Saturday 6th of August

Today it had been decided would be the big day. Dave and Stu's hire car was packed up with the three bikes and we headed off north towards Modane which was that start point of one of the Tour de France's toughest stages – Modane to Alpe D'Huez. Really we should have tried to get there a lot sooner and the other guys would probably have been up for an earlier start but I sometimes struggle to get up early when on holiday more so than normal.

We parked up close to the centre and got ready. The plan was to leave the car there and come back for it tomorrow in my car. So eventually managed to set just before midday. The first 16-17km where very easy and I hardly had to pedal at all as we dropped down to the bottom of the valley. One left turn taken in the middle of a village and we were now heading up the first mountain – Col de Telegraph. According to the Garmin this was 12.78km from the bottom to the top. It soon became apparent that the guys weren't going to keep up. Stu was immediately on the granny ring which didn't bode well given we were 100km away from Alpe D'Huez and it was already past mid-day. I tried following them but my cadence (pedalling speed) was down to near 40rpm and it was too slow. That 25 tooth gear on the back wasn't low enough for me to sit and spin. Soon after I decided to go on at my own pace and I'd meet them at the top.

The Telegraph seemed to go quite well. It was well sheltered but in any case there wasn't much wind or too much sun. I passed a few other cyclists but there didn't seem to be that many out. Maybe they knew better about what was to come. There was little paintwork on the road but I did notice some very colourful artwork about 3km from the top and there also seemed to be quite a few Voeckler fans out there but not surprising really given he's french and was winning the Tour de France for quite a while. I decided not to stop though so didn't take any photos. About 1hr 7mins after starting to climb I got to the top and pulled in to the cafe for a coke and a coffee.

After the guys turned up we rested a little more and then set off on the brief respite downhill before the uphill commenced once again. This time things got a little more serious as we started on the Col de Galibier. Immediately you can see this is a different climb compared to the Telegraph. For the first two thirds of the climb there are no tornanti (hair pins) but often just long stretches of road with kinks in it. At first the wind wasn't noticeable but later on it perked up and gave the 9% gradient even more of a drag than normal. It wasn't blowing me around like the wind on Ventoux did but it wasn't helping. Well at least not in one direction - head on. About 5km from the top I could see that it was getting cooler (on the Garmin) and felt it too so I stopped to put on my gilet. Soon after I could feel it start to rain and with about 3km to go I took of the gilet and put on my rain jacket. The last couple of km I found quite tough and the bit between 700m and 400m to go was the worst, very steep with a strong wind. I was soon past it though and up to the top. Despite my exertions I was still cold (Garmin showing 7C) so I chose just to carry on down the hill to try and get somewhere warmer. The ride down to Lautaret was challenging, particularly as it was raining quite heavily now but I still managed 58km/h at one point. I thought I was holding some cars up but when I moved over they didn't overtake and later having driven down there at 40mph in the car I could see why they were in no rush to get past. 8km later I was in Lautaret looking for a hot drink. I ended up sat in a cafe/crepe place shivering like mad and drinking a big latte. I didn't know how long it would take Dave to turn up but I was in no fit state to go anywhere. Later on I was rather peeved at the lack of interest that the staff showed to someone sitting in their cafe showing signs of early hypothermia. By the time I'd got inside I'd forgotten the name of the village but I sent Dave a text saying I was in the first village down the hill in the cafe with the big yellow bike outside it. So Dave managed to find me without too much of a problem and he was in a similar state to me so I moved us away from the door to further in the cafe and ordered another couple of lattes. We didn't know how far back Stu was or what state he was in. Dave then pointed out that Stu didn't have his phone on him either, so we would have to keep an eye out for him through the window. After about 45 minutes in the cafe I'd stopped shivering but was still not happy about the thought of going on further. I'd been watching the temperature as I descended from the summit but despite dropping something like 420m the temperature was still 7C. We were still over 2000m and Bourg D'Oisans was a good 30 or more kilometres down the road at 800m altitude. 1,200m descent with little pedalling and no internal heat generation - it was looking grim. So Dave and I both said we'd be happy to get a taxi back but what about Stu.....

I'm not sure how long I'd been in the cafe, perhaps 2 hours, but eventually we paid the cafe staff for a lift back to our hotel. It wasn't cheap but it was well worth it. Once there we quickly warmed ourselves up by taking showers and putting some dry clothes on but once we'd done that we weren't sure what to do about Stu. We told the proprietress of the hotel but she didn't seem too concerned - 'oh we've had people turn up at 1am before'. That's fine if someone's just got a long way to go but it was getting near 6:30pm and we'd heard nothing from him. She suggested we leave our numbers and we head back to Lautaret and look for him there. We were sure we hadn't seen him on our way back to the hotel as he'd have been using the same road but we felt it would feel a little better if we at least did try. So off we set, only to get about 5km down the road before he passed us heading towards the hotel.

It turned out that at Lautaret he'd taken the wrong turning and turned left at the junction towards Briancon. I thought at one point I'd seen a guy on a silver framed mountain bike turn left but by the time Dave got out to look he'd gone. Turns out it was Stu. So after freewheeling down towards Briancon for who knows how many miles he'd realised his mistake and turned around and headed back up the hill. Seemingly unaffected by the weather he simply carried on and we probably only missed him by a few minutes when we were getting the lift back. Phew. Panic over.

Because of his arrival we were now in time for dinner again and so we tucked in to the meat selection provided for us along with the chef's speciality of potato, cheese, lardons, onion, cream and white wine. It was a long day and lessons were learnt about riding mountains over 2,000m. I almost enjoyed the two mountains we climbed and in good weather I'd have enjoyed the ride towards Alpe d'Huez too but to then ride up that mountain... respect to those who did the Etape du Tour this year.

Meat selection

Carb-tastic baked side dish

The wanderer returns