Roubaix

I stumbled across a few photos today of a trip I made to the Velodrome at Roubaix in 2007.  It was a deliberate pilgrimage.  I had been in Lille for a conference and, on the edge of the city map given to us in our packs, I spotted the word “Roubaix” and knew I should go; to stand and gaze like the golfers do in St Andrews, to breathe in the air of that hallowed place.  Getting there involved a tram and then a long walk through grimly modest Northern French residential streets, under an expressway, around a municipal building and up a side street.

Arriving there was like entering upon a sacred space, an amphitheatre.  It was still and silent, even the Velo Club de Roubaix, where I might have hoped to wander in and drink a Stella among the memorabilia, was locked up and dark.  Not a race day, then.  I sat on the tribunes above one of the banked ends and soaked up the view.  Wandering down to the track, I found that someone had abandoned a child’s bike.  It had no saddle.  It had no reason to be there.  Was it an offering to the gods?  Had a joyride around the circuit been interrupted by an angry concierge, causing noisy urchins to drop the bike and scamper for the exits?  Had it been placed there by a photographer, keen to feature in the pages of Rouleur?  However, it got there, I took my chance and used it to foreground my snaps, undisturbed.

I have for some time been looking for an ideal place to go and get to know my fixed wheel bicycle. It is a Raleigh Dynatech with purple and pink frame that I fitted out with purple wheels, pink tyres, a white saddle, white pedals and white bar tape. And, of course, I stripped off the derailleurs and fitted a simple elegant fixed gear. Until now it was just a thing of beauty but I needed to develop the courage to ride it more than the few hundred metres up and down the road outside the house.

I was persuaded to lay it gently in the back of the car on a night away up North, just in case the opportunity arose to take it for a spin. It did. We were staying at Kinloch Rannoch and, from there, my experiences of the Etape Caledonia told me that it is possible to make a very scenic 35km circuit of the eponymous loch on roads that are very quiet and reasonably flat. So I set out.

What a beautiful place to get to know a bike! I met practically no traffic and had the chance to experience the pleasing simplicity of the fixed wheel on roads that I had to myself. On the flat, it glided along noiselessly and relentlessly; on the inclines, it powered me up slopes I had no option but to dig into; on the descents, my legs spun and I was glad of the advice I had been given to relax them and let the momentum take its course.

The ride itself was quite stunningly scenic, all around the shores of the loch, among native broadleaved trees beside stony shores, fields of sheep and Highland cows, fence posts and stone walls, small treasured dwellings with priceless outlooks.

My contact points suffered from the unfamiliarity of the frame; my hands were numb, my sit bones tortured by the lack of a chance to sit up and freewheel for a while to take off the pressure. But no matter, the experience was quite exhilarating and one that I feel keen to re-acquaint myself with as soon as the chance arises.

Never mind the Etape Caledonia and all its peloton road riding thrills for the amateur dreamer: as a huge outdoor velodrome for the fixie enthusiast, the Loch Rannoch shore road is one of our country’s hidden treasures.

Fondrerie Roger is where the design classic little metal cyclists are made. Forged in a scruffy little workshop at Egreville, a town to the Southeast of Fontainebleu, these iconic tin toys have fed the dreams of countless children. They are the cycling fan’s Subbuteo figure.

Nowadays they pop up from time to time in bourgeois toy shops, quirky tabacs and tourist shops such as the one depicted, located in the Marais quartier of Paris. Acquired through this route, they are certainly not cheap but they are highly charming.  Alternatively, you could send a postal order to the Fondrerie and get a box full  of blanks to paint yourself.

I have several of these petits rouleurs; one lives in my car in front of the odometer, to remind me how I would prefer to be travelling. He is called Luigi, on account of his crudely painted Italian team jersey.

Just finished Robert Penn’s account of having a bike built from carefully chosen components, the history of each he researches along the way. It might have been a book so nerdy that one would be mildly ashamed to spend time with it, but, in fact it was so elegantly written and so much imbued with grand themes of human innovation and craft, that I devoured it rather proudly.

Having read this book, I now feel closer to my machines, as though I, too, had taken them apart and honed every component to perfection.

More books.

On business in Bristol, with a free weekend in between assignments, I got the chance to sample National Cycle Route 4;  the UK’s pioneering off-road cycle path, developed by SUSTRANS as one of their earliest projects.  It runs along a disused railway from Bristol to Bath, along backstreets and contraflows through the Georgian City and onto the tow path of the Kennet and Avon Canal to Devizes. Thence into the quiet lanes of the Vale of Pewsey and on towards London.

My 200 kilometer round trip (to Andover) turned out to be the slowest long distance ride I have ever done – even for a mediocre road cyclist like me, the statistics are too embarrassing to reveal.  So much did I underestimate this route, that I found myself by 7pm on the Friday evening, after a long afternoon’s riding, well past my ETA and still an hour short of my destination.  It was dark, I was somewhere in a militarised zone.  Worse still, one premature right turn had plunged me, with no alternative route, onto a slip road onto the A303 dual carriageway, roaring with Friday night commuters racing home.  I bailed out, invoking the pre-arranged contingency of finding a pub and calling for the support vehicle.  The return journey, on the Monday and in daylight, showed me the error of my ways and had me musing about the purchase of a bike-specific GPS.

So why so slow?  There were no significant hills; the railway and canal paths were engineered to prevent them. It was an early season ride for me, but I was by no means unfit for it nor exhausted by it. There was a stiff headwind all the way back, that certainly made a difference on the open road.  Mostly, however, my speed was limited by the terrain and the surfaces.  Three hours on a canal path is jolly enough, but you are dodging obstacles all the way: puddles, dogs, iPod-wearing strollers, the domestic outspillings of narrow boats, bridges, styles, road crossings.  Although you probably could bomb along these routes and take evasive action when required, it would be mentally exhausting to have to concentrate so closely for so long.  When I finally hit tarmac in daylight, I felt the bike lurch forward like a dog off the leash so that the sudden increase in speed made me giddy.

It turns out that the predictable rhythms of road riding, even in traffic, may well be much less mentally arduous than the constant state of alert required on an off-road path.  In a curious way, it may even have been more stressful to daunder along the “traffic-free” alternative, than it would have been to just hit the road.  It certainly took a lot longer!

Cycles Laurent is a bike shop with a pedigree.  From their base in the back shop, three generations of Messieurs Laurent reaching as far back as the 1930′s have raced their bicycles across France and they still keep their shop on one of Paris’s busiest boulevards.  It has a sort of inverted sedimentary layout: laid up at ceiling height are the bikes of yesteryear and associated posters, jerseys, photographs, caps and curiosities from the old days; as we descend nearer to touching distance, there are modern bikes made of high tech materials, titanium and carbon fibre frames, bike parts in boxes and a jumble sale of clothing made from equally high tech fabrics.  It was one of these that I laid hands on; a windproof tricolor jacket inscribed with the proprietors’ name; I just couldn’t resist it.

While I was making my purchase, two men wheeled their bikes in off the street complaining of malfunctions and were attended to swiftly and courteously, this despite the fact that their bikes were the shabbiest rusty town steeds imaginable.  No bike snobbery chez Laurent, then, despite their Aladdin’s den of pricey equipment: the day to day of a bike shop on the Boulevard is spent keeping the city moving on two wheels – a drop of grease here, the turn of a spanner there, an inner tube from time to time.  I felt that I was in a wholesome place and would have lingered longer but instead I withdrew with my fancy garment under my arm and left them to get on with their work.

My bike, pedalled by me to the top of the Galibier, September 2006

I have dreamed for years of the day when the Tour de France followed the same route that I took in September 2006, as I rode over the Telegraphe, Galibier, down the valley to Bourg D’Oisans and up the Alpe D’Huez. Today is that day.

Of course, there will be no comparison in terms of athleticism, guile, speed, crowds, helicopters, press vehicles and public excitement. However, the landscape and the effort of pushing oneself to the limit will resonate with me and remind me of an achievement of which I am still very proud.

My Alpine Trip