Day 13- Mont Ventoux!
53km
1,777m ascent
Another sunny day. We got our gear together and headed into Bedoin to pick up Sarah’s hire bike from the same shop that fixed my wheel on the previous day. We set off and I immediately got into a group of about 8 riders, going at a pace that I felt was just below my limit. It felt great not to be laden with luggage and it was a very different style of riding compared to the last 12 days. Riding half a metre behind the person in front, tapping out rhythm that wasn’t far off ‘my legs are f****d.’
There is a very fine line between being able to ride at a decent speed for a few hours, and pushing it too much too soon and running out of steam before you’ve got where you wanted. It might be less than 1 km/h that makes the difference. I’ve straddled that line many times riding in Essex; sometimes it works, and sometimes you slow to a crawl for the last 10 miles of a ride, with no energy left to turn the pedals with any appreciable power. This tends to happen more when riding hungover, or into a headwind.
Back on Mont Ventoux, we sped up the first gentle slopes past fields before getting into the trees that crowded the flanks of the mountain. There were hundreds of people riding up and down on bikes of different shapes and styles, but all having one thing in common- being in a state of exhaustion to one degree or another. This part of the ride contains some of the steeper sections of road and now people started dropping off the back of our group every 10 minutes or so. Eventually there were just 3 of us left in the group before the leader stood up and started moving ahead. I knew there was no point in trying to follow so I sat behind the last remaining guy and kept on spinning. I knew if I tried to overtake and do some work on the front, I would be straight into a world of lactic pain and off the back! Eventually he started going a bit too quick on one of the steeper gradients and started slowly eking out a gap. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t keep up with him, but then, he probably hadn’t cycled a 1000 miles to get here.
I sat in my own world spinning up through the trees. People always ask “Don’t you get bored? “, when you tell them you’ve spent two weeks riding solo for many hours a day. I suppose the honest answer would be that there are times when you question what you are doing, but only really when something has just gone wrong, or when you’re running out of energy. I get pretty grumpy and think life is rubbish when I’m hungry. Most of the time, especially in unfamiliar places, you spend the time looking around, spotting the odd thing that makes you smile, appreciating being able to do something you love every day. Sometimes you think about existential subjects, like the universe and theology and sometimes you think about the time you nearly died laughing at some absurdity. You wonder what people are up to back home whilst you are making your way through alien surroundings. Occasionally, when the conditions are right, your mind slips into a meditative kind of state where the only thing that registers is the white noise generated by the tires on the road, the sound of your breathing and the rhythm of your pedalling. Those are probably my favourite moments. Despite being completely exposed to the elements around you, there’s a bizarre feeling of isolation from it all. It’s just the road, the bike, the rider.
There wasn’t really any opportunity for this on Ventoux as the sheer number of people meant I had to keep swinging out around them, with the usual caution I’d have in London. Eventually with about 8km to go, the trees lining the road begin to thin out and you are again exposed to the power of the sun and, for the first time since the start, can see the barren, treeless rock slopes continuing above. A couple of km later and you can see the weather station at the summit , marking the end of a winding road lined with boulders and stones bleached from the sun. It is often said that when you get to this point the wind can be fierce, blasting warm air from the west into your face. But not today! Upon seeing the summit I found new energy and started reeling in loads more people. I felt pretty awesome now! Past a water bottle strewn monument to the British cyclist Tommy Simpson, who died on this very road in the ’67 Tour de France. Past the cars lining the side of the road then finally around the last bend and up the ridiculously short, steep summit slope that I had seen in the Tour so many times! I reached the summit in 1:28:5. A very pleasing time.
Lamby arrived shortly afterwards, and we celebrated with a photo and cola, before dropping back down to give Sarah some moral support and get a few photos of each other in action. We then absolutely steamed back down maxing out at 50mph…occasionally thinking of the consequences of something going wrong…maybe this was the most fun you could have on a bike. A not too technical, extremely fast descent through trees. Epic.
Lamby and I got back to the villa and swigged down several beers before packing up in a quick sharp fashion whilst Sarah made her way back down the mountain more cautiously. We were in a bit of a rush to get to Marseilles in time to have an interesting guided trip around Le Corbusiers’ ‘Unité d’habitation’. A brutalist monstrosity or beauty depending on who you ask. The tour was in French but I knew when to “oooo and aaaah”. It was unbearably hot and I was standing about, sweating like I was riding a bike up a steep hill. I wished I was.
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