mountains
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Monts et Rivieres
Turn left out of the drive and start climbing. Ten kilometres of up. Not steep but constant. Compared to home these hills are mountains, up through the trees to the grass plateau, real mountains jagged against the skyline ahead forty miles distant. The sticky hum of tyres on sun molten tarmac. A snack on a…
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Dolomiti
Last year I took part in the fifth edition of the Transcontinental Race but unfortunately didn’t finish the race, making it across parts of Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy before stopping short of Control Point 3 in the High Tatras mountain range in northern Slovakia. After recuperating in Poprad for 36 hours we rode…
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Three is the Magic Number
A while back my friend Ollie from work said he wanted to ride up Mont Ventoux for his fortieth birthday. I mentioned that my friends Jo, George and Oli had, a couple of years before, ridden all three road ascents and joined something called Le Club Des Cingles Du Mont Ventoux. I pointed him in…
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Alpine Weekender
Thursday “Not here, you need to be at the North Terminal”. I really should have checked my boarding pass before I joined the huge queue to drop off my bike bag. Thirty minutes later I’ve dropped my bag at the right terminal and find my way to the departure gate for Geneva. A few hours after…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 6 // Oviedo to Asturias Airport
The alarms go off at 7am. Today should be a relatively easy day but we’re flying home tonight so to avoid any panic later in the day we’ve decided to get on the road early. There is going to be some faff as we need to ride the wrong way initially, in order to get…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 5 // Riaño to Oviedo
We wake up to a very different view out of the window to yesterday. Cloud hides the tips of the mountains all around us, just the lower slopes sliding into the lake are visible, their reflections bouncing back at them from the silver mirror like surface. The world is still and quiet. It’s a shame…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 4 // Riaño to Cain de Valdeón to Riaño
We wake up to sunlight streaming through the apartment windows. It is an absolutely glorious morning, but on opening a window we realise it is really very cold. Then we remember that we’re up above 1000 metres. We put on all of the layers to pop out to get coffee back at the hotel bar,…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 3 // Potes to Riaño
The original plan for today was to ride up to Fuente De in the morning before returning to Potes for the ride to Riaño. However the last couple of days have been quite hard and the riding time is longer than expected, and I know there is a lot of climbing yet to come this…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 2 // Cangas de Onis to Potes
Whilst I breakfast on bread, ham and cheese and watch the weather forecast on Spanish telly, George is fiddling with allen keys and his crankset. The day before leaving the UK, whilst suffering with a fever and tiredness, he replaced the inner ring and accidentally bolted it on the wrong way round. He spent the whole…
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