Chapeau! The French Divide

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!

PEI - Lobster with Everything

LUPINS, LOBSTERS, AND LIGHTHOUSES.

On Prince Edward Island lupins grow wild everywhere.  Riots of pink, purple and white flowers spill over the verges into the ditches and the fields beyond.  The ubiquitous potato fields run away in green lines on straight ridges of red soil down to the sea.  ‘PEI?’ our Canadian friends said, ‘Wonderful!  Take your golf clubs.  Do you like lobster?  Have you read Anne of Green Gables?’  A quick read of a tattered 1950’s hardback copy of ‘Anne of Green Gables’ remedies the latter omission.  Reluctantly we have to leave the golf clubs behind because we’re travelling by bicycle.  Has much changed here since Lucy Montgomery’s book was published a hundred years ago?  I doubt it.  Her unfailingly optimistic heroine, Anne Shirley, might not recognize the tractors and cars, but the rustic landscape and the clapperboard timbered farmhouses cannot be very different.  This maritime province of Canada is full of friendly relaxed people.  It’s like rural Ireland with a Canadian accent.  The rolling green fields, woodlands, and deep inlets give way to picturesque harbours, their solid no-nonsense fishing boats stacked high with lobster pots.  We cycle down to Basin Head to see the old fishery and try out the ‘Singing Sands’.  The fine white sand with its smooth spherical silica particles produces an odd squeaking noise when walked on.  It’s not that musical though.  ‘Not so much Beachoven, more the One Note Samba’, someone remarks.  ‘A quartztet in tempo sandante’ is the reply.  We pedal up to the quaint octagonal lighthouse at East Point, and on to North Lake.  The ‘Tuna Capital of the World’ it announces itself.  Behind the narrow river mouth is a large inland sea.  There are rows of buoys marking the mussel culture lines.  Blue herons wade in the shallows.  It’s a tranquil scene.  The Sandstone restaurant provides another chance for us to get to grips with the variety of ways that islanders like to eat their lobster.  Will it be lobster roll, lobster salad, lobster chowder, lobster wrap, lobster club, lobsterburger, lobster pasta, lobster curry, or perhaps whole lobster?  Lunch slows us down somewhat, but then it’s onwards through meadows tall with clover and wild marguerites, along heritage roads of flattened red mud (original PEI red mud T-shirts available in the shops), along forest tracks with chipmunks and hares flying out of our way, choruses of frogs which sound like Zebedee of the Magic Roundabout has just dropped in, or a secretive beaver diving down from the water surface into its lodge.  In the remotest estuaries the occasional bald eagle or osprey glides above us.  Back in Charlottetown, the capital, we settle contentedly in the armchairs of the FlexMussels restaurant for a final seafood blitz before returning our bicycles to the laid back owner of the cycle shop, accepting another glass of wine, and then a lift to the airport to return to the real world outside PEI, the ‘Gentle Island’ as its tourism brochures call it.  And it’s true.

Word Count  494

Cycling the Lofoten Islands

BEEN THERE

Lofoten Islands, Norway

We stand in dazzling day-long Arctic sunshine, at the side of a small coastal road, cooled by a gentle breeze.  Drawing breath, the air has a purity and sharpness that exists nowhere else.  Looking inland, meadows ripple with tall wild flowers, a sight that has not been seen in Britain since the scythe made way for the Industrial Revolution.  Sudden rushes of the scents of medieval spring and summer complement the dazzle of yellow, green and white.  There are contrasts of pink and purple from the wild orchids and early lilac blossom, although it is late in June.  To the east of the road the sea shimmers with a palette of marine colour.  Over the silver sand beaches, empty of any footfall, the water is a translucent turquoise blue.  All around, awesome mountains rise, seemingly straight out of the sea, still flecked with snow in their deep gullies.  The few dwellings that are visible contrast grey roofs with walls of a beautiful muted ochre or deep red colour.  Here and there, tiny fishing smacks of varnished wood dot the waters.

We are on the chain of islands that make up the ‘Lofoten Wall’.  100 miles of jagged peaks, running southwest from the north Norwegian coast in a gently curving line and stretching 50 miles out to sea, shelter a beautiful gulf – the Vestfjord – the Western fjord.  As the islands gradually peter out to the south, they become ever more remote.  On two of the larger outliers live up to a quarter of Norway’s entire population of seabirds, surrounded by seals, fish eagles, and the occasional killer whale.  The feeling of detachment from reality is enhanced by the fact that at 69º North, it is impossible to tell exactly what time of day it is.  There is a purity here which exists in only a very few places.

We travelled independently, used SAS, Braathens, and Widerøe airlines, and hired bicycles in the islands’ capital, Svolvaer.  We stayed mostly in converted fishermen’s cottages or ‘rorbu’, which means ‘red house’.  In the past I have sailed up the coast from Bødø, another magnificent way to experience the Lofotens.

In favour of coming here?  Take the most picturesque Scandinavian scenery you can imagine and go beyond it.  Against?  It’s expensive.  You’ve got to like fish, particularly cod (cod’s tongues are a frequent menu item).  Wine costs around four times as much as in the U.K.  Much of the accommodation is self-catering – not easy if you’re cycling or hiking.  Not many travel operators come here.  The flights are reliable but expensive.  The season is short.  Many of the internal tours or ferries only operate from late June.  The major travel species seems to be German, either in coaches or enormous Winnebago like vehicles.  They obviously left reluctantly in 1945 and have been reconquering ever since.  Finally, although the people are charming and very helpful, and mostly speak English, the tourist offices only seem to open in May, and it can be difficult to arrange your own visit at such short notice.

Andrew McLeod.  Poole, Dorset.