The French Divide vaguely entered my consciousness when my
daughter Anna, who has been enjoying some challenging riding with her partner
Graham, including an introduction to Cyclocross, announced that she was going
to do an endurance race in France.
Nobody seemed to know much about it.
It had only been run once before, and was the brainchild of a French
cyclist called Samuel Bécuwe. It was
known that the route was from the sea at the Franco-Belgian border to the
Spanish border in the Pyrenees but not much more. Anna called her campaign ‘bikingforbrioche’
and decided to raise funds for World Bicycle Relief – a charity that provides
rugged reliable no-nonsense bicycles for poor countries where owning a bicycle
might make the difference between being able to go to school or not. She and Graham embarked on a punishing
training regime, which most weekends seemed to feature a minimum of 200 miles
on the road, and in order to prepare for the trip also bivouacked in fields,
including a memorable night of thunderstorms on Golden Cap in Dorset. I also received updates stating that Graham or
Anna had done a Zwift race around London, or even popped over to Holland to
participate in some event there.
Eventually I discovered that Zwift is a digital link from a stationary
bicycle turbo trainer to a computer, whereby one can choose a route of varying
difficulty virtually anywhere in the world to make indoor training less boring.
Eventually the information and the route arrived, in a piecemeal
fashion. The proposal was over 2200Km of
cycling, 70% off road, using VTT bikes (Vélo Tout-Terrain), and entirely
unsupported, i.e. find your own accommodation or camp, your own water, your own
food. The time limit was 15 days. Consider for a moment what that entails. The distance – approximately ⅔ of the
distance covered in the Tour de France, in only ⅔ the time. The bikes – much more rugged and less easy to
ride than Tour bikes. The support team –
none, compared with extensive mechanical and domestique assistance, luxury
coaches, comfortable beds, adequate feeding and water. It seemed a very tall order to even consider
undertaking the journey.
The time arrived. I
wondered why the bikes were so difficult to fit into the 4x4. They were the newer type of off-road bicycle –
29 inch wheels, not 26, with a single front chain ring and a huge rear cassette
on the derailleur. The white cliffs of
Dover (which are grey close up, not like our lovely Dorset Jurassic coast)
faded as we travelled Southeast towards Dunkirk, and we descended the ramp into
France to make our way around the ring road in search of the most remote spot
on the top right hand corner of France – Bray-Dunes. Arriving at the Mairie, there were a number
of rather athletic looking males in lycra, all looking terribly serious,
waiting to register with the French Divide team. After hanging around and chatting to some of
the other participants, many of whom had undertaken other endurance rides, the
briefing began. It was followed by a
repeat in broken English. The major
learning point for me was that if looking for fresh and drinkable water, the
place to look in France is a cemetery!
For some reason, most French cemeteries have a source of l’eau
potable. We were asked to reassemble on
the beach at the Belgian border at 5.30am the following day. Getting up at 03.30 English time on the
Sunday was hard, and unsurprisingly there were few spectators as we reached the
Dunes du Perroquet at the end of the beach road where Belgium begins. After assembling the bikes, checking the
tires and inserting the latex mixture which protects against punctures, the
French Divide team checked the lights, high-viz gear, and roll out was at 0615,
led by a cyclist in Le Coq Sportif costume.
Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard speaks of the ploughman
leaving ‘the world to darkness and to me’ but the reverse was true for me. Left alone in the dark, the glimmer of dawn
on the horizon, I climbed the dunes, and saw the sun breach the line of the
coast to the East. It was time
for me to leave, to return to the UK, leaving the team to plough on into rural
France and indeed Belgium, the organisers having cunningly arranged for the ‘Dividers’
as they now became known to experience ‘The Hell of the North’. This term refers to the cobbled or pavé byroads
in Belgium which many major cycling events, including Paris-Roubaix and the
Tour de France, pass over. The FD team
had arranged for some of Le Tour’s greatest routes to be followed, including a
final challenge over the infamous Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees. The participants had been issued with full
GPS coordinates of the route in GPX codes, with a minimum requirement of
checking in at four checkpoints, in Epernay, Quarré-les-Tombes, Cahors, and the
Col du Tourmalet, before finishing at a tiny village called Mendionde in the
Pyrenees just above the Spanish border. Some
of the off-road route was designed to follow the classic pilgrims’ way from
France to Santiago de Compostella.
Much more than that – I can’t tell you. But here are the pictures… Anna was the fastest of the nine female riders. She and Graham completed the route in under
13 days. A total of 2222Km, an estimated
35000m of ascent, one puncture, a disintegrated bottom bracket, in an event
where almost 30% of the riders abandoned the race. Chapeau!
 |
| Leaving the Grey Cliffs of Dover |
 |
| 29 inch wheels take up a lot of room |
 |
| On vous propose... |
 |
| The Profile |
 |
| Amazingly there were two cyclists there before us |
 |
| Apprehensive but excited |
 |
| Tous pret |
 |
| It's important for Le Coq Sportif to check his phone... |
 |
| ...Before leading them out |
 |
| ...And leaves the world to darkness and to me... |
 |
| Somewhere in Northern France |
 |
| Great scenery, especially when it's flat |
 |
| They needed crampons for some of the Parc National Regional du Morvan |
 |
| Calories that we could only dream of - eight croissants each for breakfast |
 |
| FD wanted them to do the Col du Tourmalet the hard way |
 |
| ...but maybe it was worth it |
 |
| ...and Le Coq Sportif is there at the finish in Mendionde |
 |
Duncan s'est déguisé en coq pour accueillir ses compatriotes Anna et Graham. Ce dernier avait accepté le pari de suivre sa copine sur la French Divide. Il est prêt à repartir pour une nouvelle aventure mais seulement si elle choisi un pays plus petit à traverser. |
 |
| Elation at the finish |
 |
| Avec Samuel - chef de la route 'French Divide' |
 |
| Anna's track by GPS over 13 days, an average of 178Km per day! |
Well done!
