Random thoughts mainly about bikes, beer and photography.
I have just discovered this tool for planning cycle routes in unfamiliar locations. A major plus is the ability to download gpx files!
Good coverage of UK, Belgium, Holland and a few others, more patchy in most European countries but the major routes such as the North Sea Route and the Danube Cycle path are included.
A link to my write up of our Cuba Tour of 2011 on the Crazy Guy on a Bike website.
Pico de Veleta
The book that was the inspiration.
Shortly after I started serious cycling again, my sister in law bought me a copy of “Mountain High”, a book listing 50 of Europe’s greatest cycling climbs. Some like the 78m high Koppenberg are there due their links with classic races rather than their severity, but for most, it is their majesty formed by height, gradient as well as the romanticism formed by their links with the famous Grand Tours.
Listed in order of ascending height, we start with 8 hills below 1000m, before the serious stuff starts with 19 mountains in the 1000-2000m bracket, including Alpe d’Huez and Mont Ventoux. There are a further 22 mountain passes listed in the next section, before we get to the final part, 3000m+ with it’s single listing of the Pico de Veleta.
After toying briefly with the idea of conquering all of these climbs one by one, I figured that if I just did the highest of them all I wouldn’t need to do the other 49!
This year for our October break we had hired a villa near Granada. After quite a few years of extended city breaks, rushing around the likes of Rome, Istanbul, Venice, etc trying to see all we could in 4 days before flying home exhausted, we now relax for a week, Helen by the pool while I hire a bike and go cycling.
Now I hadn’t realised how close the villa was to the Pico Veleta (honestly!) when I booked it, but being only about 10km away seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
The bike I had hired was an aluminium framed Giant TCR, with Shimano Ultegra groupset and a low gear of 34×28 which should be sufficient as although I am still a good 2 stone heavier than I would like to be, I wasn’t going to be carrying any luggage.
I had hired the bike for 5 days, with the expectation that I would ride for a couple of hours each day building up to the big one. Day one was a 30 mile circular route to Santa Fe, day two was going to be a 50 mile ride but starting in the heat of the afternoon and not feeling too good, I cut it short after getting to the top of the first of two hills on the planned route. Mind you, at 1362m, this hill was 18m higher than Ben Nevis and was the highest that I had ever climbed on a bicycle before, so not a bad effort.
About to leave the villa. The arrows on my YACF shirt point the wrong way on the continent!
I left soon after it was light at 08:47, learning from yesterday’s experience and getting as high as I could while it was still cool. The first 8 miles from the villa were through satellite towns of Granada and fairly flat. I relied heavily on the map function of my Garmin eTrex 30 through these towns as I was led a merry dance through a variety of one way streets. After leaving Barrio de la Vega it was much easier, and all I had to do was follow the road along the Rio Monochil all the way up to where it meets the A-395 main road at just under 1500m. This section was the hardest by far, 7 miles up with gradients approaching 20% in places, before a short downhill to the main road junction. I stopped briefly to take a photo of a white house cut into the mountain, unfortunately I couldn’t get far enough away to get the whole house in the picture as it was a sheer drop on the other side of the road.
You can get an idea of the gradient in this photo.
On joining the main road it was a case of plodding on, stopping briefly at the 1500m sign for a photo and for a bit longer at the visitors centre on the junction of the main road and the A-4025. Here I refilled my bottles and added a couple of electrolyte tabs to each. I immediately realised that this was not such a good idea, as now I didn’t have any clean water to wash out my eyes if I needed to. Oh well, I better make sure I keep wiping the sweat from my brow regularly. At least as I was going uphill, the Spanish helmet law didn’t apply so, a) less sweat was created, and b) my brow was easy to get to.
On leaving the visitor’s centre rather than continuing on the main road, I turned left and carried on up on the A-4025. This road was through pine trees for the first five hairpins so offered some shade in places. I passed a rider on a mountain bike just after joining this road, the only one I passed all day. I was also passed by just one other rider, on the main road section, another Brit, although he wasn’t going to the top. After about ? miles you’ll meet the main road again, here you turn left unless you are in desperate need of water/food in which case you can turn right and go down into the ski resort of Sol y Nieve (Pradollano) before starting back up again.
Hoya de la Mora is just around the bend.
As I was fine for water, I turned left and continued up to Hoya de la Mora at 2500m. Here I stopped for 30’ at the bar/restaurant for a coffee and Chorizo bocadillo. In total I stopped for 59’on the climb, this one and 15’ down at the visitor’s centre, as well as half a dozen or so photo stops.
Lunch
Where the road runs out.
Hoya de la Mora is just before the Military Hostel and the barrier across the road stopping public access for cars. Cyclists are fine to continue past the barrier although now the road begins to deteriorate.
Where the rough road gets a bit better.
The rough road doesn’t last too long though and gets smooth again as you pass the Snow Virgin monument, and then remains in reasonable condition for maybe 2 miles until it becomes very broken. At this point although the views are amazing and the scenery is like an early Sci-Fi ‘just landed on Mars’ film set, I was becoming concerned that very soon, riding down on skinny tyres would not be possible. However I was determined to hit 3000m so on I went. What was a road with patches of rubble became rubble with patches of road. My gps unit said I had reached 3000m but as I hadn’t seen a sign telling me I went on a bit more, around another two hairpins. Now a straight-ish bit of track and still no sign, so I trusted the barometric altimeter, took a photo of my bike against the snow, turned around, attached helmet to head, and picked my way gingerly back down. Post ride analysis confirms that I hit 3003m so job done!
Looking down on the ski resort from about 2600m.
3000 m
The ride down was a bit faster than the ride up! Coming down I turned left after Hoya de la Mora into Pradollano and onto the main road for a fast bit until the steep hairpins slowed me down back on the GR-410 to Monachil. I did stop early on to put on a rain jacket and silk glove liners under my mitts as the windchill was a little uncomfortable, didn’t bother with the buff or legwarmers though.
Summary of route:
Phase 1 (GR-410 Monachil to the A-395 junction): Very steep in places but very quiet road, great views.
Phase 2 (A-395 to visitors centre): Busier road but not unpleasantly so (it was late October), a number of hotels/restaurants for food/drink.
Phase 3 (A-4025): Quiet road, beautiful scenery, nowhere to refill water bottles so make sure you have full ones before leaving phase 2!
Phase 4 (road from ski resort to Hoya de la Mora): Busier road, 2500m sign just before the bar/restaurant/kiosk area.
Phase 5 (beyond the barrier): Just keep going as far as you can, a mountain bike would be useful, or at least fat tyres and disc brakes!
This is the strava segment for phase 3/4:
and the whole climb:
Brig John Hackett
Just back from a very enjoyable 5 day tour of Holland, to Arnhem and back. Arnhem was of course the “Bridge Too Far”. In September 1944 the 1st Airborne Division landed just west of Arnhem with the mission objectives to capture an important Bridge over the Rhine that would aid the advancing allies. Unfortunately the advancing land forces did not get there in time and as the paratroopers ran out of ammo and equipment they had to withdraw back south over the river. Only 2000 from about 10,000 successfully withdrew, the rest were either killed, wounded and captured by the Germans, or went into hiding.
Although I can’t remember the film I do have a copy of “I Was a Stranger” by General Sir John Hackett. Hackett at the time was a brigadier commanding the 4th Parachute Brigade. I took the book with me to re-read on the ferry over. His book tells the story of how after being wounded the day before the withdrawal he escaped from a lightly guarded hospital and was hidden in a Dutch family home in Ede. In February 1945 he rode a ramshackle old bike to Sliedrecht where he was ferried across the Waal by canoe to the allied held side. I had forgotten that he “rode” to freedom, otherwise I would have planned our routes the other way round to match more closely his ride.
A tally of Germans shot written on wallpaper in a house in Oosterbeek.
In the basement of the Airborne museum was the “Arnhem Experience”.
St Malo – Le Harve (329 miles)
St Malo – Le Harve
A five day tour of Normandy (with a little bit of Brittany thrown in).
Daily highlights:
Day T-1 Oundle -Portsmouth: Arrived at Peterborough station to meet Robbie, uneventful trip across London from Kings Cross to Waterloo, off at Fratton and cycled to last leg to the ferry port. Total miles=21. First thing to do once we had settled into our reclining seats was find a shower. As luck would have it it was just next door. Managed to forget to take towel to shower though, so have to put clean clothes on a wet body. Luckily it was still very warm so I dried out pretty quickly.
Day 1 St Malo – Ville Vrard (46 miles): Off the ferry into fog but that soon cleared up and we had a nice sunny day, just like the rest of the week. I managed to break my seat pin bolt just after our visit to the Menhir at Dol. In the end had to stick a carry mat on top of the tent that was on my rear rack and rest the rear of the saddle on that. This gave almost exactly the right saddle height although it was a bit of a suspension effect.
We stopped in Combourg and had a drink while we waited for the bike shop to open after lunch. We’re in France, everywhere shuts for lunch! However, as we were to find out, this particular shop was actually shut for 2 weeks. Who shuts their shop for two weeks in a tourist town the summer? Obviously, the French! We tried a Super-U to no avail, and in the end rode the rest of the way to Ville Vrard where my father-in-law found a spare bolt from a packet he recently got to fix his strimmer. Morale of the story, I should have gone to a brico-marche.
Menhir at Dol de Bretagne
Day 2 Ville Vrard – Bagnoles-de-L’Orne (88 miles): This was always going to be the toughest day, long and hilly. I would have planned to stop at Lassay had there been a campsite listed there, so we did have to option of stopping earlier if we saw a camping site before the one we knew for sure existed at Bagnoles. We were so shattered by Lassay that we decided to ask the locals if there was a campsite nearby as we didn’t relish the extra 10 miles. The nearest campsite was only 5km down the road so off we went, only to find it had been closed for some years. We were both suffering from the heat and dehydration, I now had cramp in both legs and was reducing to walking up hills and coasting down them, still there was no choice but to plough on to Bagnoles and make the best of it. We rolled up at the campsite at 8.30pm, 13 hours after setting off. On the way we had collected another 3 stamps for our FFCT brevets.
Brunch stop in Fougeres
Testing my Titanium and rosewood lightweight chopsticks!
Day 3 Bagnoles-de-L’Orne – Pont Farcy (61 miles): Although not as far as yesterday, today had more climbing crammed into those 61 miles. Had we gone due north to the Normandy beaches we would have passed through the heart of Swiss Normandy, but for brevet purposes we needed to go to Mortain on our way to Conde-sur-Vire so we skirted around Suisse Normande this time.
Breakfast pastries at Bagnoles-de-L’Orne
There are 6 possible sites to get stamps from in each département. For the BCN, only one stamp is needed, for Le Brevet des Provinces Françaises (BPF) you need to get all 6.
First 5 département stamps achieved for Le Brevet de Cyclotourisme National (BCN), just another 90 to get!
Bagnoles-de-L’Orne
Lonlay L’Abbaye
Roadside decoration near Montain
Essential supplies
Camping at Pont Farcy
Day 4 Pont Farcy – Arromanches (54 miles): A fairly uneventful day, a flat first 12 miles, some cycle paths. then a 56 mile uphill, followed by an undulating ride to the coast.
Vire Valley Cycle Path (Voie Vert), we joined it at La-Chapelle-sur-Vire and rode up to Conde-sur-Vire.
Chateau de Balleroy, owned by Malcolm Forbes of Forbes Magazine fame. Has a balloon museum but we didn’t go in.
First sign of the D-Day landings.
This gun was not in the best condition.
Defensive gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer
Our one and only puncture.
Physics in action, beer bottles wrapped in wet tissue paper. In a breeze out of direct sun, as the water evaporates, the heat is drawn from the beer. Wonderful!
Day 5 Arromanches – Le Harve (78 miles): Original plan was to ride to Honfleur by way of Pegasus Bridge and Beuvron-en-Auge, however on leaving Touques Robbie’s front wheel got tangled in a level crossing and his seat tube cracked just above the bottom bracket. We made the campsite after 10 very careful miles only to find it full, so we thought we may as well push on to Le Harve, another 15 miles away over the Pont de Normandie.
Robbie’ cracked frame, he rode another 40km on that, keeping the speed down to about 10-12 kph!
Douvres-la-Délivrande
Just arrived at Pegasus Bridge.
Nah, sorry mate, your big end’s gone!
Pegasus Bridge
A Horsa glider at the Pegasus Bridge museum
Inside the all wooden Horsa glider.
A Bailey Bridge.
A Jeep with bicycle.
JEEP = Just Enough Essential Parts
Lunch, galettes at Beuvron-en-Auge.
Checking the map while sampling the local cidre
Pont de Normandie comes into sight.
Descending the Pont de Normandie
Last night’s camp at the ferry port, didn’t bother with a tent. Realised in the morning that there was toilet in the far corner of the yard, hmm no need to have waited until night fell, or got up early, for a leak after all!
Day T+1: On the fast ferry to Portsmouth, managed to get an earlier than booked train at Kings Cross by sweet-talking Paul the guard, and back home just in time for the finale of Le Tour on TV. Total miles today 19, total for whole trip – 367 miles.