Category: Bike

So it is, that almost a year to the day we had first set our eyes on the ‘Beast of Provence’ we find ourselves once again at the foot of the mountain. We are a team of four – Joe and Georgie on the bikes, Suzannah and Alex cheerleading from the car. In contrast to my visit in early May, this hot June day finds the slopes once again crammed with eager masochists.

We are a bit concerned for Georgie’s chances of completing the ascent. A less than whole-hearted approach to training means she’ll have to fall back on natural talent and sheer pig-headedness. She has form: a previous long-distance bike-ride from The Hague to Amsterdam and back resulted in her having to be scraped from the saddle in a state of total exhaustion. So we double up on energy bars and drinks…though not quite enough as it turns out.

The early kilometres are not too bad. The presence of all those other climbers helps maintain the determination. Also, the roadside  is lined with spectators, no doubt waiting for their own heroes to appear, who clap and cheer us all along with shouts of ‘bon courage’. Suzannah and Alex periodically pass us, horn screaming, in the car. We make it to Chalet Renard in reasonably good shape but there is plenty of climbing still to do. The sun beats down on the bare limestone rock, dazzling and dehydrating us. There is no shade, no hiding place, on these upper slopes. 

Meanwhile things take a turn for the worse in the car. Suzannah’s near-pathological fear of heights resurfaces as she manoeuvres onto the narrow verge of the mountain side to watch us pass. Telling Alex that she feels like driving, Thelma and Louise-like, off the mountain does nothing to calm the situation.  

Anyone who has climbed Ventoux will recognise the infinite regress which characterises the last few kilometres. Shortly after Chalet Renard a sharp right turn brings the iconic white observatory-tower suddenly into view. The end is literally in sight! As you pedal frantically towards it, the tower disappears behind the intervening steep face of the mountain, to reappear once more at the next hairpin-bend. But at each reappearance it seems no nearer – you feel trapped in one of those Escher drawings where you can climb and climb forever whilst going precisely nowhere. But then when all hope of reaching the finish has just about evaporated, we make one last turn and suddenly there it is, right above us – and only a few hundred yards to go!

But Ventoux is not yet finished with us – the gradient once more steepens for these last few metres, draining what minimal reserves of energy we still retain. Riders weave across the road, unable to maintain a straight path to the finish, oblivious to the cars that avoid them by inches. I think back to the Memorial to Tommy Simpson we passed a few moments earlier. It marks the spot where the British cyclist collapsed and died during the 1967 Tour and is a vivid reminder that this mountain is not to be trifled with.

Meanwhile dehydration has finally become alarming.  I had earlier given the last of my water to Georgie (not through vainglorious chivalry but from fear of Suzannah’s reaction later had I refused) and both head and heart are pounding. My mouth feels like an ashtray someone has been sick in. I speed up a little to get it over with before my knees explode, leaving Georgie to bring up the rear. 

Amazingly I reach the top and turn to find Georgie. As she rounds the final steep bend she seems to be trying to dismount. Alex rushes to plomp her back in the saddle and after an encouraging push she too reaches the summit. We have done it! 

Epilogue

But what was all that nonsense about my mother in law you ask; what did that have do with this? Well, everything really. Helen should have been with us that day in Vaison La Romaine, but she was too ill to travel. Instead she remained at home undergoing punishing treatment for cancer. Tragically she did not recover and she died a few months before we made our ascent. But we had her with us in more than just spirit that day. With all of us sporting a photo-badge of Helen from an earlier French holiday, I carried her ashes to the top in my backpack. Torn between euphoria and grief we cast her ashes from the viewpoint at the top towards the distant Alps. 

So if I misled you it was not about Helen. It was in implying that there was ever any doubt that we would make it. With Helen on the team there was no way we could fail.

 

Long ago I went on one of those positive thinking courses that big companies used to be so fond of. The power-dressed dynamo running the event told us that “you can do anything you put your mind to”.  I said “I want to play centre forward for Liverpool”. She gave me funny look and moved swiftly on. I know that I should have entered the spirit of the thing, but I‘m a bit of a fatalist.

I thought about that lady when I decided to climb Ventoux. The gap between desire and reality seemed as great as pulling that No. 9 shirt on. I could barely make it up the Burford High Street, a feat, I carefully worked out, that I would need to repeat about one hundred times in succession to reach the summit.

I began to cast about for reassurance – some show-off had managed to climb the mountain eleven times in one day. The oldest person to manage it was 84 years old at the time. Come on, how hard could it be? Its even been done by an eight year old, for God’s sake!

Just a question of buckling down to training then. But how exactly in the Cotswolds, where the highest ‘peak’ is no more than 300m? The answer was to retreat to the garage and impale myself on a training machine, or simulator. With today’s machines you can recreate the torture of climbing the world’s peaks without leaving the house. My fiendish device, appropriately called a ‘Wahoo Kickr’ envelopes the bike in a powerful electromagnetic field. You can link this to a computer display that will calibrate your effort to a climb viewed on the screen. Thus is your garage converted into Torquemada’s cellar.

Whilst the Kickr does everything it says on the label, it should really come with a serious health warning. I don’t mean the risk of pulled muscles or shattered kneecaps. Nor even of a heart attack. I’m thinking rather of the damage the saddle can inflict.  The conventional expression for the encounter of our derrière with a suitable support is ‘sitting’. But this does not do justice to the physical intimacy required by the bike saddle. We are back again at the ischial tuberosity.  I facetiously translated this as ‘fat arse’ earlier but a more exact phrase would be ‘sit bones’.  Normally when you are seated your gluteus maximus cushions the pressure on the sit bones. But a road bike saddle is skilfully designed to circumvent this protection. The buttocks are parted and the bones pushed tight against the unyielding saddle like a condemned man to Old Sparky. The chamois in your cycle shorts affords a temporary barrier to the pain but the effect is short-lived.

Once the chamois rear-guard is breached, the pressure on the backside intensifies. Normal feeling is gradually lost, replaced by an thrumming, aching numbness. Eventually the pain obliges you to dismount – it feels like a last-minute reprieve from an impaling. But the worst is not over.  As feeling gradually returns you experience an uncomfortable tingling in your anterior nether regions that morphs into a violent  throbbing – as if something is determined to burst its way out of your wedding tackle without taking the conventional exit. The penny drops and you realise that the blood supply to the reproductive organs has been cut. Panic is replaced by relief as you realise that the pain is caused by the sudden surge of blood back into your unblocked manhood. Salvation – it is not going to fall off!!*

I learn to treat the Kickr like an unbroken stallion – a dangerous but essential ally. Training improves and by March or April  I am able to slog my way to the top. It’s neither pretty not pleasant but it is effective. Meantime the whole adventure has become more complicated. Georgie decides to join me on the climb. She gets to work immediately on her training regime of gin and popcorn – youth has its advantages. More worryingly an old college friend, Hamish, also wants to join us – and bring two cycling buddies. The worry is not just that they want to descend on our holiday home as their base for the climb, but that they have all done it before!

This turn of events rekindles the doubts – can sitting on a stationary bike in a garage really simulate the real thing? What if I can’t keep up? What if I can’t get to the top at all…Only one thing for it. Scuttle off to Provence and try it for real before the big day arrives. Which is what I did, though I cheated… just a little bit.

There are three ways up Mont Ventoux. The classic route is from Bedoin on the south side of the mountain, but there is an equally difficult route on the northern side starting at Malaucene. Naturally, I avoided both of these and went for the third alternative – from Sault in the east. This route starts higher up the mountain slopes and is a bit longer and so not quite as steep as the other routes. My reason for doing it this way was probably cowardice but I rationalised it as ‘walk before you can run’. If I could do this ascent in May I would surely be able to tackle Bedoin with six weeks more training.

Things though took another unexpected turn when Hamish and friends withdrew. A diagnosis of serious illness left him with a more important challenge than cycling up a hill. Still the mere thought of being left in his wake had galvanised my training – proving (to me rather than to Hamish) that every cloud has a silver lining. It seemed that it would be just me and Georgie, then..

As for the Sault route, I managed that just fine, though the final five kilometres were brutal. Could I have finished it off had I first come up the steep route from Bedoin? Only time would tell…

*Why not get out of the saddle, just as you would do on the road, you might ask. Well, my setup had the infuriating habit of crashing each time I tried this, forcing me to return to the start of the program. Not as bad as gangrene, obviously, but pretty annoying.

For the ageing male, cycling may be a good choice but its definitely a bad look. Lycra is barely flattering to fit young men in their muscular prime, far less for the flabby MAMIL’S who pepper our roads on Sunday mornings.

Nor does the cycling build help. The emphasis being all on leg power, there are more sunken chests than at a pirate’s reunion. Arms like a pair of  folding chopsticks enhance the weedy look. The backside in contrast looks over-developed, suggesting an accident in an incontinence pad (see below).

Partners of these strange creatures will know that the appearance is scarcely improved when the clothes are removed. Covered all summer in sun-proof lycra that reaches half way down the thighs and forearms, the naked cyclist resembles a stick insect with a blue-white torso and mahogany brown  appendages.

MAMIL by the way is the derogatory acronym for the cyclist beyond the first flush of youth. It stands for ‘Middle Aged Man in Lycra’. Sadly I am too old for even this derisive phrase – unless I live to be 120. I tried to think of other, more felicitous expressions, but none would come forth. I was stuck with: PILOC: ‘Pensioner In Lycra On Cycle’ or OFIL (awful): ‘Old F***** In Lycra’.  Not epithets to inspire confidence.

The steatopygian backside is a result of incorporating the padding in the shorts rather than the saddle. Supposedly to protect your ischial tuberosity, it sounds to me like an elaborate joke on the gullible cyclist (is ‘ischial tuberosity’ Latin for ‘fat arse’?).

To say nothing of the shoes…

Whilst the shorts may be just a harmless joke, the shoes are a potential death trap. These lock you to the peddles by means of a device known as a ‘cleat’. Perfectly harmless whilst the bike is in motion, the drawback becomes apparent if you have to stop suddenly. Every cyclist knows that sinking feeling when gravity exerts its pull and there is no free leg to impede it – you and the tarmac must inevitably meet, with road-rash an inevitable consequence.

I have even managed this manoeuvre whilst standing with one foot on the ground. A simple rotation of the handlebars shifted the centre of gravity to the side with my foot still locked in the cleat – result, embarrassing collapse. A scene whose surreal nature was enhanced by two pedestrians waiting to cross the A40. They simply ignored me and walked on, as if my mishap was the standard procedure for dismounting a road-bike.

So, could I get to Ventoux looking the part and able to avoid embarrassing pratfalls? Time to get training.

Torn between elation and grief, I threw my mother-in-law off a mountain in Provence. Contemplated over many months, I finally resolved to do it. To understand why, we need to go back to where it all started.

A year earlier – June 2015 – Vaison La Romaine, Provence: the family are wandering desultorily through the steep, winding lanes of the old town. Hard by the arched entrance, beneath the medieval bell tower, I stop at the Zanella gallery, fascinated by the near luminous quality of the vibrant scenes of rural Provence. A chat, in pigeon French, with the gallery owner Leon and I find myself back on the street with a collection of digital art prints, posters and books. Its been a good day for Leon and an expensive one for me.

Objective achieved, I have had my fill of Vaison for the day. But the girls want to wander some more, so my son Alex and I decide to go for a little drive. As we head for the car I notice a sign-post at the Quai de Verdun roundabout – Le Mt Ventoux. The name stirs vague memories of (for me) long-forgotten cycling exploits…didn’t some British rider perish on those slopes many years ago? Was that were Lance Armstrong raced up the mountain as if propelled by rocket fuel (he was). Fatefully, we decide to go take a look..

Reaching the lower slopes of the mountain above Malaucene, our first impressions are not auspicious. The road is heaving – vehicles of every kind – camper vans, cars, fleets of motorcycles, are elbowing their way up the mountain. The motorcyclists are particularly intimidating, accelerating through tiny gaps in the traffic to overtake the ponderous camper vans. A similar procession snakes its way down the mountain in the adjacent lane.

On the margins of this chaos an endless line of cyclists inch their way upwards. “God, I don’t fancy that’ I blurt out to Alex, who is in total agreement. On the other side of the road the cyclists are hurtling down at suicidal speeds, some overtaking cars and vans as they negotiate the hairpin bends. We have never seen anything quite like this – it is insanity made flesh.

As we struggle upwards, careful to avoid exhausted cyclists weaving across the road, I begin to pay more attention to these lycra-skinned masochists. Many do not look that healthy. Some are even older than me. One or two world-class girths are being hauled up there by emaciated, shaven legs that hardly look up to the task. Surely some would retire, if not expire, long before the summit?

A few kilometres from the top we emerge from the forest which clads the lower slopes of the mountain, the French countryside spread out magnificently before us. It is suddenly exhilarating, the blinding sunshine amplified by the bare white limestone of the mountain top, giving one the impression of being suddenly caught in a giant spotlight.

We reach the summit, and struggle to find a parking space amongst the hordes of motorists, hikers and unsteady cyclists. Yes, many of those unlikely looking specimens have indeed clambered their way to the top and the sense of achievement amongst them is palpable – the place seems to ooze elation. And each triumphant grimpeur ensures their exploit is immortalised by a photograph by the famous marker – ‘Sommet du Ventoux à 1909m’.

The satisfaction of reaching the summit is amplified by the majestic setting. Located in splendid isolation, to the southwest of the Alps-proper, Ventoux commands a 360 degree  panorama of southern France; to the west numerous ranges of the Massif Central recede into invisibility. To the northeast the Alps proper rise up, like jagged grey ramparts of some brobdignagian fortress. Between these two ranges the Rhone Valley cuts its way down to the Mediterranean, just about visible on a clear day. Magnificent.

As I savoured this view I wondered – how much better would it feel if I had climbed here under my own steam? The thought could not be dislodged..you could do this…what’s to stop you trying? Except maybe fear of failure? And thus the great obsession was born.

To be continued…