make your way through sunflower fields and beautiful valleys, you take in the smells, the wind and the sights so much more intensely than when you are in a car. Even when you stop in little villages and ride down cobble-stoned streets on your
rode bike trying to find a water fountain, there is something so basic about just being you and your bike. And the French love cyclists, it’s unbelievable. Everyone talks to you, want to know where you are from and where you are going. I must admit my high-school French came in very handy when meeting all those French who cant speak English. And funny, I always used to think that it is rather arrogant of the French not to speak English, however, now I think its admirable. They have such a fantastic rich culture and such a beautiful language. Why wouldn’t you?
So, I feel in love with France. With the mountains, the villages, the food (see below), the French people, the history and most of all just the Frenchness of it all. Yes, its funny, but every time we got to a new village we used to joke that everything is just so “French”, it was really the only way to describe the atmosphere although it sounds funny.
As for our trip, we went from Paris to Burgundy to Ardeche to Alp d’Huez on to Italy (blog to follow), Switzerland (nothing to say but thanks for the
Even more French
Chinon in the Loire Valley. And yes road bikes go on cobble stones! chocolate), then back to Burgundy for more snails (see below) and then on to visit Christians family friends in Loire. This visit was quite an experience as they happened to live in a house that resembled a castle (see pic) and here we also had the most amazing duck I have ever tried. This was also the place where we saved a German’s life (she was having heart problems so we drove her to the hospital) and the place where we enjoyed the luxury of real beds and toilets (the French still have toilets that are just a hole in the floor) which was very handy after 3 weeks of camping with no chairs and no electricity.
French Food
Being the food lover I am, one of the added bonuses of the trip was of course the chance to indulge in French food. And oh, how we indulged. You gotta love the French for still getting their meat from the butchers, their breads from the bakery and so on. Everything is so real and so basic. No processed food, just culinary delights. So in our ventures across the country we indulged in (among other things) the most beautiful duck
Our mansion!
Christian's family friends mansion in Loire! What luxury after three weeks in a tent! I have every tried, tartare (raw meat), escargots (snails), Foie Gras (goose liver) and too many other beautiful things to mention. Most importantly of course was getting a baguette for breakfast every morning. Funny, how your stereotype of a Frenchman always involves him holding a baguette. Well, its true. You see kids on the streets walking around with baguettes, cyclists with baguettes in their bike bags and grannies cutting up some baguettes and salami as they sit in front on the house in the siesta. So of course baguettes became part of our stable diet. And I can highly recommend baguettes with Roquefort cheese and salami for lunch. Yum. But even more important became our daily “pain au chocolat” which is a kind of chocolate croissant which of course was a routine for every bike ride. I think Christian managed to eat 8 of them on one of his big rides, so well done. “Crepes” is another fine experience in France. They have “Creperie” which is essentially a restaurant that serves crepes in any way you can imagine. Another great lunch recommendation when you are riding up some small hill! And I know a few of you will comment on the snails but all I can say is that you have to try it. They are served in the tastiest garlic/parsley butter sauce which makes them to die for. I seriously think we ate 100 on the trip!
Another added bonus was the fact that Christian proved to be a reincarnation of Jamie Oliver and a fabulous cook which of course for those of you who know me well, know that it is heaven sent as I love food but cant boil a potato without burning it. So we had some great one pot wonders on our little cooker by the tent of course adding in some cheap but great French wine. Isnt it amazing that wine is cheaper than beer and soft drinks in France? Another reason to move there….along with the French accent of course!!!
I don’t know if this blog gives my impression of France the slightest justice. For once, words are not enough. The mountains, the food, the culture, le Tour, the cycling - it was truly one of the most amazing adventures I have ever been on. A perfect moment except I did come away with a very broken heart. I suppose we cant have it all. Or maybe love is just not for me. So I will stick to what I do best - falling in love with foreign countries instead of men!
So now I want to move to France as if my decision between Denmark and New Zealand isn’t difficult enough without having to add a third country!!!
Vive la France. I will be back for le Tour again. With or without extra blood packs and testosterone band aids!!!
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Jill
non-member comment
nice climb!
Hey Vicki! What an amazing time you are having! Too bad about the broken heart - I've been there too. This post might be enough to convince Micah to go to France with me! He doesn't think he'd like it but what does he know, eh? :)