And the point of getting up at 5.30 am was ... ?

To get in a car and go and watch the 19th stage (etape) of this year's Tour de France, of course! The Tour is one of France's great gifts to the world, and this year's 19th etape took in 2 of the iconic climbs: le Gallibier, and a summit finish on top of Alpe d'Huez. So, of course, this was not to be missed.

The Guardian's cycling correspondent described the etape as 'short and horrible' - and that was only for those spectators intent on walking all or - in our case - part of the way up Alpe d'Huez. For the riders, something like, 'short and murderous' or 'short and suicidal' would have been more accurate. Le Gallibier and Alpe d'Huez are HUGE mothers in cycling terms: Gallibier is almost exactly the same height as Taranaki, and Alpe d'Huez is 3/4 that height (but steeeeeeeeeep like you've never seen). So, it'd be like riding up Taranaki, descending, then whipping around and doing pretty much the same thing - all in one day (actually, in a touch over 3 hours). And this after nearly 3 weeks in the saddle. No wonder these guys are so skinny they're nearly transparent. (The cycling pointy heads amongst you may be interested in this link, but even the non-pointy heads should look at the D211 on this one, which gives you a sense of the sheer horribleness of what was involved.)

Looking fresh

Anyway, here's the stage in pictures. Michel, Cam and I leave at 6.30 am to beat the rush, arrive (with half of Europe; the other half will be watching it on the telly) at the foot of Alpe d'Huez, and start climbing. It's only 14 kms to the top, but it's steep as buggery, so we only get to the 5th of 21 turns before setting up camp. That is already 500 m up a solid 10% gradient. Turns out we have chosen a small quarter of Luxembourg to settle in for the day. Les freres Schleck, Frank and Andy (pronounced 'Ondy' in these parts), are prominent in Le Tour this year, and attract a fanatical and well-natured following. The hardcore have set up camp on our corner (or we on theirs): generator, music, telly, beer keg, tents, cars, bikes, caravans, appropriately spraypainted road (all the way up you can paint your favourite rider's name on the tarmac - the archaeological record goes back millenia), 'Go hard' signs for Frank and Ondy on any remotely flat surface (road, cliff, car) ... all the usual signs of cycling colonisation.

Yes, it is cold

So, welcome to Luxembourg. This will be base camp for the next 9 hours.  It is cold, rocky and full of Frank'n'Ondy stuff. Perhaps the real Luxembourg is not like this, but I suspect it may well be at this particular point in history. Their boys are doing well, after all, and the natives have high hopes that Ondy will take possession of the maillot jaune today. He probably will, but the French and the neutrals (which amount to the same thing - in my view it is impossible to be neutral in something like the Tour, so you may as well be French, which I am anyway) desperately hope this will not happen, as it will mean the end of the glorious, heroic, majestic effort of Thomas Voeckler. (Yes, I know that that makes 3 uber-superlatives in one sentence, but he deserves each of them, and I would by inclination put in more.) The French don't really do the 'little battler' narrative, but this year Voeckler has been the Tour's equivalent of Alan Border, Steve Waugh and Precious Mackenzie all rolled into one. (Some of you will get these cultural references; the quilters amongst you probably won't.) The nation has died with him up ever monsterous ascent in the Pyrenees and the Alps, and we're all secretly hoping that Ondy will fall off/miss his alarm clock/get bored and go home do the decent thing and let Voeckler ride into Paris with maillot jaune on his shoulders. He probably won't, though ...

A wee ride up the hill

What do you do for 9 hours while you wait for something that will take a matter of seconds to zip past? Partly what we do is we watch people ride up and down the mountain (and some of them do it more than once). This is considerably more interesting than it sounds, although if I were to be wholly truthful I would concede that after 8 or so hours the novelty wears off a bit. But there are so many of them! One boffin estimates that there are nearly 500,000 people lining the route of the etape, and that most of these are on Alpe d'Huez. And perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 have come armed with a bicycle, and each of them is intent on demonstrating that they, too, can ride up Alpe d'Huez. It is a bit like a Womad concert without the music: young and old, big and small, thin and the other word We Must Not Utter - they're all decked out in their colourful mockers and are chugging up the hill at various speeds. There are people doing it in wheelchairs! There is the obligatory anti-drug protester (who will later receive a punch in the face from Alberto Contador for his efforts). There is the evangelist predicting the end of the world (but not 'til the end of the race, and only if Thomas does not win). Never have so many DBs been deserved by so many.

To DB or not to DB?

Psycho Boy

We don't deserve DBs, though. We simply sit and watch the  festival. There goes the Luxembourg Lion (he is drinking a lot of DBs, and by the end of the day will be wilting badly but happily). There are the Vikings. There's the weird guy with a Hannibal Lecter mask waving the US and Mexican flags. Noone can figure him out, but he appears harmless. There goes the Roman centurion riding a top-of-the line Cannondale. And so on and so on. It is the strangest thing. Although we can only see the people for 100m on either side of our corner, we can hear vast amounts of noise booming up and down the mountain, and out across the valley. It is slightly apocolyptic, but in a very happy, cheerful sort of way.

Stuff

It is very hot now, so we clump together under our neighbour's umbrella (but he is following the Tour and has not washed for some time, so we do not clump too closely). We talk with Swedes, Portugese, Dutch and English people; we spot All Black jerseys and Sliver Ferns, but retreat into our Frenchness and do not yell out 'g'day'; we stroll along the sides of the mountain and marvel that not one child seems to be wearing either sunscreen or a cap; and occasionally we wonder why we are sitting in full Alpine sun on the side of road. But then the caravan of goodies arrives and we have the answer to our question! For fully half an hour the sponsors' trucks rampage up the mountain. Each is inhabited by French youths who dance madly to Gaga or Madonna (and these days who can tell the difference?) while hurling Stuff out into the adoring masses. Cam deployed her energies to excellent effect: caps, lanyards, jelly things, madeleines, blow up wavy things, other gumpf the purposes of which are not immediately apparent - all vacuumed up.

Look mum, I can read!

Then more waiting.









Then they arrive. And we find that we have badly over-estimated how long it will take the riders to go past. Contador, Rolland and Ondy are a blur, and then are gone. They are riding faster than Psycho Boy can run - he tries to keep up with them, but fails. Possibly his mask hinders his breathing. But there is no Thomas Voeckler: we fear the worst and fall silent. Then a huge roar rolls up the mountain as he hoves into view. He is down - well down - on Ondy and the drug-taking cheat Contador, but no matter: he has battled his way back to the lead group and is hurling himself up the hill like a man possessed (and, in a very real sense, he is). If Tennyson had been both French and alive it would not have been the Charge of the Light Brigade, it would have The Charge of Voeckler up Alpe d'Huez. Equally magificent; equally doomed.


And then they are gone. Later, we find that while Ondy did not obligingly fall off and has indeed taken Voeckler's jersey, the etape was won by Voeckler's young team mate Pierre Rolland. Rolland is the first Frenchman since Hinault in 1986 to take Alpe d'Huez, and only the second local ever to have done so. This makes it easier for us to come to terms with the end of Voeckler's challenge. Those of us who remain capable of rational thought know that all this should not matter to us as much as it seems to. But today, on the mythical Alpe d'Huez, it does.