The 'pink slip' solution refers to the best way to solve a set problem, that is that there may be numerous ways to solve the given puzzle, but there is one recognised solution that gives the optimal result for minimum effort.
Planning
Some time in October 2012 we started talking about a trip to experience the 2013 edition of the Tour de France. Each October marks the release of the route for next year's tour, and the 2013 assembly looked like just the ticket - a full week in the Alps including a mountain top finish on Mount Ventoux, twice up the Alpe d'Huez, a mountain time trial and a handful of other big mountain days, and the first nighttime finish in Paris. Between myself and the kommandant we therefore elected ourselves as the local organising committee and started planting the seeds of the idea with anyone who felt like riding with us.
We have often discussed doing a trip like this - it is by far the most remarkable way to experience the Tour - and this one seemed ripe for our visit. This was to be the 100th edition of the Tour, Chris Froome (who trains locally in the off season, lives just down the road, and attended the same school as I did) was looking like a likely contender for the top spot, and the route seemed just right to allow for some great days out on the bike as well as getting to see a lot of the action up close.
The format is pretty simple. We find accommodation within striking distance of the route - anything within 50km is close enough, the roads in that part of the world are fast on a bike and easy to navigate, so a 150km round trip to our designated Col and back plus spending a few hours on the side of the road watching the riders come past is quite reasonable - and make an early start on the day of the relevant stage to be on top of our designated Col before the Gendarmerie gets around to closing the roads. Daylight continues until something after 9pm in France at this time of the year so once the peleton has passed there is usually quite enough time to get back on the bike and ride home again. The tour covers a lot of ground quite fast so the next day must then either involve packing up and heading for the next designated town, or perhaps a day off-route exploring some of the (numerous) notable climbs that didn't feature in this year's edition of the race.
The published route was reviewed in depth over multiple cups of coffee and more than a few artisanal beers until we had settled on what seemed a workable plan for a 10-day trip in France. We would fly out on a Friday, collect a couple of rental cars in Marseilles, and drive 150km north to Orange - where we could launch our assault on stage 15 climbing Mount Ventoux (on Bastille day no less), then continue in the cars up through the Alps to catch the individual time trial, the double ascent of Alpe d'Huez on stage 18, and the start of stage 19 to Le Grand Bornand (which took in 2 hors categorie climbs over the Glandon and Madeleine), ultimately dropping the cars off in Grenoble (about 500km from Marseilles) from where we could catch a TGV to Paris to see the finish and wrap up the trip.
Bookings
Our success in putting something together rested heavily on getting a group of 6 to 8 committed riders on board, and the biggest consideration here is always the perceived potential cost of an excursion. A commercial trip from South Africa can sell for as much as R60 000, and a lot of the people we were chatting to therefore had this high on their list of concerns. Thankfully it has become relatively simple to secure the relevant bookings with zero deposit so in December 2012 we were able to secure provisional hotel bookings across France as well as car hire and airline prices and get this out to the various interested parties. At this stage the sum total of these bookings was R18 000, of which R9 000 was the air ticket, so with this highly appealing price tag we sent out an email with a simple requirement: Buy an airline ticket if you're interested in joining us. These prices rose quite steeply in the next few months - it turned out to be quite important to get the various elements secured early.
Our ultimatum brought in a group of 6 eager participants - Connor the Kommandant, Sugar, G-Spot, Mark, Pierre and myself - and we set to work refining our itinerary now with this group in mind. This meant changing the initial bookings from a hotel just outside of Grenoble to a ski chalet in Oz en Orsains (only available in 1-week blocks, but then again I can think of few nicer places to spend a week with a bike), from where we would be able to access the Alpe d'Huez by cable car, and releasing our accommodation in the region of the time trial at the same time.
Our cost breakdown per person was then as follows:
Flights (JHB-Marseilles; Paris-JHB on Air France): R8 000
Extra luggage (for bike): R1 400
2 nights Mornas, dbb sharing (for Ventoux): R2 000
5 nights Oz, 10-bed chalet between 6, self catering (for Alpe d Huez): R2 000
2 nights Paris, sharing, bed only: R3 000
Car hire (1 large van, 1 station wagon for a week between 6 people): R1 800
TGV:R550
All of which adds to a very reasonable R 19 000
At this point we were getting into March and the specifics of the daily routes were slowly becoming clearer. The official website of the tour now showed the major towns that the tour would pass through on their route profiles, and www.climbbybike.com helped our planning by releasing the specifics of the routes that the Tour was using to get up the various Cols (which meant juggling some of our route choices to fit in) Most of the big Cols have 2 or 3 options available for the ascent, so it was quite important to know which side you would be ascending along the race route. It is relatively straightforward to work out what route the tour is following through the mountains once you know the climbs they are using and the towns that they will pass through along the way.
We received an unexpected bonus at this stage as the tour organisers announced La Randonnee de Tour on their website - a fun ride around the final circuit on the Champs Elysees perfectly timed to fill the afternoon in Paris before the arrival of the Tour, and a chance for us to venture out onto this hallowed ground immediately preceding the arrival of the peleton. Google translate communicated that this was a 7.5km 'walking tour' of the Champs, but we figured we would be able to get our bikes out on the road, and who was going to be able to walk the 7.5km circuit in the allotted hour anyway. At R50 a head the risk of disappointment seemed pretty low too.
Finally with a few weeks to go in June the organisers release the time schedules for each day's stage. For planning purposes the roads are closed to all traffic about an hour before the arrival of the promotional caravan, and we were able to confirm that we would just be able to complete our various route segments before the gendarmes sealed the roads. The critical points in our schedule were the closure of the road at the summit of each col - the caravan ascending the col much faster than we would be able to, and therefore it was important that we were starting each climb in good time to be able to top out before we were taken off the route. There is an accurate time plan for this caravan on the tour's website to figure out when this is scheduled to occur, and the timings applied on the day were within 10 minutes of our predetermined road closures.
Monday 29 July 2013
Ventoux
It is always a relief to get to your destination with a full complement of luggage, and so it was with some relief that we left Marseilles airport with 6 bikes and all our bags loaded into the van, albeit after quite a lot of waiting around collecting cars and loading up equipment. For reference the Renault Traffic (Group N) van we rented from Avis quite comfortably accommodated 6 bikes, either in bike boxes or with the front wheels removed once they were built up, as well as a few bags, or all 6 of us plus bikes once we had the bags stowed away in whatever accommodation we were using.
We had a brief celebratory swim on a pebbly beach outside the city to stretch out after the flight, found lunch, and set off to locate the Giant of Provence.
First Day
I have only ever watched the Tour in the Pyrenees and on the Central Massif before, and the event in the Alps is without doubt an order of magnitude bigger than what one experiences further to the south. Having built our bikes the evening before we ate an early breakfast and tried to leave promptly. Our early departure was promptly derailed by yours truly - having fitted new cleats just before we left I discovered to my horror that Look have now released 2 very similar looking but completely incompatible versions of their Keo cleat, a fact that my LBS had failed to mention. This is one of those lessons one is unfortunately forced to relearn - that there is no substitute for testing your gear before departure. Also it seems that everyone owning these cleats is obliged to buy themselves a set of the incompatible model before they become aware of the design change. Thankfully someone had packed spares, and with these fitted we were able to get going by around 9am.
Our route required a 38km haul out to Bedoin - the recognised base of the Ventoux climb at 290m above sea level (although G-Spot did point out that we did quite a bit of climbing to get to the base), and after a little bit of route confusion we got ourselves into Bedoin around 11am. We stocked up on what lunch we could (the local stores being heavily depleted by the mass of people who had got there in better time than we had), and started the 23km climb with little more than 2 hours available to us to make the summit.
Ventoux gives you quite a sense of progress as you climb. you start in open fields, then move into the forested lower slopes of the mountain as you get into the km marker teens, and finally break through the tree line as you get into the single digit milestones. The summit is immediately recognisable - the distinctive square telecomms tower marking the top. As our climb progressed so the crowds built and the gendarmes became less tolerant of anyone coming past them until with about 6km to go to the top we followed a pair of cyclists - one in a speedo and one in a morph suit - around a particularly busy roadblock and found ourselves on largely open roads to the top. We were eventually pulled off with 800m to go at 1.50pm, with the rest of our party ejected about a km further down the climb at around the same time. Close enough to summit on foot (thankfully) as we needed to get over the top and onto the descent on towards Malaucene for our planned exit.
The days work was eventually done reaching Mornas just after 7pm with 150km behind us and dinner waiting at the hotel.
We had picked out our own lantern rouge for the touring group - l' Polpe, a large and noisy handlebar-mounted purple rubber octopus, which we awarded with great glee to Sugar after repeatedly surging off the front on the days ride, convinced that while he had finished at the front of the group, his performance would almost certainly guarantee that he would be off the back tomorrow. While intended as a floating trophy Sugs instead developed an immediate attachment to his new passenger, abusing the squeaky toy incessantly - usually to either frighten or amuse pedestrians - and refusing to give it back in a stubborn and very Scottish manner.
I'm not sure what sticks out as the greater achievement here. the climb was truly remarkable, the grandstand seats we had reached on the rocky slopes around the finish were particularly sweet, and the 30km descent on closed roads down the back of the climb would bring a grin to any cyclists face, not least that we rode the early stages of the descent with the pros shooting past us on the way to their waiting buses further down the pass. You have to be dropped by one of these guys to truly appreciate their skill on getting down these passes. In my case by Tony Martin.
We had a brief celebratory swim on a pebbly beach outside the city to stretch out after the flight, found lunch, and set off to locate the Giant of Provence.
First Day
I have only ever watched the Tour in the Pyrenees and on the Central Massif before, and the event in the Alps is without doubt an order of magnitude bigger than what one experiences further to the south. Having built our bikes the evening before we ate an early breakfast and tried to leave promptly. Our early departure was promptly derailed by yours truly - having fitted new cleats just before we left I discovered to my horror that Look have now released 2 very similar looking but completely incompatible versions of their Keo cleat, a fact that my LBS had failed to mention. This is one of those lessons one is unfortunately forced to relearn - that there is no substitute for testing your gear before departure. Also it seems that everyone owning these cleats is obliged to buy themselves a set of the incompatible model before they become aware of the design change. Thankfully someone had packed spares, and with these fitted we were able to get going by around 9am.
Our route required a 38km haul out to Bedoin - the recognised base of the Ventoux climb at 290m above sea level (although G-Spot did point out that we did quite a bit of climbing to get to the base), and after a little bit of route confusion we got ourselves into Bedoin around 11am. We stocked up on what lunch we could (the local stores being heavily depleted by the mass of people who had got there in better time than we had), and started the 23km climb with little more than 2 hours available to us to make the summit.
The days work was eventually done reaching Mornas just after 7pm with 150km behind us and dinner waiting at the hotel.
We had picked out our own lantern rouge for the touring group - l' Polpe, a large and noisy handlebar-mounted purple rubber octopus, which we awarded with great glee to Sugar after repeatedly surging off the front on the days ride, convinced that while he had finished at the front of the group, his performance would almost certainly guarantee that he would be off the back tomorrow. While intended as a floating trophy Sugs instead developed an immediate attachment to his new passenger, abusing the squeaky toy incessantly - usually to either frighten or amuse pedestrians - and refusing to give it back in a stubborn and very Scottish manner.
I'm not sure what sticks out as the greater achievement here. the climb was truly remarkable, the grandstand seats we had reached on the rocky slopes around the finish were particularly sweet, and the 30km descent on closed roads down the back of the climb would bring a grin to any cyclists face, not least that we rode the early stages of the descent with the pros shooting past us on the way to their waiting buses further down the pass. You have to be dropped by one of these guys to truly appreciate their skill on getting down these passes. In my case by Tony Martin.
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| Froome on his way to a win on Ventoux |
Alpe d' Huez
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| Two days of work - the upper loop is the Alpe d' Huez and Col du Sarenne, the lower loop the climb to Villard Notre Dame via its 3 dark tunnels and returning down the Col d' Ornon. |
This stage we rode 2 days ahead of the arrival of the Tour, and with hindsight we could not have left it any later. The road was as busy as it could be without yet being dangerous or unpleasant (the day before the race was an entirely different story, with a smooth ride up being almost impossible at that stage).
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| Bourg d' Oissans (valley floor), the 21 bends of Alpe d' Huez (centre), the reservoir at Oz and the ski lift station (top left), and hints of Col du ... in the foreground |
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| 5 guys on a Col |
Ventoux was always going to be hard to beat, but this had beaten it.
Team Rapha had also put us onto doing the climb up to Villard Notre Dame to traverse the ridge that faces Alpe d' Huez and then ultimately connect to and descend the Col d'Ornon (albeit with a few jibes
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| The climb to Villard Notre Dame |
The day of the stage on Alpe d' Huez we had chosen (quite wisely) to leave our bikes securely tucked away in Oz and rather make use of the resorts ski lifts to access the finish town. This mountain draws crowds like no other - it was reported, perhaps ambitiously, that there were over a million people on the mountain in 2008 - I suspect 2013 saw close to 200 000 people lining the edges of the climb.
Glandon, Madeleine and the Croix de Fer
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| Get Free Stuff |
So at 9am we found ourselves on top of the first climb, 25km from home, particularly well positioned to collect the goods being distributed by the promotional caravan, and none the worse for wear when the Tour's law enforcement personnel brought any further progress to a halt. The organisers of the tour have hit on a sure-fire way to draw spectators to the route (which clearly makes for better TV, and therefore a more highly marketable event) - about 2 hours before the peleton arrives the road is taken over by a float parade distributing hats and sweets and T-shirts and other paraphernalia. Having collected your bounty the roads are then sealed by the police until the Tour passes. Bingo - instant roadside crowds. :)
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| The hazards of 5% body fat on Alpine Cols |
Paris
We crammed 6 bikes into our first class TGV coach - 2nd class being crammed full of a group of panicked Australians squeezed in between their 2 dozen bike cases, and who had saved themselves about R100 each through their downgrade - and sat through our Saturday morning train trip with a fair amount of trepidation about how Paris would compare to the experiences we had had in the Alps, Sugar proclaiming loudly that he would be back as soon as possible to tick off any remaining recognised cols of any order and making it very clear that he is in no way a city kid. The city would never offer the same sense of freedom and achievement that you can find in the remote high mountains.The hotel - when we got there - was unusually welcoming and quite accommodating of our extensive luggage, although my inner cynic suspects they were being nice to make up for the fact that their aircon was off and Paris was in the middle of a heatwave.
Our accommodation is just 2 blocks from the finish on the Champs Elysees - and stepping out onto the finish circuit outside our hotel the next morning its suddenly clear to everyone that this element of the trip is going to be entirely worth it.
The planned victory lap felt like a 'critical mass' ride with a difference - not sure why anyone would want to race it. It is quite surreal to traipse around this hallowed ground. |
| Self portrait |
Louvre (someone crashes here in the melee on the downhill - their excitement clearly getting the better of their good judgement), up into the sunlight again and under the 1km to go kite (a bunch of clearly English and American riders have attempted to join the event, perhaps in frustration at being left out and in not getting their entries in order, and have been stopped here by a itinerant Parisian Policeman), and under the finish line as we watch the yellow mass that we are part of continue up the straight to the Arc de Triomphe while the tail of the group descends the other side of the avenue - the organisers have figured out just how many riders they can fit onto the 7.5km circuit and set the number of available entries accordingly. We have to settle for a spot a few rows back off the barriers, but we have a big screen and beer, and what else does one need anyway.
The late night finish means that we spend the night in Paris and sets up a shopping day for the Monday before we trek home. The bikes we disassemble out in the street and on the pavements to the ire of the regular Parisians who have emerged for their working week, although we hardly noticed. A week later and we're all still grinning and ready to tell anyone who will listen about the adventure.
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| Dinner, and a standing ovation each time one of the riders came past as they departed the finish area |
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