I have had another day which has mainly involved sitting on
French motorways. This seems to be becoming a bit of regular occurrence and has
resulted in a noticeable increase in my knowledge of French geography, my
hatred of French radio and my fuel bills.
I arrived at Allemont about 3:30 this afternoon. It says
Allemont on the big sign in the village but Allemond on my map, I’m going to go
with what the locals say.
The practice sessions for the Megavelanche start tomorrow, I
have no idea what I’m doing in a race like this so I have got lift passes for
the whole week, I need as much practice as I can get! Anyway, since I can only
pick them up tomorrow morning I decided to take the road bike out instead, just
to have a look around.
It was 30 degrees in Allemont when I set off. It was a
little odd being in temperatures like that and yet with so much snow around. I
headed along the valley and then turned up the hill towards Alpe D’Huez. I knew
this would be a big hill but didn’t realise just how big. I climbed up through
Huez Village and up to Alpe D’Huez itself, then continued on up the mountain to
the lakes at the top.
I say top, but it was just the top of the road section, as
far as I could really go on the road bike. I had started about at about 2,000ft
and climbed nearly 5,000ft but there was a still a long way to go, I could see
the snow covered summit of Pic Blanc towering above me, the place where the
race will start next Sunday.
The ride to up from Allemont had taken me 1hr54min, but the
ride back took 25 minutes. Anyone who says that you don’t need disc brakes on a
road bike is talking complete rubbish! Unfortunately I still have rim brakes on
mine…
I found somewhere to camp, a lovely spot by a ravine with a
waterfall, where I made dinner and mended the van before settling down for the
night. Yes, I have yet another broken van story to tell, I’ve got a load of
those which I will save for a quiet news week.
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