Tuesday 31 January 2012

Snowbound

At last, a huge dump of snow hits the Mercantour National Park. The shopkeepers are dancing in the streets. Non-locals are appearing on the slopes. There's some off piste going down.

As a result of the off piste, I’m keeping the board-repair guy’s kids in private education. My record? Sunday morning: "Your board is ready, bien sur."  Sunday afternoon, I'm back in the shop: “Your feet: they have rock magnets, yes? Ha ha!” Well, apparently, yes.

Over a metre of snow falls overnight. It keeps coming, and we’re pretty much stuck in the cabin all day. I could go riding, but visibility’s pretty patchy even down here: up high it’ll be worse. Best to keep my powder dry for tomorrow.

So, things I’ve achieved while snowbound:

Sorted out the non-clickingness of the right-hand shifter on one of the road bikes. Because obviously that really needed doing, now it’s snowing.


Done a rubbish repair on the other snowboard. Fairly sure it’s going to drop out as soon as the board flexes.


Cleared the path down to the road (this is pre-cleared...)


And in the debit column, things I haven’t done while snowbound:

• Any work on my children’s novel

• Any ukulele practice

Console myself with the thought that at least I’m doing better than my companion. Still in her pyjamas at 3.30 p.m. 

Sunday 15 January 2012

In search of the rhythm

“When he was pedalling he had rhythm. I had tempo.” Stephen Roche, on climbing the Col de Joux Plan behind Robert Millar in the 1983 Tour de France. I’m still not sure what it means, but the quote came to mind unbidden this morning.

The route down the valley is a perfect warm-up for a climb. Slightly downhill, your legs spin fast even in a big gear. The cold makes it hard to feel my fingers by the time I reach the turn for Thorame Basse, but my road swings to the left, uphill and into the sun.

Like a lot of climbs in the Alps, the uphill pitch is steady but relentless. The road snakes rather than hairpinning, and at this time of the morning, with the sun low behind the mountain, it weaves in and out of the shade. There’s no traffic: the mountain silence, which has a different quality from other silences, bears in. Some pocket-bound thing in my jersey chinks with every pedal stroke.

I shift to a bigger gear a couple of times, wanting to push harder, but force myself to shift back down. The mountaineer Doug Scott used to say you should never forget that when you got to the top, you were only halfway home. Pretty quickly the road swings left and levels, and the little hamlet of La Colle St Michel appears ahead.


Last time this was the turnaround, but today I need more pain. Through the houses, back onto the big ring, on the drops, two fingers on the brakes. Down we go.

The descent from La Colle St Michel to Le Fugerét is – so far as I know – unremarked. Like a surfer who discovers a new break, I hope it stays that way. I swing down reckless, low over the front of the bike, railing each curve like a hard bottom turn, pushing out of the saddle for speed on every straight section. I notice someone’s laughing like a lunatic. “Haa-hahahaha!” It’s me.


A rude awakening from euphoria at the bottom, as I coast into France’s Least Friendly Village. A bunch of locals sit outside the café in the sun. “Bonjour, Messieurs et Dames.” No response, unless you count blank stares. Scurry in, get a coffee, come out again. A woman pointedly pulls the only spare seat toward her and puts her coat on it. No worries: that wall by the fountain looks plenty comfortable, thanks.

Climbing back on the bike with a scorched throat from too-hot coffee, I risk a photo. The general air of open-hearted friendliness is summed up by the gentleman second left. He lifts his cheek and farts – which I take it is not a local sign of respect. Whoever said it was better to travel than to arrive must have just arrived in Le Fugerét.

As the road leaves the village there’s a sign: La Colle St Michel 14km. Wish I’d bought some food. But my legs feel good – better than they should, considering how little riding I’ve done lately. Find a gear that needs a bit of effort to turn – this is what I backed off for earlier, and I don’t want to twiddle up it in a tiny gear. I want to roar up it like a mountain lion. Yes, an old one, possibly a bit mangy and with a dodgy knee, but a mountain lion nonetheless.

The road kicks here and there; instead of changing down, I concentrate on keeping the same cadence in the same gear. About halfway up, Stephen Roche whispers in my ear. Is this what he meant? Normally I’d shift to an easier ratio when the slope picks up, find a gear that keeps cadence and effort the same. Tempo. This is something else. Rhythm?

On the way home I pull into a little place called Beauvezer, to fill my bidon at the village fountain. There’s a war memorial on the wall nearby, so I wander over and read it. Stand frozen to the spot for several heartbeats. You could throw a stone from one side of this place to the other. A generation, gone.


Saturday 7 January 2012

Winter's Bone

There’s a farmhouse on the road through Villard Haut, tucked into a tight little corner of the road. It’s so far up that it looks down like a royal butler on Seignus, the highest settlement on the other side of the valley. I’m pretty sure it’s the last building on the way up the mountain.

This is one of those broken-down, added-to French mountain buildings where it’s hard to see where the habitable bits begin or end. Corrugated iron roofs, drunken walls with holes in, a large barking dog tied to a rope, incongruous lace curtains in a couple of windows, a snowmobile from about the time Jimmy Carter entered the White House. There are doors everywhere, but it’s not clear which one you’d knock on. First sight, Emma nailed it: Winter’s Bone.

This afternoon I wound my way up through St Brigitte in the van, toward the pull-in where you can park and walk into the mountains. On to Villard Bas, then a second-gear creep into Villard Haute. When I rode up here on a road bike on New Year’s Day, the road was clear enough for narrow tyres. There’s been a little snow since then, but really just windblown flocante.

Round the bend at Winter’s Bone, suddenly there’s thick, packed-down snow on the road. You can usually roll over this, especially with a two-tonne van bearing down on the tyres. Keep the gas pedal steady, and we seem good. Then the tyres start to spin a bit. OK – still moving forward. Then not.

It’s a strange sensation when something that normally does one thing – in this case, pressing on the gas pedal to move forward – apparently begins to produce an opposite effect. Suddenly two tonnes of van doesn’t seem such a great thing. Take a moment to reflect that the thing that was helping me by pressing the tyres down, gravity, is now the enemy. We slide back down what suddenly looks like a very steep, curved road, with a nasty, expensive, and possibly painful bang at the end.

A bit of brake pedal, a bit of handbrake – somehow movement eases, then stops. OK, good, think. Snow chains in the back. Foot off the brake pedal, and the van starts to slide again. Not good.

Sit with my foot back on the brake pedal, paralysed by stupidity and slow-wittedness for a moment. Shift into first gear, turn off the engine – thinking that I’m royally fucked if this doesn’t work, because the brakes are servo and I won’t get started again before we hit terminal velocity – and lift the clutch. Success: the front wheels lock. If you can call being precariously parked on an ice sheet in the middle of a road to nowhere success.

Scared, cold fingers make slow work of the anyway-laborious job of getting the chains on. Every second, I expect the van to skid back over my hand/arm/leg. Obviously the fact that I’m typing this demonstrates that a) it didn’t and b) the road home was successfully driven. “Chill out in the mountains,” they said, “it’s the most relaxing place.” Pah.

As I roll back past Winter’s Bone, a man who could be any age between 45 and 70 waits on a balcony. His sweater has holes in it, the baggy trousers he’s wearing were once some sort of grey colour. He’s trained a couple of strands of lank hair over a bare pate: people do have standards, even up here in the mountains. He’s been watching the whole thing.

I look over; he raises his beer bottle and nods.

Sunday 1 January 2012

New Year's Day

New Year’s Day brings yet more beautiful, warm weather. Too warm: snow’s disappearing from the ski runs faster than the cannons can replace it. Like meltwater, the holiday crowds are also cascading down the valley, a torrent of Citroens and Peugeots and VWs emptying the resorts, the ghost town vibe creeping back behind them.

With the slopes rapidly turning brown, I pull the old road bike off the wall, screw on some pedals, raise the seat height and give the chain a squirt of lubricant. The corkscrew road up to Lac d’Allos has been waiting for me since we arrived, and today’s the day. I won’t make it all the way up – not without a mountain bike and snow tyres – but I’m hoping to get to the lower car park.

Get lost counting hairpins somewhere around number 12; also confused about how tight a bend has to be to be called a hairpin. That's definitely one on the left.

Up into the forested belt, the space for tyres narrows and narrows, and the snow under the trees gets deeper. Soon it's a choice between less snow in the middle, or the pine-needle path at the sides.

Finally, clear tarmac disappears altogether and I'm riding on snow. Don’t brake. Don’t change direction. Don’t put too much into the pedal stroke. Slim chance of that: lungs and throat burn cold, and there’s only enough oxygen coming in for tempo riding. Balance-balance- balance.

End of the line: the road meets a barrier of snow piled across the trail at the lower car park. Even in early December it was icy walking further than this. Climb off, lean the bike up for the obligatory photo, and climb back on before I get cold: I learnt my lesson twatting about at the top of the Col d'Allos last time.


On the way down, those little trickles of water across the road look like ice. They’re not, but it makes for nervous descending. Still manage to overtake a Peugeot coming down Grandma-style, second gear all the way. Elderly lady driver or not, it’s always fun to overtake a car on a pushbike.

At the bottom of the road I decide my legs aren’t kippered yet, and turn left to Colmars. Very pretty, very like walking through a museum, but free water at the fountains. Slog back up the valley to Allos, and I’m done.

Happy New Year.