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!