Une petite semaine en France

I like France. I had a thoroughly enjoyable year in Nantes while doing my degree. I like the language, the culture and the food and yet I've barely spent any time in the country since leaving university.

Travelling to cycle 180km with a mountain-top finish is possibly an extreme way of resolving this issue, but that's what I'm currently doing.

The Etape de Tour is a massive cycle event which happens every year during the Tour de France. Its organisers pick a stage of the Tour and, a couple of days before the pros come through, about 15,000 mad cyclists from all over the world sign up to try and complete it. I did this two years ago on a fiendishly difficult stage with several climbs, and while it was the hardest thing ever I kind of enjoyed it in a masochistic sort of way. So in December, when I was feeling a bit post-South America bluesy, I rashly signed up for the 2017 edition. And then did nothing about it until the end of May, when I decided that yes, I was going to go.

This uncharacteristic lack of organisation means I probably haven't done enough training. It also means I travelled out independently, failing to get sorted to team up with the few friends who are also riding it (though we're meeting up tomorrow). So I sent my bike on a bike transport service and flew with Ryanair to Grenoble and stayed the first night in Grenoble, which was a lovely city with a nice old centre that I enjoyed wandering around before treating myself to steak-frites for dinner. I got a bit worried my French had completely gone when I couldn't communicate with the waiter, but it turned out he was part-Corsican, part-Vietnamese and both of us were struggling with each other's weird accents.

View from the train

Yesterday I caught a train from Grenoble to Gap and another from Gap to Briançon, where the Etape starts and finishes. It was a nice journey with lovely views, the trains were comfortable and exactly on time, and I rather enjoyed the trip. 

I'm staying in a campsite a little outside Briançon, having failed to find a hotel with rooms. I haven't camped for ages either and although it took me a while to get to sleep last night the campsite's nice, with really friendly owners and a little pool for a dip. And it's only 10 minutes by bike into town.

Today to warm up my legs a little - and give myself confidence for the Etape on Sunday - I picked a relatively short (11.4km) but also relatively tough (9%) climb, the Col de Granon. It's a good climb with lots of amazing mountain views and finishes quite high up so was also good for altitude acclimatisation. I was pretty slow, but steady, and even the 11.1% section wasn't too bad. The descent was fast but less fun. I don't like descending!

Traditional top-of-col selfie

It's nice to be in France again and speaking French a bit, and hearing it all around me, and I'm now actually looking forward to the Etape and its challenge on Sunday!