Land and sky are close to indistinguishable. My light wedges a cone of visibility into the darkness in front of me, the surrounding world muted. It’s not night but nor is it yet day. It will be a few hours before sunlight will breach the eastern horizon. A smattering of stars sparkle in the silence and Orion hunts above the shallow valley. The screech of a buzzard pierces the darkness. A hemisphere of light far ahead expands slowly to expose the shape of the skyline. The light strengthens moving closer, the edge of land sharpens and then disappears as the veil of light drops to two concentrated spots of car headlights. The sound of an engine grows nearer until it passes me a few moments later and I am plunged back into the almost dark. The moon is full and bright and casts silhouettes of trees to my right. Moonlight snags on mist in the dips as the air I breathe cools briefly. A silver vapour trails cuts the sky diagonally. Gradually the shine of the moon dulls until its surface makes itself visible. Day eases into the sky to my left and the world starts to colour itself in.
Twenty one bends. Any space that a camper fits is filled, many German, French and Belgians camped out, Dutch corner banging out euro pop at 9.30am, thirty six hours before the tour hits. Beers cooling in streams. A corner festooned in Norwegian flags quiet on the way up but will be belting out AC/ DC on the way back down whilst two fellas drink beer and play chess. Further up a lot quieter. Kilometre after kilometre of barriers. Overtake a street cleaning truck into the final hairpin. A long straight into the town, past the apartment blocks, in the drops, the Channel 4 Tour theme tune plays in my head, images of Lemond and Hinault in yellow and combo jerseys, hand in hand to the line. Through the tunnel, zip my jersey back up. Cap damp with sweat. Ride as high as I can until the tarmac runs out. Time to find a mid morning coffee and Orangina and some shade.
Yellow, green, white, polka dot jerseys flutter overhead. Thousands of people mill around town, all ages, many nationalities. The race isn’t due for hours yet but the atmosphere is already fizzing with anticipation and excitement. I wasn’t expecting to be here.
This morning I wasn’t sure that I wanted to have the six kilometre mountain climb back to my apartment after a day of loitering in the scorching sun on Alpe d’Huez all day. I’ve ridden up there the last two evenings in the full glare of the sun, heat bouncing back off the road, absolutely nowhere to hide, and it was a bit punchy hurty. Another option was to turn right at the bottom on the hill and ride up towards the Glandon and watch the race on the descent. Or I could watch on telly and when they hit the Glandon freewheel down to the reservoir to watch the race pass, then roll into Allemond for a Belgian beer and watch the battle on Alpe d’Huez on the big screen before staggering home.
I popped into the village to get a coffee after breakfast and discovered the cable cars to Alpe d’Huez are running today! That negated any need to ride anywhere. Knocked back an espresso and returned to the apartment to stuff snacks, cheese and pesto sarnies, kindle, headphones, chargers, rain jacket (unlikely I remember sitting in a bin bag on the Joux Plane a few years back), and bidons out of the freezer into a bag. Back into the village and joined the queue.
Meander around town looking for a spot to watch that isn’t too far from the cable car – it’s an extremely long hike in sliders or a very expensive taxi ride home if I miss the last one which is annoyingly early. David Millar passes by on his Brompton. Sit outside a bar with a cold Amstel and play a game of guess the country from how cyclists are dressed. Rule of thumb: northern Europe equals minimal design and neutral colours, the darker the better (Rapha and Pas Normal battling for top spot in the hit parade), southern Europe is all kinds of euro-fluoro mixed with team kits and very short socks.
Continue bar hopping and soaking up the atmosphere. Spot somewhere in the shade in the last kilometre but it’s still hours until the race will arrive. Pass a bar on the finishing straight but all the deckchairs and tables outside are taken, wander inside out of the heat, four locals watching the stage on telly. Order an espresso and Vedett and settle in for the afternoon. Pidcock attacks on the first descent. Oh this is gonna be good!
The bar fills as the riders climb Col de la Croix de Fer, locals, Dutch, Germans, a bunch of Brits who clearly rode the Etape last weekend, and a tipsy Italian fully channelling his inner Pantani – no jersey, bibs unhooked, sockless, bald, mahogany tan. An ad break just as the leading group turn onto the road to Bourg d’Oisans in the valley below, time to find a space on the barriers.
Final corner, about 700 metres to go, a view down the finishing straight. French commentary blasts from speakers and I open up the live tracker on my phone. Four groups scattered along the valley to the first hairpins of this climb. Within minutes an explosion of dots all the way up the twisting ascent. Pidcock out front on his own. Dots on the tracker continue to multiply, like watching cells split. The sound of helicopters and the commentary gets more excited, people lean over the barriers… Police outriders speed past, then Pidcock, people screaming and cheering. More motorbikes, another rider, then another, then the top three in a group together. Check time and estimate how long to walk back to cable car. There’s time to watch a few more before I need to head back up the hill but not too many. I suspect I’ll be swinging over a ravine in a box hanging from a wire by the time the grupetto hit town.
People line the barriers all the way into Bourg d’Oisans. Pop to the bakery for a pastry and then find a cafe for coffee and orange juice. Seems every table is a different nationality, English spoken opposite with American accents, Flemish next to me, German in the corner, French over there?
A crowd in red t-shrts with Danish flags on the barriers opposite the stage, they must have been here since very early. All the sponsors get their 15 minutes of fame to talk up their products/services whilst studiously ignored by everyone. A circus act gets a bit more attention but then what everyone has been waiting for… The caravan of tat sets off throwing out instant landfill, adults fighting little kids for bits of crappy plastic and sachets of washing powder.
Teams ride up a ramp and line up on the stage to be introduced to the crowds. Every rider waves when names are called out, some riders picked out to have a chat with the compere. Some get bigger cheers than others; Sagan, Gilbert, Van Aert, Bardet. The loudest reserved for Pinoy until the Danes go crazy for Vingegaard. Riders collect in front of me ready for the neutralised start.
Clip in and head down the valley towards Grenoble into a wind as warm as that from a hairdryer. Scan the verges for discarded bidons. Campers with pinched TdF direction arrows in the windows pass at regular intervals.
I watch a bead of sweat roll back and forth along the peak of my cap then drop onto my crossbar. Another bead of sweat appears. Squirt some ice cold Iced Tea into my mouth.
Two options to get to Valence today, follow the river Isere around the Vercors massif or up and over the mountains. Opting for up and over because it’ll probably be prettier and hopefully some cooler air higher up I left the hotel early, and followed the bike lanes out of the city, over the motorway and across the river and straight onto a fourteen kilometre climb gaining almost 1000 metres.
It’s still only nudging 8.30am and it’s already hot. The sun still low it appears to be the same level as me. Long shadows stretch across the tarmac allowing snatches of flickering shade. Grenoble sits far below and the Alps rise across the way. It’s a nice climb, even gradient never too steep, just tap it out. A father and young son pass me and hover just ahead for the next two hairpins. I pass them when they stop for a drink in the shade of the next bend. They pass again a couple of kilometres further but this time the dad is gently pushing the kid.
Oy my oh my! This road is stunning, carved deep into the rock alongside a fast tumbling river. Very quickly I catch a camper van ruining the flow on this lovely smooth tarmac. Mutter under my breath, road a bit too narrow and curves a bit too blind to pass. Crossing a bridge on to a less busy road and the brakes need to be dabbed a little less frequently. Rock arches over my head and I plunge into cool dark tunnels every now and again. Looking across the gorge I can see the road I left, a groove chiselled into the side of the mountain. Damn, that looks good. I check the map and see I could have continued along that ledge and then taken a set of tight switchbacks to drop me in the next village. I’ve lost too much height to turn back now. I’ll have to come back another time and have a proper explore in these mountains.
Slice of pizza and a cold drink in a pretty village wedged into the lower end of the gorge. Soft pedal to the Isère and follow it for a while. Coffee, water and fruit juice in the shade outside a strip mall patisserie next to a dual carriageway.
New Fast Automatic Daffodils and cross/tail wind for the final 20km to Valence. A kid in a car shouts Allez! Allez! and gives me a thumbs up. Air con and the last 80 kilometres of today’s stage.
Three rest days. Museums and restaurants, hanging out with old friends, chatting, eating, drinking, swimming, walking in the mountains. Mostly eating and chatting.
A beautiful cathedral sites atop the hill overlooking the town, a stopping off point on the St Jacques pilgrimage to Santiago. Later this evening there is music and dance from Galicia on the market square. Steep narrow cobbled streets radiate and stumble away from the cathedral.
Oh, that Le Puy! That explains why everything on every menu in town comes with lentils. Order a glass of wine and decide what to have with my lentils. There’s a lot of calories to replace. Today was harder than it looked on paper and it didn’t look that easy on paper. A detour due to a closed road didn’t help, adding ten kilometres and maybe some extra climbing. A glorious day though, climbing from the Rhône into the Ardèche, More mountains but not Alpine, heading into the ancient volcanos of the Massif Central.
Crisscrossing the Saint Jacques pilgrim trail all day, the road never flat. The sun and the views dazzle. Twisting in and out of the hills and between villages perched up high.
Why is it so damn hot? I thought today was supposed to be cooler. I order a coffee whilst pulling a bottle of water and a Capri Sun from the fridge. The final climb of today’s stage on a television in the corner. Why is it so hot? I knew I should have ordered two burgers in McDonalds earlier. Yeah, yeah, I know but Maccy D has air conditioning and stick loads of ice in their drinks, half of which can be tipped into a bidon to keep water cool for a few minutes longer. Why the hell didn’t I order two burgers.
This road is shit. Fuck this. Let’s revert to the original plan, this short cut doesn’t cut off much distance or height and it’s not worth the trucks and people in a hurry. I’m going to regret not ordering two burgers.
Oh heck, this is a beautiful road, spectacular views. I know this pass but not from this direction. I’m running out of kilometres to the summit and I’m not high enough so this road is going to ramp up at some point… ah shit this is steep… no, no, don’t cramp… Jeez when will I learn to eat more on days like this.
“Coke, s’il vous plait. Grande. Merci.” Feel faint, shaking. Should eat but I’ve spent the last five kilometres craving an omelette and there are only sandwiches and a couple of burgers on the menu. Yep, two hours ago I wanted a burger. Not now. I want an omelette. The fickleness of exhaustion. Three thousand metres of climbing in the 142 kilometres to now, it’s given me a bit of a spanking. However I’ve ridden then next 38km before and I know it’s all downhill, the first ten fast and squiggly, then the rest gently tipping down along a valley road. An hour and a bit at most. The sugar in the coke with get me that far. I hope.
Whack up the air con and collapse on the bed. Shower and stroll a hundred metres for dirty fast food tacos on the corner. Set alarm for early train and pass out less than 90 seconds into the podcast about today’s stage.
Helicopters buzz overhead. A policeman whistles, waves people out of the road. Police motorbikes pass then another rider, team car behind helpfully displaying his name, more police bikes. A name ticked off a list. A group of lads play cards on an ice box, bottles of beer next to their stools. Official photographers mill around by the hotel bar looking for interesting shots. Another rider passes. The sound of very expensive carbon fibre slicing through the air, the hum of high pressure tyres fizzing past on warm roads. Flashes of colour, more whistles. National champs jersey, world champ stripes. Picnic chairs in the shade. Entire families in polka dots. Another burst of colour and sirens. And repeat…
You can tell who is making an effort and those that just want to get to Paris. Some scrape the apex of the corner, others barely lean in. Pinot! Pinot! Pinot! chant the French. We’re getting towards the pointier end. Excitement is growing. The helicopters loiter overhead, more urgency in the outriders. Card games are stopped, newspapers folded away, bars empty, more people line the street. Into the top ten. Riders now followed by television cameras. Geraint Thomas appears almost immediately after David Gaudu, he’s has almost caught his two minute man. Pog in white, Vingegaard in yellow, a swarm of photographers and VIPs trailing, then the broomwagen. Chairs are folded up and people stroll off. A cold Orangina in a busy bar to watch the final few riders climb to the finish in Rocamadour on the TV in the corner.
A usual road from the port following the Arques valley to the first town inland where we turn over a small stone bridge and start up a narrow lane towards the forest. A pink hue floods the sky as the sun breaches the horizon hidden beyond the hill we’re climbing. A hare jumps from the verge, races away along the road and disappears into the fields opposite from where it appeared. At the hairpin we leave the road and pass by small red and white bars painted on a tree trunk indicating the trail is part of a long distance Grande Randonnée route. Bumping over roots, tyres scrabble for grip on the damp single track, steep little ramps around tree trucks. Suspended in the air the smell of wild garlic but we can’t see any. Joining a gravel fire road we zip along a straight line between trees before a sharp switchbacked doubletrack descent spits us out onto a road, straight over and loop back up around the other side, back across the same road and zigzag along more fire roads. Two deer bounce across the track ahead of us.
A fast double track descent from the forest suddenly funnels into a tunnel of trees. Duck under a branch, dab the brakes. A lake flickering between the trees out of the corner of my eye. The trees thin and I realise it’s a silver white field, dry chalky earth speckled with flint glowing in the early light. Drop down a bank onto a farm track and transported to Tuscany for a moment: White gravel road, row of cyprus trees, farmhouse in the foreground, low hills behind. Across a railway bridge to a steep grassy holloway, tyres slipping on wet grass and rutted chalk. Through a wheat field and turn right by the cows. Another holloway, this time downwards and leaf strewn. A bit of confusion and turning back and forth trying to match the paths or rather the lack of a path with the map. Shoulder the bikes up a high steep bank and find what we’re looking for. The narrow track snakes through woodland, pine needles litter the ground.
An isolated house stands sentry beside a disused railway line, across the tracks the tarmac disintegrates into gravel and in turn to mud. Rain has started to fall and despite knowing we’re ultimately heading to where we can see blue sky our convoluted squiggle of a route keeps turning back into the rain and the wind. Turn right at a junction rather than straight across, we’ll do this side of a square rather than the other three just to end up at the same place. Hopefully a bit less time spent under damp clouds. Rumble over tractor tyre tracks in the mud between fields. Wet brakes squeal on a swooping tarmac descent to Sept-Meules, a placename I’ve seen on signposts for ten years but never actually been through. A not so inbetween place between the inbetween places I tend to ride. Nice looking church. Rolling along the road we exit from under the rain and fork onto a grass track beside a field of barley and poppies that slowly rises and morphs into a rooty flinty climb between brambles. A couple of field edges lead us towards a church spire and an open patisserie.
A rut hidden under an overgrown grasstrack to road into another forest. Struggle to find the path in the woodland, obscured by vibrant verdant undergrowth. Swim through pools of light between trees. Slip slide through boggy ground and sludge in and out of stagnant puddles on a straight line carved through the middle of the forest. Must remember this section can be dropped from any future routes. More tyre tracks in the moist earth, a sign that others ride here but we still haven’t seen anyone in five hours. A family of wild boar trot across our path.
Eat tartiflette from a market stall sitting on the steps on the square in front of l’Eglise Notre-Dame de la Délivrance I can hear a brass band around the corner and hymns coming from the church, like having radios tuned to different stations in two different rooms. On our way to Amiens one Armastice Day morning a few years ago we stopped in Blangy-sur-Bresle before sunrise for a coffee whilst a market was being set up. The warming hunger inducing smell of cassoulet hit us as we left the cafe. Looking around the corner I spied a huge vat of stew being cooked up ready for market. That morning I swore I would one day arrange a day trip where we’d hit here at lunchtime. Today, finally, I made good on that promise. The options are tartiflette, paella, cassoulet, or lamb stew with cous cous. In all honesty it is a bit of a disappointment as it is no longer warm, it’s made to be taken home to heat up, not eat out of a plastic take-away tub with a spork there and then. Next time I’ll buy a small baguette from the bakery across the square and join the long queue at the rotisserie van. Or aim for ten in the morning and have still warm tartiflette for brunch.
Returning to the forest we climb steadily through birdsong and dappled sunlight. A section of a favourite road over the top of the ridge but rather than the usual snaking descent that brings a smile to the face swerve left into a narrow gap between the trees. The GR plummets down the side of the hill, we slalom lumps of flint and chunks of fallen branches. A view of the wide valley opens ahead as the path widens into a chalky double track. Sharp right turn at the farm and along the valley floor. Waist high grass and wheat whips shins.
I’ve never seen the bar open in Grandcourt in ten years! I add it to the mental map for future rides. A different way out of the village for a change simply to find the other end of a farm track I’ve passed up at Fresnoy-Folney many times. Wind turbines stand beacon like up on the plateau, their rotors spinning quickly – we form a two man echelon on the roads back towards Dieppe. The longest stretch of tarmac all day, through places familiar enough for autopilot switch to flicked to ‘On’. Across the big road and in my head tick off the cliff top villages and last few kilometres.
One last bit of edgelands… dart behind the back garden gates for a gravel track between the houses and cliff edge. In a dip in the land our ferry home appears cruising into port. The path narrows to what might be a footpath but a walker we pass doesn’t grumble. Steps and a barrier, yep this is probably a footpath. The ferry within the harbour walls directly ahead. A Canadian war memorial, one of many along this stretch of coast, in the narrow gap between the cliffs. One final climb of the day to get us over the cliffs into Dieppe.
Glancing up from my Kindle I see it is raining heavily outside. This wasn’t on the forecast I looked at late last night as we left Newhaven so I’m glad that I was off the boat quickly and the first through passport control. Also for the first time in all the years I’ve done daytrips and long weekends in northern France I don’t hit the road straight off the ferry. I’m here for a few days and I’ve ridden the roads around Dieppe many times so have decided to get a train to a suburban town four stops south of Rouen. It quickly and easily gets me to a less familiar region of Normandy. So I am reading a couple of chapters of a book in the port waiting room with a cup of coffee and packet of chocolate madeleines from the vending machine whilst I wait the two hours until the half six train.
The rain clears by the time I spin through the harbour to the station and from the dark empty platform wheel my bike onto the train. The clouds disperse and dissolve as the sky lightens as we travel southwards. By the time I disembark at Saint-Aubin-les-Elbeuf there is even a hint of sunshine. A rumble of cobbles and a bridge spanning the Seine and I’m into the countryside climbing into woodland. Smatterings of snow lie on the ground amongst curled bracken vivid amber as the light of the climbing sun splinters into shafts between trees. A deer scarpers across the road.
An infinite sky wraps around low flat horizons. Expansive fields stretch between lines of lolly pop trees and church spires and water towers. Approaching junctions cars perpendicular to me drive on top of straight lines like children’s drawings. Sunlight flicker as I ride past rows of trees edging meadows. Falling and rising through birdsong and vibrant spring woodland, new leaves intense greens, a world refreshing. Angular stone churches and medieval timber houses. A cat in a window next to a set of traffic lights. Past an abbey and a lake and then start a steady climb through a forest to high Normandy hills. A rabbit hops across the road and along the verge oblivious to me and the giant buzzard that just swept out of that tree. A squadron of kites practice manoeuvres over a striped field.
A joyous swooning descent turning over the biggest gear, lean into the roundabout and onto one of those very long, very straight, very undulating French roads. In my right ear a podcast with two ex pro cyclists chatting about racing. I pretend it’s team radio and click down a cog, into the drops, push slighter harder on the pedals, TV helicopter tracking me on the left side. Solo breakaway. Slight rise to a left kink, the road straightens again, tilting down a degree again. Click down once more and tired legs keep turning. Try and tuck a little tighter and lower, all day the wind has not been as friendly as I’d hoped and is starting to sap energy.
Three departments in a day; Seine-Maritime, Eure, Orne. A cold beer in the sunshine in the centre of Alencon before retreating to my hotel on the outskirts of town surrounded by car dealerships. A light aircraft wobbles through the wind low over the flat roofs to the regional airport on the opposite side of the road.
Frost smothers cars and the grass edges of the carpark as I walk to breakfast, my breath a small cloud rising into the bright empty sky overhead. After eating I watch cartoons with a cup of tea and let the sun get higher and allow the day to warm a little more. No rush to leave, I’ve got all day to cover the 120km to Evreux.
Out of Normandy and into the department of Sarthe in Pays de la Loire. The flowing gently curving roads across a barely rippling landscape of a transition stage in le Tour. The alchemy of sleep has regenerated the legs. Another solo attack and the same imaginary helicopter. I can picture the images in the rest day montage. This is bold move so early and most likely doomed, hopefully the DS will call me back. I stumble across a museum of cycling in the next village. Not expecting it to be open on an out of season Sunday I’m surprised to find it’ll be open in less than 30 mins. I’ve not ridden far and it’s a bit early to stop but decide if there’s a café in the village I’ll grab a coffee and wait. There’s a PMU bar on the next corner. It is a wise decision – the museum is fantastic. A collection of bikes, jerseys, maps, paraphernalia and memorabilia covering the entire history of the Tour de France and further back to the earliest days of racing.
Sunday club runs out on the roads, an older guy in full FDJ kit. Nods and waves and friendly Bonjours. A rural landscape, farms and barns, ploughed fields. Not much in the way of climbing today, following various rivers back north. A morning of false flats, marshes and flooded fields. Across the border into Normandy again but continuing to trace the Sarthe north. The old blue metal signposts in Orne really are lovely. Those arrows and the superscript Ks above the decimal in the numbers of kilometres, lovely typography. Crucifixes on every other junction. A cold can of Iced Tea and snacks tucked in a musette slung over my shoulder. Nothing will be open this afternoon.
A pair of gates set in a tall wall, faded peeling paint, rusted chain and padlock. An avenue of uniform trees beyond line an overgrown driveway. Somewhere beyond a grand house out of view hidden amongst . I wish I had a medium format camera with me, there’s a portrait project in this. I’ve lost track of how many gateways like this I’ve seen over the last two days, more often than not fallen out of use. Le domaine perdu of Henri Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, “some forsaken old manor”. I can see the slim faded 70’s Penguin Classic paperback on the shelf at home, picked up in a second hand shop near the art school in Farnham three decades ago. Then I remember I have an audiobook version on my phone. It needs to be the soundtrack to one of these rides soon. There again I should really listen to it in the original language.
Canary yellow colour fields of rape. A sweet floral smell hangs in the air. Telephone cables skip alongside the road. Yet more lolly pop trees and water towers and church spires. Plastic wrapped hay bales stacked in pink and green Tetris patterns. Pollock-esque dribbles of tar on the roads through towns. Traffic increases and roads get wider the closer I get to Evreux. I think I must have lost concentration and not paid as much attention to this part of the route. I’m sure there are quieter roads just over there somewhere. On the plus side the tarmac is smooth and progress is quick. Another beer in town in the sunshine before finding the hotel.
Second coffee stop of the day and only forty five kilometres covered. It’s only another twenty to Rouen and the train to Dieppe isn’t for another four hours. I’ve been here before I think, definitely that last ten kilometres that traced the curve of the Seine, and I’ve certainly been through the town along the main road a few times before. I take a look at the map, there’s plenty of time for a detour and still make it to Rouen for lunch before the train.
Turning left at the lights under the giant bicycle sculpture I’m on the Cote Jacques Anquetil, an almost four kilometre climb to Chateau Anquetil, the large manor house he retired to after racing. I’ve descended this a few times in the past, it’s a fantastic alpine-esque road through woodland with a couple of hairpins mixed into the fast bends. There’s a great view across the flood plain of the Seine to the distinct curve of the hills carved by the river over millennia. Those hills almost look as though designed on a architects drawing board. There’s not much height gain over the length of the climb so the gradient is friendly and I’m not sure the last k and a half counts as climbing at all. Past the monument in Anquetil’s honour and two long straight roads to Rouen. A tailwind gives me a massive push so even with a detour from the planned route there’s time for lunch and a glass of rose outside a creperie in the shadow of the cathedral.
Before the ferry leaves Dieppe there’s time for one last coffee and another glass of wine at the Café des Tribuneaux in the middle of town, a haunt of Oscar Wilde, Walter Sickert and James McNeill Whistler when the town was a fashionable coastal resort amongst British poets and artists at the turn of the century before last. It’s been nice to be able to hop on the ferry again just for the sake of going for a ride on empty French roads, pastries from village bakeries with coffee on the terrace outside a PMU bar. No forms or tests complicating things, just the post-Brexit stamping of passport in and out of the EU. Three days of my current allowance of ninety used up so time to start thinking of another trip over…
*you have to pronouce Sarthe appallingly incorrectly with an English accent for that title to work. The correct pronunciation is ‘Sart’ with a hard T.
Each signpost points to somewhere I was either a few minutes or an hour or two ago, and quite often both. A back and forth route that almost retraces and crosses itself but never quite meets. A series of incredibly familiar lanes, like a list of old friends in an address book; St Helena, Streat, Underhill, New Way, Danworth, Pomper, Twineham, Bob, Kent, Picts, Long House. These are old commutes, once visited daily, autopilot could be applied but I tap the Garmin to check which way to turn as although I’m riding usual ways it’s not in familiar directions or combinations. The hinterlands of the South Downs where the curves of the hills flatten out into mid-Sussex. Not completely ironed out though, there are short sharp climbs. There’s that lane that has a Belgium like feel which is appropriate as it’s Classics season.
Past the house that looks like a World War II bunker from the outside but you know it’s all walls of glass and pristine white inside. Square edge shorn hedges, splintered shards poking outwards, spiking the sunlight. A harshness and violence at odds with the flowers gently exploding in verges. Spring’s big bang. Colour splatters. Galaxies of flowers in verges and hedgerows, white and yellow and lilac. Hawthorne blossom, buttercups, daisies, things I don’t know the names of, I should get a book of plants. Dazzle ship pattern shadows on the roads, sunlight able to filter between still bare branches but the pointillist fizz of trees coming into bud has started. Squirrels, rabbits, and pheasants in the quiet lanes. Cats laze in the shade under car bumpers in driveways. A coke can, bright and new rolls across the white lines in the centre of the road, must have been thrown from that last car. What is wrong with people?
The reservoir after a detour for a closed road and then Horsted Keynes, a place that will forever sound like the name of a firm of solicitors from a Wodehouse book in my mind. Up and down and across Sussex, the route still folds in on itself, almost crossing itself but not quite. Slugwash Lane returning towards the South Downs in anticipation. Those hills have been in sight almost the whole time since setting off but not yet to be clambered over. Back to the north and the Ashdown. A route that takes in almost all of what Sussex has to offer, the Downs, the Weald, Ashdown Forest, High Weald, Pevensey Levels, but not today…
Diamonds are forever but not the ones in my legs. A hundred and twenty k into the two hundred and I turn around and head back to Lewes and the train station. I’ve managed another complete James Bond audiobook continuing this years Randonneur Round the Year soundtrack theme but not all of the ride. I’m feeling empty, going through the motions for no real gain, either physically or mentally. Changes at work and a bout of COVID have played havoc with my audax schedule with cancelling entries to calendar events and trying to find weekends to squeeze in DIYs and now I’ve missed March. Perhaps a month off to reset and start again in May. Maybe even revisit that idea from a couple of years ago before the world closed down to try and complete RRtY on French roads now travel restrictions have eased.
I’m soaked and distracted and I’m not sure I exchange any pleasantries as I stick my head round the door of the pub and bluntly ask “Are you serving coffee?”
“Yes,” is the answer.
“Awesome,” I respond before sticking my head back out the door to tell Jim the good news.
– – –
“Wanna a whiskey to go with that?”
“Are you having one?”
I look at the puddle rapidly forming around my sodden shoes, then up again and out of the window at the slanting rain. My socks squelch as I shuffle my feet and the landlady has handed us bar towels.
“Yeah. Jura?”
“Yes please.”
We neck the malt and then the coffee. It’s around half two. We should get going again, there’s still about forty kilometres to go and earlier this morning I’d optimistically thought we’d be almost finished by now. Turns out a triple A audax in the Lakes is not the same as a triple A audax in Sussex. La’al Lakeland, or Little Lakeland in Cumbrian dialect, is already the hardest 100km perm I’ve ever ridden and we’ve only done sixty kilometres of it so far. Before we set off it did look like if we were done by three we’d potentially outrun the forecast rain but it rolled in earlier than hoped, and we’re nowhere near finished. We move by the fire for a few minutes before we head back outside. Warm damp clothing is ever so slightly more pleasant than cold soggy clothing.
It had been reasonable when we set off, cloudy but dry, occasional cracks in the grey showing blue and faint shadows along with sunlight skidding off high hillsides at times. It had been an easy spin out of Kendal towards Staveley, past the nice coffee shop, over and around the hill avoiding the big road to Troutbeck Bridge. Petrol station haul of oat bars shared out and stuffed in pockets and a receipt tucked in the brevet card. We followed the cyclepath along the edge of Lake Windermere to Ambleside. Unofficial coffee stop at Chester’s at Skelwith Bridge to say hello to Bex.
A few lumpy kilometres into Little Langdale and past its tarn and rattle over a cattle grid where the road splits. Previous time here a few days back we’d come over from Blea Tarn but we weren’t going that way today. We followed the sign that kindly warned extreme caution and of 30% gradients and extreme bends up and over Wrynose and Hardknott passes.
First up Wrynose. Literally. One tight steep double hairpin at the start and then not bothering with any more to ease the gradient, straight up, not-so-gradually ramping up, bear left over a stone bridge, straight steeper bit, slight right, over the top. Caught my breath. Thumbs up from Japanese tourists driving the other way.
Into the burned rust and dark green vale between the high points. The short descent is trickier than the climb, the road twisted more on this side, tarmac cracked and broken in patches, gravel and water in the bends. Fortunately we didn’t lose all the height gained from Langdale, the road ever so gently tipped down along the floor of the wide shallow valley. A few minutes of soft pedalling before another cattle grid and warning sign.
Hardknott. The road a narrow scribbled squiggle as if someone has doodled distractedly on the hillside with tarmac. Winters have not been kind to the surface, or perhaps gravity as it looks as though it is slipping down at a glacial pace. Hairpins, tight and steep, bumps and ridges, fossilised moguls. Sat in the saddle the front end lifted off the ground, stood on the pedals and leaning over the front the rear wheel skipped and slipped. Looking up I watched a van at seemingly impossible angles coming down. The drop the other side was much the same but twice the height lost, twisting precipitously, dragged brakes and tense shoulders.
A long road out of the valley, more easy spinning respite between hedgerow and dry stone walls. A pub on a junction at Eskdale Green. Lunch and a pint and another receipt. Our stop seemed well timed as hail fell outside the window. It was tempting to stay by the fire and have another pint but we were only half way round and outside it looked like the rain was easing.
It hadn’t. As we climbed on our way to Ulpha the rain hardened and for the next hour or so over the fells to Broughton it attacked us sideways. The landscape was stunningly empty and despite the weather just the right side of bleak. Cloud blurred the tops and hail briefly tapped on the road. Despite the saturation humour wasn’t lost. It may have been if we hadn’t found the Kings Head serving coffee. They may not be as cheered as we are as they’ve just had to mop the floor by the bar when we moved by the fire.
Miraculously it seems the rain might be stopping and by the time we join the main road back east it has definitely stopped. There’s even the classic hopeful voicing of “it looks brighter over there.” A view of the start of the sea, silver grey not too far away. A few kilometres on a big road over Grizebeck Brow, a long drag of a climb offering a chance to warm up. A super straight super fast descent to where the road from Coniston joins us, and just as the traffic increases we pull off returning to small lanes twisting and undulating through woodland. Stone bridges and river flood plains and wooded hills. It chucks it down again for a few minutes either side of Newby Bridge as we navigate cyclepaths around a busy junction to get to the last lanes back to Kendal.
First we have to get up a harsh climb away from the southern end of Lake Windermere. Annoyingly it feels like it gets steeper the further you climb. I have a little bit of a swear but I’m soon cheered over the top as stunning views unfurl ahead, lush rolling valleys and patchwork fields and distant dark hills. I glance down at the Garmin, seventeen kilometres to go and three hundred metres of ascent left. Looking up again there’s no sign of a large town within this vista. Of course, Kendal is the other side of that dark menacing lump of a fell ahead of us.
I start to wonder what time is printed on the starting receipt and doing some sums. I know we’ve got a slower lower speed limit compared to a normal Brevet Populaire but flipping heck I must be pushing the time limit a bit close for comfort. The thought of one more climb is a concern…
“I’ve never been on these roads… I’m not sure where we are.”
We are seven kilometres from Jim’s house.
“Ah, I know where we are. Shit, this last climb is horrible!”
Jim is not lying. It starts reasonably enough but this one definitely steepens the higher we get. There’s also a false summit sticking the knife in and then giving it a little twist for good measure. I spend the last hundred metres staring blankly at the tarmac just ahead of my front wheel. These last two hills have been tougher than the famous named ones from earlier. Thankfully the final kilometre and a bit are entirely downhill. Sitting on my crossbar outside the bank I compare my finishing receipt against my starting one and realise I’ve made it with 32 minutes to spare. I then remember Jim lives up the hill out the other side of Kendal. A quiet sigh and I clip back in.
The rising sun gently lifts mist from the frosted hinterlands, the angular shapes of Arundel Castle stand out against the hill curving through the clear sky. I’m on an early train to Chichester for February’s ‘Randonneur Round the Year’ attempt: Buck Barn Sutton Scotney 200. It’s a week later than planned, thanks to storms Eunice and Frederick(?) or whatever the F one was named. Chichester isn’t the nearest control to home but it’s less than an hour away on a direct train line. A Buck Barn start would mean adding seventy kilometres riding to and from the start and finish and it’s a bit early in the year to be adding unnecessary distance. There will be plenty of time – and daylight and warmth – for 300s later in the year.
Near the cathedral I stuff a cash machine receipt in my wallet as evidence of start time and location and tuck an ear bud into my left ear. My RRTY attempt is being soundtracked by audiobooks of Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. They are the perfect length for two hundred kilometres, the stories are exciting enough to listen to all the way through, but plots not so complicated that if I zone out for a bit and don’t pay close attention it doesn’t really matter. Last month it was “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, this month “From Russia With Love”. I realise the irony of this title given the sickening news that Putin has invaded Ukraine in the last few days.
A cold breeze nips at my ears, I tug at my buff. A couple of deer nibble at grass in a field oblivious to, or unfussed by, my passing. The flat roads out towards Rowlands Castle are empty so I don’t detour onto my quieter route. I’m not sure when the El Supremo audaxes were created but I’m guessing a good few years back as they use a lot of roads that I don’t find particular cycling friendly. I always validate with brevet card rather than gps and rejig the routes to smaller roads where I can. Half of the day’s route is close enough to home to ride fairly frequently. The other half shares sections with the Hailsham 600, being the same audax organiser, plus multiple rides to Bristol over the years. I’ll have at least an idea of where I am all the way round.
The inclines start almost as soon as I cross over the Hampshire border and under the A3. Climbing onto the spine of the South Downs I gaze down into the Meon Valley to the north. To my left the land fades southwards towards the sea hidden in the morning haze. Old Winchester Hill, Wheely Down, in and out of another dip. Ahead the greens and ochres of the hills are broken by hundreds of white vans on the top of the next summit. Yellow sign and temporary lights “Gate K. VIPs and traders”. No other indication what it is until I reach the roundabout after the fast descent to the roundabout on the edge of Winchester: a big yellow AA sign “Motocross World Championships”.
At the roundabout I ignore the routesheet instruction to head straight over and take the first exit towards the city centre. I usually avoid big towns as they are full of crap roads full of even crapper traffic and slow progress, but I want to visit South Downs Social, a new cycling café set up by The Handmade Cyclist. I have some of his prints on my walls at home and the the café look great in photos. It also happens to be roughly sixty kilometres into the day so well placed for the first stop of the day, plus I know that there isn’t anything other than a village shop and petrol station in Sutton Scotney, the official control point about ten kilometres up the road.
After a coffee and toasted cheese and ham croissant and a peruse of the prints hanging on the walls it’s back into the sunshine to get a receipt from the petrol station at Sutton Scotney to prove I made it this far west. Turning around again I discover exactly how strong and cold the breeze is. I zip both my gilet and jacket back up and get my head down. I remember a good chunk of the next fifty kilometres from previous rides, many small twisting lanes through woodland linking long open straights with lots of ups and downs. It’s pretty but energy sapping enough without this wind. I open the bag of Jelly Babies I bought at the petrol station and move it into a side pocket for easy access.
A buzzard glides across a corduroy field. Sharply shorn box edged hedges, crisp shadows. My way alternates between flowing lanes lain across the landscape and woodland holloways furrowed and hewn into the landscape. A kite hangs suspended low in the air, tailing flickering, wings adjusting, head still, watching… a rabbit dashes across the road to the hedgerow opposite. I briefly join a main road, snowdrops push through leaf litter and actual litter in the verge, fading beer cans and McDonald’s cups. Clatter over railway tracks into another town for another cash machine receipt.
Up a hill into a less familiar corner of Sussex. It’s two or three villages before I start to recognise names on signposts. Sitting on a village bench in the warmth of the sun I munch on Jelly Babies and think about something more substantial. Should have grabbed some proper food when I stopped in Liss to get that last receipt. Visualising the villages on the way ahead I guess I’m probably going to have to wait an hour until I get to Billingshurst. James Bond is travelling to Paris from Bulgaria on the Orient Express and my mind drifts off to a vague idea to travel Europe with an Interrail ticket and a Brompton.
Annoyingly by the time I get to Billingshurst the bakery has been closed twenty minutes but I passed a café just back down the high street. No savoury food left so a bakewell tart and a double espresso. Really don’t need more sugar but it’ll fill a hole until Buck Barn. I have two options to get there, an indirect and therefore longer back road way or a straight-ish line along the A272. This is fast road that appears a lot on El Supremo audaxes and one I generally avoid unless just for a few hundred metres to get between lanes. Today I decide to risk it in the interests of time. I’m behind my schedule which means I’ll run out of light and any semblance of warmth for the last hour of the ride at least. I instantly regret my decision. It’s one of those main roads where the width is disproportionate to the speed of most of the traffic. Constantly feeling on edge waiting for that one driver that doesn’t want to maybe drop a gear and wait fifteen seconds to pass. It’s not too busy but I’m glad when I turn off into Buck Barn services on the cross roads with the A24.
Maccy D Filet-O-Fish receipt as evidence that I hit this control. First savoury food for six hours, hits the spot. Litter put in a bin where it belongs. Retrace the A272 a kilometre or so until the first left towards Shipley and my chosen route to Amberley bypassing Storrington. That road between Storrington and Amberley is awful too so I wiggle around the back lanes through West Chiltington and Parnham Woods. Shadows lengthen as the sun rolls towards the horizon. I cross the Arun and slowly climb the hill behind Arundel. The sky softens to pinks and greys as the world mutes. One last main road, a couple of kilometres on the A29 but it’s downhill and wide enough for traffic to pass easily. Into the drops and push hard on the pedals until a rollercoaster corner flings me onto a lane into the woods.
I start climbing again as the burning red horizon glows through bare trees like a fire through a grate. If only a fire, it’s getting cold again. All light has extinguished from the sky when I join the main road above Halnaker. Stane Street, the long straight descends out of darkness into the chemical light of the outskirts of Chichester. Roundabouts and retails parks and end of day traffic into the city centre and back to the cathedral to get a final receipt. I press stop on the Garmin and soft pedal back to the train station thinking about what to have for dinner. And wishing I’d brought another warm layer.
Next up: was supposed to be the Horsepower 200 the weekend after this ride but I tested positive for COVID the day after this ride so I’ve cancelled that one. I’ll sort out a DIY by GPS for later in March.
The road is actually properly closed. Tall metal barriers span the darkened sunken lane. It’s always a risk riding past ROAD CLOSED signs but with a bike you can almost invariably get past somehow. More often than not it’s only closed to cars and pedestrians can get through, but over the years I’ve also straddled chevron covered plastic barriers, jumped over holes carved across the tarmac, shouldered the bike and clambered up banks, or cyclocrossed the grass verge, and there was that one time I pushed my bike along the side of resurfacing machinery trying hard not to catch the eyes of French workmen. Thinking about it I got away with that one in Germany once too. Didn’t even need to pull the dumb foreigner trick. I’ve pushed my luck many times. Too far this time it seems. Both road and footway fully blocked, the barriers stretching from one side to the other. The sun set about an hour ago and the last of the twilight is swiftly draining from the spaces between the branches overhead. I can’t see how far the closed section is or if I can find a way around. Anyway just to make sure no one chances their arm CCTV and guard dog signs are on display. I’m pretty certain there won’t be any dogs but not so certain that I want to find out one way or the other.
I’m 187 kilometres into a 220km audax, I really could do without this. I was hoping to be done by the time dark fully set in but we got off to a slow start as Simon wasn’t feeling well. I dumped him in Lewes 65km in after a coffee stop but we were already a long way off a ten hour schedule and all the hills have been in the second half of the ride. I haven’t ridden this sort of distance for a long time and quite honestly wasn’t entirely sure that I’d get all the way round, however I’ve signed up for a much longer endurance event later in the year and need to get some distance in the legs. This dead end now adds a bit extra because I didn’t listen to the bit of my brain that said ‘Don’t risk it, you know the way around, yeah it’s longer and the roads shitter but it’s flatter and just as quick’ and rode past the signs at the top of the road – and the word top is key here. I’ve pointlessly dumped myself at the bottom of a High Weald ghyll and the way back out is steep. Classic not thinking things through when I’m tired. I know I do yet I still do it. Idiot.
I swear to myself again, delve into my musette, pull out a packet of crisps, and turn on my heels. I’m doing this audax perm the old way with a brevet card so I’ve needed to collect receipts on the way round to prove I’ve hit all the controls. As with the last couple of years since COVID I’ve not carried cash and the last few shops I’ve used had minimum card spends, so I have a fine collection of sweet and savoury snacks in the musette – I ran out of pocket space two controls back. Oh, and a roll of masking tape in order to hit a fiver in that last village store and I really didn’t need more food but ran out of tape a couple of days ago Now I just need to follow the bigger roads to Mayfield for the final control, then a relatively short section back to Hailsham and I’m done…
Oh fuck off!!
Not again.
Approaching the roundabout in Horam I see a ROAD CLOSED sign glowing in sodium light of the streetlamps. It’s the road off to the left, the way I need to go. This is a bigger road than the last lane and usually I would be convinced that I could get around whatever has closed this one but after that last double back detour I’m going to pay attention to the signs. It’s less than ten kilometres to the finish now and I’d quite like it all to just be done. I can get on the Cuckoo Trail all the way back to the finish from here. I turn down the road knowing there’s a pavement as far as the entrance to the trail.
It’s good to be riding on the wrong side of the road again, a smile on my face as I spin through the streets of Dieppe for the first time in over a year. I’ve missed the sight of the illuminated red diamond tabac and green cross pharmacy signs. Past the castle ruin and up through the woods which I usually ride before sunrise to the sounds of owls. Legs feel the gentle rise and fall of the limestone plateau and a stubborn headwind. I know these roads so well but don’t remember a bar in that village. Consider stopping for an Orangina or cheeky beer but choose to crack on, it may be sunny and warm now but rain is possible early evening. Got four more days of café stops to look forward to. Last time I rode these roads was between midnight and 6am during Normandicat in 2019, with a 2 hour bivvy kip in that church porch along the way. No tired clipping of speed bumps this time. Pylons and striped fields. Sweep through downward curves from the Pays de Caux then climb again, through forest over to the Seine valley. Residential streets steeply drop into Rouen.
After checking into a hotel on the banks of the river I stroll to a supermarket via the cathedral. Lazy evening with a hotel room picnic of the best Carrefour City has to offer and second division French footie on the telly (SC Bastia v SM Caen, Nancy v Havre AC, Nimes v Amiens SC for the aficionados). Early night as tomorrow is going to be the furthest I’ve ridden in a day since last year. And then repeat for the three days after that.
Yesterday’s forecast of heavy rain has changed to “scattered rainfall” and “few showers”. Damp roads when I look down from balcony, rained overnight. Snaffle madeleines, biscuits, Nutella and cheese from the breakfast buffet (always take a musette down to breakfast).
Empty roads out of the city, still early for a Sunday. Sharp up from the off, clamber away from the Seine through switchbacks and the pungent scent of damp woodland. A D road with 4 numbers, know what to expect, dead straight for as far as I can see, gentle swell like a calmed sea. Supermarkets, car dealerships, Macdonald’s, regional airport, and the golden glow so many open patisseries. Catch red light after red light after red light for six kilometres. The edge of city urbanity ebbs horizon and sky open wide. Click down a sprocket or two, settle into a rhythm.
Chateau Anquetil. Been this way before, the next descent is awesome! Three kilometres of twists and hairpins back down towards the Seine. A giant’s bike at the lights. Tables and chairs being unstacked outside a bar I stopped at a few years ago. Not enough kilometres done yet to justify a stop, next town maybe. Switchbacks again, up this time, another plateau and find the rhythm again. More hairpins and a view back down to the Seine. Limestone outcrops tower above the road and river. Spot a PMU bar next to a church in a village on the banks of the river. “Un café crème s’il vous plait” – it’s good to be back!
Keep to the left bank as far as Vernon where I leave the Seine and start towards a different river valley. I know from here until Chartres will be fairly empty of opportunities to find food so stop for a sarnie and cold drink. I start to eat but then suddenly remember the climb from this town from a previous ride. I tuck the remainder of the sandwich in my musette to eat once I’ve climbed out of town onto a new plateau. Once back up on the limestone it’s sixty kilometres of flat-ish that tip gently up and down. Flick back and forth between a couple of cogs on the rear. Nothing but fields and ever widening horizons interrupted only by church spires and lolly pop trees and water towers. An extensive sky is animated by sunshine and almost out of focus clouds but is definitely not leaking any rain like the forecast threatened. Acres and acres of farmland, drying corn and drooped sunflowers, varied cereals, white butterflies jerkily waft along wild flower verges. The only traffic I see is the occasional tractor. Start to feel the distance and lack of food. Bus stop snack of biscuits and madeleines pinched from the hotel this morning.
Just as the tedium of the ever so slightly undulating farmland starts to drag the road slants downwards into lush bright green woodland tracing the Eure towards Chartres. The double spires of the cathedral appear on the horizon as I crest a small incline. Pass a bakery still open at 4 on a Sunday so grab two baguette sarnies for dinner. Twenty odd kilometres to go, the wind picks up and sky darkens. More church spires and water towers. A kestrel hovers of the edge of woodland. Couple of k’s to go and I get a bit eager into a gravelly corner that’s tighter than anticipated. Hold it and ease up. A lorry silently glides along a motorway in the distance.
As I check into my B&B today’s promised rain promptly arrives. Shove my bike into a barn. Seeing a lack of luggage and hearing how far I’ve come my host asks if I’m a pilgrim heading to the Compostela. Maybe I just look tired and grubby.
Farm B&B breakfast with homemade apple juice, jams and honey (carrot and onion plants if I understand correctly). Setting off under leaden sky the views are blurred in every direction. I suspect I could get wet today. Telegraph poles crisscross shaved fields. Flat never-ending horizons broken by occasional trees and houses clumped around church steeples. Stacked bales, huge grain silos, yet more drying corn and darkened dropped heads of sunflowers. An audiobook in my right ear to half distract me, this landscape won’t change much until I get near the Loire and that’s still a hundred kilometres away.
A brief break from vast agriculture to dip through woodland to a town by a river. Coffee and quick Di2 charge as I’ve only had the small ring for the last ten kilomatres and it’s too flat a day for that. I realise I’ve been here before when prior to TCRno5 attempted to ride to my parents non-stop until my freehub imploded. The next chunk of distance will be the way I rode that night, it’ll be nice to see what it all actually looks like.
Endless flat. I remember that the top half of France goes on and on for quite some time but forgot quite how dull it gets, expecially by the second day. Probably best I rode this in the dark the last time. The drab sky pressing down on everything isn’t helping. Gradually the straight roads start to bend and dip, fields edged by trees more frequently. A field of vines, must be getting close to the Loire.
A long bridge and the château that was all lit up last time. A glance behind and see dark clouds chasing me. Forty kilometres to go, I might outrun them. Twenty kilometres later I exit a supermarket to the definite smell of rain. Moments later crossing le Cher I’m soaked. By the time I find a bus stop to shelter in it has stopped. I knew I should have just stopped for a coffee in Montrichard.
Zip through a village bouncing over speedbumps… oh hang on that’s the bench I napped on by the mairie. I prefer this pace and hotel rooms. Route barrée. Only six kilometres to go and the detour looks fiddly. You can usually ride around or climb over whatever it is. Keep riding, nothing, keep riding, lovely smooth tarmac, keep riding, this is lovely! Oh, trucks and resurfacing machine and heavy rollers block the road. Hmm, no one is shouting at me to turn around, hop off and walk along the grass verge past it all, men in hi-viz look at me strangely but no one stops me. Keep walking, don’t catch their eyes, pull straw out of my cassette, hop back on, sprint. Hang everything up to dry when I reach my B&B.
Wake up to church bells and cockerels. And rain but it stops whilst I eat breakfast. Definite change to the landscape, gentle ripples, gradually gaining height all day. The first hundred kilometres roughly follow the route I rode 5 years ago through the night and morning until the heat and busted freehub got to me. Every 10km or so I get a flashback, the field I eventually bivvied in when I fell asleep on the aero bars, the cemetery with ornamental trees where I found water at 6am, that undulating road that made my legs grumble.
La Brenne, ‘the land of the thousand lakes’ and long long very very straight roads. Smooth tarmac and barely any traffic, settle into aerobars. Into Limousin, and the roads start to angle up. Rise and fall, rise and fall increments, like lock gates on a canal. A coffee and Orangina in Lussac-les-Églises in memory of a missed friend. Supermarket picnic in the next town. Fifty to go and the climbing kicks in big time. Ripples become waves. Layer upon layer of hills. Dark green lumps. Dense cool slightly damp forest; orange and purple heather, bracken, pine and oak. Stick to the medium sized roads, quiet enough without corkscrewing through the in-between bits where the steep roads and chasey dogs tend to live. These follow the ridges, big ring, cross chaining. Huge buzzards. Pine and oak, fern and heather. Keep pushing a big gear along false flats.
Dicking about on the outer edge of Limoges as I didn’t check that short section of the route near the end that turns out not to be a road. It looks like a green way cycle route but overgrown, doesn’t look like it’s ridden much. I’m within 5km of a shower and I can’t be arsed with possible punctures or mud. Twenty minutes later than expected and more than one dead end I check into cheap motel near the motorway.
Final day. A day of blue and green, sky and rivers, valleys and hills. Today is the officially hilly day, proper climbs, ones that go on for kilometres. Left achilles niggles. Long descents where I fold into the aero bars and let out audible whoops. Using a mix of big smooth roads and twisting little ones. Empty main roads as they run parallel to the motorway and all the traffic is just over there. These big roads that run straighter and iron out the worst of the hills mean I make up some of the time I’m losing on the rollercoaster corkscrews between them. To the east I can see the Millevaches, dark forested hills standing taller than the high lands I’m already on. I rode through those last time I did this, big old lumps. I’ll be over that way on the way home in a week’s time. After a few days of clouds today the sun cast sharp shadows, it feels like summer rather than autumn, the temperature tilting upwards. A quiche in a bus stop in the shade. Past deserted hotels and petrol stations now that traffic is diverted onto the motorway.
Away from the big roads lizards skitter across tarmac under shadow buzzards, screeching echoing in the empty blue sky. Cows munch in fields, a heron stands sentry. Stone walls slowly being eaten by moss line sun dappled chestnut strewn lanes. Colours turning to autumn. The smell of apples fills the air, orchards to my right. Familiar place names start to appear on road signs. Another closed road, a fallen tree and a crane on a bridge across the Correze, and a much further than I’d like it to be detour. Some hand gestures and broken French and the guy in the hi-viz diverting traffic lets me walk past on the narrow pavement. According to my gpx file there are two climbs left to do but the first is a long steady valley climb followed by a long fast valley descent, an feel of alpine foothills.
T-junction. Oh, know where I am now, flick on autopilot. Climb, under the bridge, descent to the junction, turn tight, long straight road. Follow the Dordogne, cross the Dordogne, past the supermarket, slight kink in the road, avenue of plane trees, Occitanie sign, past the jam factory, over the railway lines, over the Cère. Destination reached.
West
The plan was to ride home almost parallel to the route down but it will be big days and I’m not sure that I can either be bothered or that my achilles will hold out all the way back. The first day would be scenic but I’m not sure I really need to ride for two days across northern France again. A bit of investigating and I discover that I can book the bike onto a TGV from Bordeaux to Paris. This way I can ride across the Dordogne to Bordeaux which I’ve never done before and then catch a very fast train all the way across the boring bit. The train will cover in two hours what will take me two days or more. Trains booked, hotels booked, new route plotted…
The first 45km are half of a favourite local loop. I climb through cloud up onto the limestone causse. Sheep with cow bells and silent cows. Two deer bound along a fence line. Gnarly old oak trees and moss covered crumbling walls. Water droplets hang on intricate spiderwebs in the verges and across fields, each sparkling web like a tiny galaxy making up a map of the universe. Rounding a bend a recently harvested field is full of them as if a farmer is growing candyfloss. By the time I reach the memorial for US Air Force arms drop to the resistance I’ve breached the cloud and shadows stripe the road. They stay for the rest of the day.
Around the ridge above Rocamadour and the alpine-esque descent and climb again through the gorges. Rather than the usual right turn take a left in the village at the top. Now the roads are new as I continue west towards the department of the Dordogne. Fuzzy felt hills stretch away in every direction. Chestnuts and lizards litter the back roads, I swerve chickens and ducks, and a proper grumpy dog. A medieval village on top of a hill with speedy hairpins to the edge of the Dordogne. Climb again, drop to river again, then repeat.
I track the river to Bergerac for two hours, first on the left side, then the right side. A beautiful canal and riverside ‘voie verte’ for the final twenty kilometres, well for fifteen and then the usual indirect going all the way round the back of there to end up back here and then over there again before eventually getting spat out into city traffic. A glass of wine by the river before finding the cheap hotel on the edge of town, the very edge of town by a big roundabout and out of town shopping centre.
Up early, still dark. Might as well hit the road early, only a hundred k’s to Bordeaux and would be good to get there and have time to look around. A slice of pizza from the bakery next to the hotel for breakfast. Tuck a pain aux raisin into musette. The sun hasn’t yet made it over the trees and the air is cool. Busy rush hour road away from the city, dog leg over the river and barely a bend in the road for thirty kilmotres. Shouldn’t have taken the aero bars off.
Cross the Dordogne onto smaller roads and stop at a patisserie for coffee and second breakfast at earliest opportunity. I continue along the river on the flood plains before a turn onto a road that abruptly climbs through vineyards. My achilles is really not enjoying the steepness so I swing my leg over the top tube and walk to the top. At the top vines stretch to the horizon on all sides, vanishing points left, right and centre. For the next couple of hours I see nothing but vineyards, the landscape reminding me of Tuscany in that it rolls relentlessly, not necessarily sharp climbs but up or down constantly, slowly draining the energy.
Somewhere along the way the line on the Garmin does a sharp right but I can’t see any road, just a dirt track. Ah shit, I’ve not done it again, I thought I checked this way was all tarmac. When I get to the turn I realise it’s another ‘voie verte’ and this one follows an old railway line all the way to Bordeaux, still forty kilometres away. I usually try to avoid these paths for this kind of distance as they tend to get a bit dull, false flat tarmac with no opportunites to freewheel, through tunnels of trees with no views, but it does mean a relatively easy run into Bordeaux and no traffic. It is what I expect so plug into some podcasts and pedal on.
Nearing Bordeaux I find myself on the banks of the Garonne, a huge industrial river, and follow Eurovelo 3 signposts into the city (and I note to myself also to Barcelona). Check-in at my apartment isn’t for another half hour so I find a small bar around the corner for a coffee and beer. And then another beer. After all that’s all the riding done and I’m on holiday.
North
Bike dumped in hotels, strolls around cities, museums, restaurants, trains. I should break bike rides up like this more often.
We sweep down from the opera singer’s house past Virginia Woolf’s to the Ouse flood plain, the first of our Ravilious rendezvous. A heron nonchalantly flaps overhead. The riverbank into Lewes is beautifully overgrown, my shins whipped by wild grass and flowers. Butterflies skitter about. We’re the wrong side of the Ouse for the Ravilious view, I think it’s from under Caburn but will be obscured from our eyes by the A27. We track the noisy dual carriageway, a glance left for his painting of the farm in the curves below Caburn, and then tuck ourselves under the road alongside Glynde Reach into Beddingham and to The Lay. This is part of the old ways before the A roads were bulldozed through. The shaded track to Furlongs is waterlogged and muddy, tyres slipping. In my head I see his caravans on the side of the track.
I’m not sure when I became conscious of the paintings of Eric Ravilious. I don’t recall being taught about him either on foundation or degree. It was all Duchamp and Picasso and Modernism and the big brash Americans. In the fine art studios we all painted in oil or acrylic (or in my case tins of Dulux when things got too big to be economically viable to paint with little tubes). No sign of watercolour outside of the illustration and graphic design rooms. Perhaps Ravilious was too parochial, too twee, just too English. He may have watered down his credentials by also working in design and illustration and applied arts. Maybe he died too young, however dying young doesn’t usually impede an artists reputation. Whatever it was it seems he was out of fashion for half a century. Flicking through books from art school days and scanning indexes, barely a mention. The 1987 Royal Academy catalogue for a huge survey show of British Art in the 20th Century, absolutely nothing. He wasn’t Modern in the international sense, he didn’t paint the epics of the Romantics, he didn’t fit the cultural narrative of the last century as it was then told.
The glare from the Shock Of The New faded and Common Ground rose along with the New Nature Writing. Particulars of place were emphasised, the local was no longer parochial. It’s worth noting that Ravilious once produced 44 wood block prints in 1937 to illustrate a new Nonesuch Press edition of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by the godfather of nature writing Reverend Gilbert White, a book the artist had read as a young man. Then there were a couple of exhibitions in a short period of time, one at Dulwich Picture House and another at Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, also home to the largest public collection of Ravilious works.
The Towner is where we are heading, continuing along the Old Coach Road in the lee of the Downs, bypassing Alfriston to Lullington Church. Later I know we’ll see Ravilious’s beautiful small woodcut of the tiny church. From the graveyard looking back the way we came is the vista from an earlier watercolour, maybe one of the first completed in Sussex. Caburn squats low on the horizon. It’s these hills and valleys and coombes between them that I explored and rediscovered during the first of the COVID lockdowns. I travelled along paths again and again and again in the footsteps of many before me, tracks worn into the chalk over centuries, in Ravilious’s words the “long white roads are a temptation, what quests they propose! They take us away to the thin air of the future or to the underworld of the past.” More often than not riding at sunrise when empty of people the hills, much like Percy Douglas Bliss’s 1933 description of his friends paintings, were “captivating in their quiet elegance, their complete absence of haste.”
Brushing the soles of the Long Man we climb over Windover Hill in stifling heat. Tree tunnels in and out of Jevington, stopping at the churchyard to sit in the shade for a few moments and make the most of the drinking water tap. I soak my cap and water drips down my back, a pleasant cooling shock. Back up on the Downs Eastbourne sprawls below us, tower blocks look out to sea. I’m not sure Ravilious would recognise it. An unknown path steeply drops into the Old Town. Zigzagging through streets and parks and possibly past a house where his parents lived we arrive at the Towner.
It may have been when I read Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways that I first really paid any attention to Ravilious. To be honest whenever I did first see his paintings I didn’t really like them. The paint was thin and colour subdued, they looked unfinished, sketch like. There was something odd about the atmosphere they conveyed. They felt distant and uncanny.
Then something happened when I started to spend a lot of time on the Downs. Those subdued shades of his paintings are the colours of the Downs during winter and shoulder seasons. The South Downs are soft and low, “seen from a distance, it seems to ebb and swell like the ocean from which it once emerged”*. In high summer blinding sun in enormous empty skies flatten the view, all becomes line and pattern. “The design, so beautifully obvious” in the artist’s own words. Slowly Ravilious started to make sense, the thin paint a metaphor for the barely there earth that just about covers the chalk: As Christopher Neve wrote in The Unquiet Landscape he painted with “an almost empty brush which allowed the white of the paper to glitter through”. Pencil lines and crosshatching visible through the watercolour mirror reality, the mark of plough and crop. “In this place he had perfect pitch.”
Leaving the Towner we climb back up to where the Downs literally fall into the sea at Beachy Head. Avoiding the road we ride a bridleway slightly inland and parallel to the coast, Belle Tout visible all the way. Having seen his painting of the Cuckmere Meanders a little while before we speed down the descent with this view to our left.
We finish our Ravilious ride with a pint and chips in Newhaven at The Hope Inn where the Ouse meets the English Channel. He stayed in rooms here with Eric Bawden when they drew and painted the harbour. Earlier we had seen two Ravilious paintings of the steam packet leaving and arriving from Dieppe. Serendipitously the current equivalent, the Transmanche ferry, leaves the harbour as we sit and drink and watch it head for France.
