Now coughing like a banshee. Lovely Dr Mike has given me some antibiotics for a chest infection and today I’m taking it easy. ‘Easy’ is 1500m ascent to the Col de la Bonette. We’re all wearing out pink tour tops for a planned summit group photo. Pink to replicate the maglia rosa worn by the lead rider in the Tour of Italy.
Knowing that Brandon and others will start late, specifically to enjoy picking the rest of us off like safari game, I think I’d better get going. It’s a pleasant 16oC, I pass the popular vegetable market stalls in Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée and turn the bike up towards the head of the valley.
Despite the best plans, creams, ointments and salves, my derriere is not happy. She’s close to leaving the party, and I have to coax her into staying. We compromise with some ‘stand-up’ pedalling now and again; usually an activity reserved for cyclists feeling fit and ready to ‘jump’ a lead on the peloton. I laugh to myself, and try not to cough a lung up.
The alpine flora is stunning, and I cannot help myself taking photos of most of the flowers. Something I do every alpine trip, never doing anything with the pictures, but feeling an urge to capture them somehow (maybe I’m more like Safari Brandon than I realise).
(one day I’ll insert a montage of all the flower photos I took…)
After yesterday’s efforts, I’m finding the climb tough, it’s a long way to ascend in a ‘oner’. I look around drinking in the incredible scenery, and realising that this is the penultimate day of the trip. How each day has dragged then flown.
As I press my left pedal, I hear a squeak. Oh no, a mechanical? I momentarily stop pedalling, the squeak stops too, recurring as I pedal further. I re-test several times. Finally, I locate the noise. There is a bird nearby, a pedal-tit(?). Does it do this deliberately? Laughing at all the puzzled cyclists? There is something ‘active’ about this valley. To my left, I swear a marmot is laughing at me (from a safe distance).
Pulling around the next corner, a hamlet (Carsles?)of abandoned cottages swing into view. They sit quietly hugging the hillside, their unglazed, empty windows staring back at me. The road weaves between them, and I have an eerie feeling something bad happened here…
Pedalling continues, I’m not getting in the grupetto, but I am hugely annoyed when Samantha lets me know she has reached the top, 300m above me. Samantha is my Garmin virtual partner. She runs on an algorithm written by Garmin and is designed to be an adversary to help spur you to ride faster. It doesn’t sound great to say this (I’m a little ashamed), but until this weekend, I’ve enjoyed giving Samantha a good kicking. Now she gives me a digital raspberry tune from the Garmin. Samantha and I are not friends. Tonight I will delete her very existence. And laugh.
On long ascents like this, there is the comfort that you do always finally arrive at the top, and true to form, the Col de la Bonette is (eventually) conquered! There is no café, just a dusty track and a large stone on a plinth. A small queue of polite cyclists and leather-clad motorbikes are queuing for photographs. The view is a little obstructed by the motorbikes, who I think perhaps avoid walking anywhere. They pull right up the monument, negating the need for any unnecessary walking (do they ride like this to the toilet too?).
The descent, apart from a couple of ruckles, is dreamy, creamy smooth, and even sweeter knowing there are no further hills today. We reassemble in a shady picnic table, gilets and jackets donned against the chill of the descent, are stowed.
For only the second time in the trip, we come into peloton formation, and charge, as a pink pedalling snake, down into Balconette, for a late lunch and relaxation at the hotel.
“How each day has dragged then flown.”. Marvellously observed, as usual Liz.