ventoux further reduced

 

I am not sure we really expected it to be any different at this time of the year especially after an historic stage visit from the Tour de France (insofar the hill was ascended and descended twice, for the first time). But the volumes of folk up there on top of Le Géant were rather more than we bargained for. The hill can absorb large numbers it is true and the majority do tend to congregate around the very top, not surprisingly. Fair enough, it is lovely up there, but we think the ascending and descending issues are beginning to become rather critical. 

There are so many cyclists now who toil up from Bédoin, the difficult and classic ascent, that the route is reaching saturation point. Wheel to wheel, sometimes two abreast, etc, you know the form. For once I saw no indiscipline amongst those driving up, but some very reckless descending from cyclists, with considerable disregard for those ascending, and for their own safety. I gather the figures of those involved in accidents is increasing, as well as fatalities. Yet it is the French way to let the issue continue with little done to improve matters. Will there come a time when ascents will be limited in number or to a number of days a week? I hope not. Oh yes, there are probably too many cars also if the parking free-for-all up top is anything to go by…

But something has to give. How to keep motorised and pedal power apart, that’s the thing. Off-road bikers are beginning to make any path, away from the roadways, a new kind of hazard. One is, as it were, in the way. I thought it too rough for them but not any more, damn it.

We stopped short of the summit, like we often have before, parked up on the dead end road, and walked eastward. The flat summit thereabouts has now been used as a dumping ground for extracted material removed to make the changes we saw being engineered in autumn 2020, as well as a depository for discarded concrete and life expired tarmacadam. OK, neatly piled up and levelled, the loose stuff,  to allow for a shallow relief to be created on its plateau (a bicycle motif, of course what else) but still somewhat of an eyesore. About three metres high, it messes up the spot heights FGS. 

More concerning is the probable loss of the delicate alpines we have found up there on previous visits. Vaucluse seems to have tried to improve the summit but without consideration, much, to the rest of the hill. All in the interests of the visitor, in which case it has largely failed IMHO. But we did at least get some fresh air and exercise thereabouts, but viewed the summit area with some forboding as we were scheduled to pass over it and it was heaving, plain to see. 

Trying to get over the top was no better an experience than in previous years despite the extra concrete laid here and there. The triumphal staircase from restaurant corniche to the summit tarmac capping causes danger to all and is a monstrous blot of pre-cast nastiness on the top bit. It was never pretty, but now… The traffic was muddled, chaotic, aggravated by over large vehicles still having access over the top. We had first hand experience of that!

Best of all, cyclists are directed to cut diagonally through and across both directions of traffic so they can top out Ventoux over the glorious summit white line across the uppermost black-top: at risk to them and the rest of the throng. The chaos Vaucluse has rendered up there now has to be managed by the local gendarmerie! Who came up with the ideas? Needs another spell at the drawing board m’thinks, not to mention an introduction to environmental management and the flora/fauna associated with same.

We didn’t stop, not even to check the status of the Family Seat which may or may not have succumbed to the ruination. We were glad to be off the hill: the journey down wasn’t much better than the ascent. The lunatic element of the boys in lycra descending through the cars going sedately and in orderly fashion, down to Malaucène,were all too apparent. Thankfully we didn’t witness an actual smash… It would seem though that on Ventoux a minority of riders decide on death or glory.

Meanwhile Ventoux looks mutely on at the muddle on its flanks. Winter will come and close the roads except to the cat-track. The sheep flocks will still move across the mostly undisturbed flanks and upper forest remnants. The concrete will age and crack and if the Family Seat still holds on, maybe another weather blasted plank will yield. Winter… skiers then show up I guess… there are ski-tows on the western ridge… As for that communications tower: there’s a case of an eyesore becoming an icon! 

footnote: yes, yes yes, we know, if we go up there we are just adding to the problem. Don’t need to point it out. Most issues in this world are other people, let’s face it…
Anyway. No more summer visits: on that we are resolved. Spring, Autumn, Winter. That’s it. We’ll walk it if its closed. And by the way, we pay taxes here in Vaucluse, so think on. I bet you don’t! 

point of information: All credit to Belgian Wout Van Aert who won the eleventh stage of the TdeF, the one that involved ascending Le Géant twice. He also won the second time trial and the glorious sprint finish on the Champs Elysee! The race was won overall by Tadej Pogacar while Richard Carapaz came third but took the gold in the Olympic Men’s Road Race in Tokyo the very day I scribe this missive! Here they are the three of them, the future of cycling on the Olympic podium… left to right: the Belgian, the Ecuadorian, the Slovenian.

postcard: piègon walk

 

postcard: below grand montmirail

 

Yes, just turning up a vineyard track off a routeway we had wanted to link up with previous explores from the Lafare to Suzette road. Having made that link rather more quickly than expected, we ascended steeply up the hill and took ourselves round these wonderful airy terraces on the south side of the Grand Montmirail. We found shade and delight under a little group of mediterranean pines offering long views to Ventoux and beyond. 

Our return was straightforward, familiar, a little dusty, back to where we had left the motor. This is delightful productive generally quiet countryside: the odd off roader and vine-tractor is all one might expect from this approach, above the Durban domaines and north of St Hilaire, above Beaumes-de-Venise etc. Different picture come the harvesting, of course. Beaumes de Venise is the wine, butting up with Gigondas to the west… quality.

Fill your lungs with that fresh and scented air!

NB: That's the postcard, that composite at the top, the text is extra, now that I can do it again back at Bullsmead Towers… and the picture below is looking downhill, even though it looks flat……

postcard: violès sacks the planes

 

postcard: the d9 variation

 

the eleventh stage

Le Géant broods quietly in the Vauclusian dawn, after the previous evening’s downpour (with lightning). Its flanks are strewn with visitors from below, in camper vans and other forms of transportation who have taken their places within the last day or two to sit it out to be able to witness the scheduled ascent of the Giant of Provence, Ventoux, not troubled since 2016 by incursions like this, but now hosting the serious part of the eleventh stage of the Tour de France 2021. 

Not one ascent you understand, but two: firstly from the Sault direction, along to Chalet Reynard, over the top and down to Maulacène, then secondly from Bédoin, to Chalet Reynard, the classic ascent, then newly cosseted summit and down, terminating back in Malaucène.

So that’s two ascents and two descents to sort the wheat from the chaff in this exciting race.

We are viewing the stage from a (considerable) distance. The view above is as close as we are going to get. As previously commented in my earlier post, best laid plans, we are destined to miss the stage roadside, miss the stage on tv and perhaps, only perhaps, have satellite tv coverage returned to us just in time for itv’s highlights programme, please God.

Eight hundred and eighty-eight miles to get here in time for the stage. Then this. Life is a vale  of tears, a sheaf of might-have-beens, a cornucopia of near misses and dashed hopes…

So we went for our Rasteau walk in the fresher air of the morning and revitalised our spirits with our familiar round. Lovely. Could do much much worse. Cheered the heart and quenched the thirst once returned to the informality of the Rasteau bar.

Could that be smoke from barbeques wafting north from Ventoux’s noble brow? I do hope The Family Seat is not being abused up there by all those onlookers. We shall have to get up there sooner or later just to set foot where today’s drama is playing out, even as I tap this out.

Down here, the drama is, where is our man-in-blue? He was due at 1600……… and he arrives exactly as the church clock gives out the hour (four bells) and not in blue but black and khaki. I feel my spirits lifting: the brackets he proposes will surely give the answer to the Mistral’s attentions……

And with new resins, bolts, anchorages and tunings, we are treated with the last half hour or thereabouts, of stage eleven, a famous victory indeed for Belgian Wout Van Aert, winning the stage right outside our regular café in Malaucène… We got to see the highlights tonight at 2000 hours our time and 1900 hours yours. The ‘man-in-black-and-khaki’ done good.

No, not the stage winner, dolt! TV-aerial-repair-man, of course! He mentioned something about some football semi final he thought we might be watching this evening… get out! Football? No way. 

The photo below was taken during the twelfth stage and has not been doctored.  Ventoux radio mast showing. From near Puyméras.

best laid plans

Off the boat, uncharacteristically for us, in double quick time and on the road by ten minutes past seven local time. Normally we bring up the rear of disembarkation but somehow we got through the checks early and at speed. The illicit gooseberries for the Kaisers were not detected and the gun toting border guards were still abed. 

Very good journey down I have to say, no hiccups or holdups, no rain, only a modicum of swearing and shouting around La Roche-sur-Yonne. But that’s a tradition: the place is bloody badly signposted and places part of its ringroad on a passing auto-route which we’ve taken to be péage but now believe it isn’t. Most often we just hack straight through the town, it’s not much slower. Unless there is a fire, which there once was and then we saw bits of La Roche that even the locals were unfamiliar with.

Por du Bec (not Porte as on the image) for the statutory fish lunch (arriving on the dot of midday). La Rochelle in a spasm of grid locked traffic but hotel, when finally reached, up to scratch as per… 

The next day, a smooth transfer to hotel Ibis in Cahors. Quiet roads mostly, and after getting off the boat and getting that first 300 miles out of the way, well a bit easier progress with some lovely stretches of countryside.

On day three we even abandoned going down the swoops to the mediterranean plain on the jolly old A75, sweet though they be (Madame Melling doesn’t care for them, sadly) taking instead the old pre-autoroute via Soubès for a lunch stop thereat (we didn’t take the Marseillan option this time, honeypot in July we fear, but bashed on through Montpellier to complete the route on the rather unloved A9). Got into Sabbers at 1510, don’t y’know? And seemingly, at first glance, all fine and dandy… 

Less enthusiastic to find that our tame builder chappie has not undertaken the remedial corrections to the abode that Madame Melling had paid him to do upfront, last October. She gets no response to her messages to him before our arrival, and naturally none from the one sent from here. Conveniently (for him) tame builder doesn’t ‘do’ e-mails (he is a builder). I expect we will stumble across him soon, probably lunching at L’As de Coeur if he is in the area at all. I wonder if he will have forgotten our €200 advance…… (NEWSFLASH: Tame builder shows up at 1 Rue FB before 10.00 hours, as I scribe this record, explains issues, and becomes our favourite and reliable builder chappie once more! He offers to return lucre (as well as the duplicate keys) but no, he can keep the euros against the cost of the work not done but about to be done (we trust). Or so I gather; as you know I don’t have the Fr and I blame my school for that, as in previous posts: I just grin and nod and occasionally say ah oui if I determine that it might lubricate the dialogue and suggest that I know what the hell is going on. Which I don’t. 

When we contracted TV repair men (aerials division) last October we were assured by the men in blue that turned out for us that their fantastic expansion bolts (we marvelled at their size and grandeur) would hold anything firm.

On Saturday Madame Melling and self returned to the retail premises to update them on the unsatisfactory nature of blue men’s last reaffixing, the aformentioned bolts associated with the anchorage of our TV satellite dish. Men in blue are coming to try again on Wednesday. Wednesday mind you. What is happening on Wednesday? That’s right, the double ascent of Le Géant. Which means, of course we cannot roadside the stage (as we have to stay in for aerial repair men) and we cannot watch the stage as by the time ARM arrive and work their wonder the stage will be over. So we have come 888 miles (or 1421 kilometres, near enough) to miss the stage altogether. Good huh? There’s always the highlights, if they can fix the dish again… in time. 

As for reconnecting the landline (a simple switch at Orange’s master exchange)? Nah. Nothing. So no communication at all beyond M’s hot spot. (NEWSFLASH: Madame Melling has been on to Orange again via her very smart phone and now we are back on line (land) and the dubious pleasure of nuisance calls! Progress is ours!!). 

I sorted out a 13mm spanner I found in my toilet or tool bag and tightened the world’s strongest gripping expansion bolts until they screamed. As a result we managed to get some BBC channels and Channel 4 too. But ITV? You have to be joking. No. The Tour coverage is on ITV y’see. EF EF EF EF! Merde aussi. If only I could insert another NEWSFLASH here to tell you the operatives are even now fixing the dish on the terrace but my magic is all used up: no van is parking up and the door bell remains unrung. Wednesday! What’s wrong with Tuesday or even right now? Tsch and Fie!

OK. So the Best Laid Plans are very much curate’s egg, not to mix my mayonnaises, good in parts! Nice to be able to scoff cherries and apricots once more though, I expect to be doing so with attitude, and will no doubt come out in spots as a result…

footnote: Mary suggested a trip to our other favourite market, after St Cecile, at Malaucéne on Wednesday.
There won’t be one. That’s where the Ventoux stage is finishing!