Day 10—Dove fuggi? In Italia.

Mônetier-les-Bains to Pinerolo
107 kms

Knowing that yet another summit awaited me before the border, I got off to an early yet pleasant start, pushing off from Mônetier-les-Bains and rolling on down the last part of the Lautâret towards Briançon, hair a-floating in the morning breeze. I met a kindred spirit, Jannot, who was setting off on a tour of Switzerland. He and Abz got on like wildfire.

Jannot.

After passing through Briançon, I started my climb up the Col de Montgenèvre. Although it stretches over a lesser distance, it is much steeper than the Lautaret. Most of the way there was no point even trying to ride. I just trudged upwards, pushing the Git alongside me. And the higher I got, the less I could see through the soupy layer of fog that had engulfed the entire valley. The terrible weather conditions put a damper my photographic impulses, so you can thank mother nature for sparing you many a gooey-eyed landscape stupid.

OK, grant me one!

The one thing I CAN say about the mountain top ski station of Montgenèvre is that it would be far prettier had it been obscured by snow. As it was in mid-september, the architecture of the hotels reminded me a lot of some of the most misguided attempts at housing the poor in the Northwestern suburbs of Paris in the 1960s. It's just not designed for half-seasons.

Montgenèvre: two down, one to go!

I thus waved goodbye to Douce France and sailed down into Italy, with nary a border official in sight. Take note, drug/arm smugglers: bicycle saddle-bags are the new double-lined truck floor.

As happy as I was to have passed the symbolic milestone of the border, however, I was decidedly displeased when at the bottom of the hill, the road started climbing yet again. Having thought that Montgenèvre would be my last serious climb, the summit of Sestriere was an unwelcome surprise—by now, I had fully had enough of the grind. But there was little choice, so I gritted my teeth, pushed on, and ended up being fully rewarded by the postcard prettiness of the mountain villages perched along the ascent.

At the summit, I stopped to warm my bones with a cappuccino and test-drive my Italian by asking for some directions. I had never before spoken Italian to anyone but myself, so I was eager to find out whether it was as comprehensible to real people as it seemed during my long chats with my imaginary Italian friends Nicola, Pier Paolo and Dario. The barista didn’t burst out laughing and finger pointing or blank out with a “say wha?” look on his face, so I took it as a good sign.

From the summit at Sestriere, I had a grand old day. I could literally feel my bones thawing with every passing kilometre despite the gale force wind from the high speed. The sun was shining, the houses were colourful, and despite being confined to a fairly anonymous and trucky road I got my first glimpse of some pretty sweet-looking Italian olive groves.

I arrived in the charming town of Pinerolo in the early evening, and decided to stop for the night. Feeling confident in my rolling Rs and budding hand gestures, I stopped at a fruit shop in the centre of the old town to inquire as to the whereabouts of the nearest youth hostel, “ostello della giuventu”. Perhaps I can put it down to the fact that hostelling is far less developed in Southern Europe than in the anglo-saxon world, or perhaps my Italian wasn’t actually as good as I had been telling myself. In any case, the shop owner sent me to the nuns who ran the “casa delle giovane” on the other side of the piazza. I reiterated my original inquiry to the lovely old nun at the reception. She told me to wait in the courtyard whilst she made some calls, then sent me without explanation up a couple of hilly streets to the Casa Betania.

Via Principe d'Acaia, my home for the night...

Waiting there on one of those granite doorsteps eroded by centuries of ins and outs was another no-nonsense lady who told me that they had been waiting for me. A few ladies came outside to help me carry the Git into the foyer and two little kids came running to see what all the commotion was about. I was given a grand tour of the rambling ancient house and the indoor chapel, shown where the shower was and told that dinner would be at seven. It was only when I asked where I could pay that I found out that I was actually in a shelter for women in difficulty that was attached to the town’s convent, and that I was welcome to stay for nothing and for as long as I wished, as long as I helped with the dishes from time to time.

And so I stayed.

Day 9: Just move on up

Grenoble to Le Monêtier-les-Bain
96 kms, 2058 m. Up and down.

Oh Alps ! This was the source of all my anxiety. For the past week, I had been asking every person I spoke to whether they knew the Alpine passes along the border and, if so, where they thought it would be easiest for me to cross the mountains into Italy. I had boiled my options down to two finalists: either the Col du Mont Cenis or the Col du Lautaret. In the end, I plumped for the Col du Lautaret, partly because I realised that without noticing, I had literally ridden past the former without even noticing. What can I say. I’ve never been very observant.

In any case, the Lautaret turned out to be an ideal choice. As luck indeed had it, I left Grenoble early on a Sunday morning after a delicious breakfast of fresh bread and homemade plum jam with the Bailly family.

Hroops, they named a massif after us!

Halfway to Bourg d’Oisans, , up rode a fellow cyclist who told me his mother-in-law was from Naples, and then proceeded to tighten my brakes and straighten my wheel. Hurray for the lovely man, his kindness spared me many a perilous skid on the other side of the Col. Arriving in Grenoble the day before, I had been pretty much scraping my feet along the ground to halt my flight, which is actually fine considering how flat the Bresse region is. Well, those dancing days were now gone.

C'est toujours Noël dans les Alpes...

Once I passed Le Bourg d’Oisans, a town wedged into the valley between about 5 different mountains, I spent the entire day on 1-1 speed, creeping upwards at about 5 or 6 kms/hour and often coming to a slow wobbly halt and toppling sideways clean off the Git. Abz said I reminded her of a kid learning to ride who hasn’t yet understood the “stabling” (remember, Dad?) virtues of speed. In the steeper bits, I even had to get off and push the lovely girl up. Sounds hideous from the telling, but in actual fact it wasn’t so. The sun was shining, the air was Fresch, the audiobook was enthralling (“The making of a president”—Hillary declined to join the Obama ticket because the Hopesters refused to pay off her campaign debt!! That made me pedal real fast...). Most of all, I was without doubt moving on UP (with Curtis and his sax in my ears), high up, as opposed to the frustration of the tiny ups and downs of the Morvan.

Someone I think was watching over me...

It was, however, a very long day, and when I finally reached the summit of the Col du Lautaret the sun was on the wane behind the peaks and all the hotels and fondue-restaurants were saving themselves for the winter. I kitted myself up for the windy descent, donning pretty much every item of clothing I found in my bag, aswell as two pairs of socks over my hands. I tightened my helmet, pedalled once and let gravity do all the work my poor knees had done on the way up. Can knees purr with contentment? I think mine did.

Abz, white-faced from the chill, but happy to have made it.

I arrived in the adorably old-timey hameau of Mônetier-les-Bains just as night was falling, had a lovely dinner with the family running the excellent-value town auberge, crawled into bed at 9pm and slept like a baby.

All downhill from here...not in a bad way!

Day 8--Kindness of strangers

Serrières-de-Briord to Grenoble
107 kms

Woke up to a lacey violet dawn, and had coffee on the banks of the Rhône in the company of its resident crew of swans, who seemed more preoccupied with their morning toilette than my witty répartie.

OK, I get the message.

Having run out of porridge oats, I decided it was time for a trip to the market. The camping ground owners told me there was a good one about two villages away. So off I headed in quest of some yumminess, convinced that I wouldn’t have to wait too long until breakfast. But this market, you see, was in Montalieu, not its neighbour Montagnieu, and I only realised the difference between the two after what seemed like a few hours of combing the entire village thrice over at a crawl, peering down every alley way to find the market. I like to think that my facial expression was inquisitive. However, I wouldn’t blame anyone if, in my full biking get-up (bum-bag-style rain coat and all), they mistook me for a mental ward fugitive and/or child molester. I’m pretty sure I heard some mothers call their children inside, interrupting their game of street football.

In any case, the market turned out to be fantabulously abundant, with local goat’s cheese home-made apéricubes and the first comice pears of the season. Happy as Larry (and Bob and Eugene), I filled every available space in my saddle bags with fruit, cheese, a pain au chocolat (a mere 80 cents and better than Fauchon), and crawled off in the direction of Grenoble, the Git’s joints creaking and re-adjusting to the extra weight.

Abz and I, ready for the best lunch imaginable.

Strange that these things are even noticeable when one is travelling so slowly, but I actually felt the temperature shift around mid-day. It wasn’t just the blazing sun and blue of the sky; the air had all of a sudden become softer. I decided that I had officially entered the South.

The road towards Grenoble started getting a tad hilly, with the mini “Col du Banchet” standing in as a taste of what was to come. I got lost in the tangle of interconnecting roads leading into the centre of town and almost got stuck on a godforsaken highway, but happily was turned back at the péage. So I was tired and grateful when a couple of guys cycling back from a mountaineering expedition offered to guide me halfway to the youth hostel I was looking for. And even more grateful when the Bailly family, of whom I asked directions, offered to host me for the night. Oh shower! Oh warm dinner! Oh sleeping in a real bed! It’s hard to express how appreciative one becomes of these simple offerings after a mere week on the road. But it felt like a little slice of heaven.

Bailly, père et fille. They were heroes.

Day 7—Platitudes sur la platitude

De Cluny à Serrières-de-Briord
116 kms

Réveil de bonne heure à Cluny, et petit déjeuner bon à penser et surtout à manger constitué de porridge parfumé de mûres récoltées sur les bords de chemin le jour précédent. Depuis mon départ, je n’ai pas encore eu du tout à acheter de fruits, grâce à l’abondance de pommiers dans les squares bourguignons et aux mûriers qui longent le chemin qui n’attendent que moi pour cueillir leurs fruits. I fancy myself as a resourceful hunter-gatherer, living off the land, making the most of the bounty of the earth. Which just goes to show you what a coddled city-girl I really am.
Very tempted to get in on some of that action. Political statements aside, I'm jonesing for some dairy...

Je me dirige ensuite vers le centre historique, histoire de voir l’abbaye et de communier avec l’esprit d’Abélard au lever du soleil avant d’attaquer les kms de la journée. Abz insiste que je la prenne en photo devant la tour des fromages. She wants to be able to say « Cheeeeeeeese » and really mean it. I roll my eyes and comply.

Vient ensuite le grand plateau de la Bresse, un grand calme avant la tempête tectonique des Alpes, qui ne me font plus attendre et surgissent de nulle part à mon côté en fin d’après-midi. Pour le reste de la journée, je décide de faire comme si je ne les avais même pas vues, dans l’espoir que cette indifférence les intimidera, en attendant l’offensive que je lancerai sur elles d’ici deux jours. L’âme du monde à vélo, quoi!

What's in store...

Mon shout-out du jour s'adresse aux Cyclonautes Jean-Luc et Edouard Mercier, friands de relief contraiement à moi. Je penserai au succès de leur périple du mois de Juin pour me donner du courage dans ma propre campagne d'Italie.

Day 6—The sweet side of the hills

De Marmagne à Cluny
113 kms

The Vieux Jambon being a favourite dining spot for long-distance truckers, I had the pleasure of having the company of a few of them at dinner last night. It seems they are afflicted with 2 Great Injustices: the police and foreign competition. The former see truckers as “vaches à lait”, knowing that if they haven’t made their incident quotas for the week they can rely on any given trucker to be on the phone/eating at the wheel/three minutes over the time-limit between rest stops to stick him with a fine, which most of the time the company refuses to cover. The latter have swept in from the east since the last extension of the EU and stolen all their jobs, apparently whilst watching porn on portable DVD players and driving at the same time. This last revelation I take to heart, and vow to steer as clear as possible from the giants.

Dinner, in any case, was a triumph of French Golden Oldies—onion soup, boeuf braisé aux carottes, cheese plateau, raspberry bavaroise. Whole world away from camp-stove-cooked pasta with a sauce of chicken bouillon, always slightly redolent of gas, which has been the staple of my diet for the last week. After which I slept for about 12 hours, and woke up to slightly better weather.

After pushing off around 12, I climbed all the way up to Le Creusot, for the sole reason that it is the birthplace of Schneider Electric, the company at which I interned this summer. However, my leisurely tour was rudely interrupted by some mean looking security guys, who objected to me stationing my loaded bicycle anywhere near the Château de la Verrerie which was about to host the employment minister Xavier Darcos for some super-important meeting. Les vélos piégés, c’est la nouvelle forme de terrorisme du 21ème siècle, it seems.
I therefore came away with but One picture as proof of my passage, which goes out along with my Daily Shout-Out to Violaine, Cécile, Aurore, Pen, Hervé, Alban and the rest of my peeps at Schneider.

Le Creusot: seule preuve de mon passage. (Darcos, si tu m'entends, je suis fâchée contre toi).

Such stuff as dreams are made on.

From there, I cut cross-country to reach the lovely “voie verte” that runs along the old train tracks towards Cluny, pretty much letting gravity just pull me down out out of hilly Morvan and down into the plain of the Saône. Oh the clear blue afternoon sky, the riverside châteaux and the heavenly ease of it all. I reached Cluny in time to see the sun set over the old spires of the Medieval monastery, my leg muscles purring contentedly.

Château de la Jmenrappelleplus. All very pretty, though.

Day 5—Fischia il vento, urla la bufera

55 kms
De Moux-en-Morvan à Marmagne

First things first, I had to go to the mairie to pay my 2€ camping fee (hurray for l’Etat providence) for the camping communal. Ran into Monsieur Le Maire himself, who asked me whether I was the new goaly on the town team. Mwaha!

Then the lovely town garage guy checked my tire pressure and gave me about 3 road maps so that I didn’t get lost again. Such lovely helpful people. I must look totally bereft, everyone wants to rescue me.

From Moux, I shimmied down the hills I had so painstakingly climbed the day before, through fields of gorgeous plump cows in their gorgeous plump pastures, singing very a propos Elvis oldies at the top of my lungs. I wish my Mama had been there. I have always marvelled at her refined appreciation of the bovine species.

Photo spécial dédicace Maman: "If you've seen my milk cow, please ride her up on home."

I then entered the mining region around Autun.

A l'entrée d'Autun: cette fois, le boa a mangé un chameau

Suddenly, I exited the pastoral idyll and found myself in a landscape I can only describe as metallurgical, from the heavy sky to the khakified green of the vegetation. The town of Autun however had pretty stunning architecture, and an old dude, who looked like he may have been part of one of the many waves of Italian blue collar workers who came to France to make out industries function at the beginning of the century, shouted out “arrivederci a Napoli!”. Yep yep indeed!

Cathédrale d'Autun

Then major rain, and major trucks. No fun no more.

So after a mere 55 kms, I decided to call it a day and stop in a trucker’s hotel on the side of the road called “Le Vieux Jambon”, named thusly, and I kid you not, for the old cured ham that they keep in a glass case in the foyer. It was promised as part of a bride’s dowry in an engagement concluded in 1898. Either someone died tragically/turned out not to be a virgin/turned out to be a member of the family. The reason was not revealed, but in any case the engagement was broken off, and the ham that was to be eaten at the wedding was left to an old uncle for storage. And the old uncle decided it would be an awesome piece of deco for his hotel foyer. Today, it looks like a piece of old tree bark, and when you open the box, it smells, well, like a century-old ham. But it sure does foster more conversation than those hideous plastic flowers so beloved of budget hotels.

The lovely owner took me in, placed the Git in her laundry so she could have a nice dry night’s repose, and put all my soaked clothes in her dryer. I could not have asked for anything more.

Daily shout-out and first daily abrazo to my darling Esteph, siempre en el nick del tiempo.

Day 4--Le Morvan: pretty...hilly

(bon mot TM my granddad)
D’ Arcy-sur-Cure à Moux-en-Morvan

Totally forgot to check how many kms that was...Something like 68, maybe...

The day started out in the same conditions as the previous evening had ended, drizzly-rainy and overcast. Looking pretty fly for a white girl in my bubble-gum pink K-Way and black plastic pants, I pushed off from my own private camping ground by the riverside a little after ten, and made my way towards Vézelay. The rain persisted, and despite the ridiculous squelching noises emanating from various points in my outfit , I quite enjoyed the ambiance set by the damp fog in the hilly emeraldness through which I was riding.

As I am writing this, I am sitting on an ancient stone wall munching blackberries picked from the side of the road. The Zarmaloulous, all Rousseau-children to a T, taught me much in the way of botany and the art of fruit gathering during our short time together. So I knew to pick the ones growing furthest from the ground, in order to be assured that they are free of sometimes-rabies-carrying fox pee. Useful info!

Blackberries along stone walls, near Vézelay...

I stopped for lunch outside a lovely cemetery in the fields. The afternoon was just as picturesque scenery-wise, but I can’t say I got to see a whole lot of it, as I spent most of my time head down, bum up, struggling through the mountains of the Morvan. Mountains I tell you! Or so my leg muscles assured me. Makes me a bit apprehensive about the Alps, but then again I guess it’s all good practice.

Pretty!

Anti-shout-out goes to the Bourgogne public road works guys, who forbade me to go out in front of them up a road which they were re-asphalting. The result being that I had to push the Git all the way up on the grassy edge so that her beautiful tires would not be marred by the sticky muck. Anger!

Photo spécial dédicace Katharine: Christmas Tree Fields Foreva! Gling gling gling gling psychedelic sytar.

I arrived in Moux en Morvan around 7 pm and collapsed gratefully onto the football pitch cum camping ground as the rain started to fall seriously. I pitched my tent right between the goal posts, so that I could commune with Barthez in my dreams.

Shout-out to the 4-year-old version of my big sister Jayne, whom I recalled busting a move to the rocking bagpipe solos of that be-mulletted 80’s icon John Farnham, which figure prominently on my Motivaysh i-pod playlist. Perfect memory to distract one from thigh-ache in the most gruelling uphills.