No alarm clock was necessary to wake me even though breakfast was at 4 am. I had prepared and trained for this day to the exclusion of almost everything else for the past eight months. I woke at 3.30, made a few final detailed changes to my kit and headed for the dining room. The hotel staff were remarkably cheery and organised even though they had been dragged from their beds even earlier than us fifty cyclists. The bus was packed and ready to roll at a quarter to five, and we headed off on the hour and a half's drive to the village sports centre where we had parked our bikes the night before. From here, just as the sun was rising, we began the 12 km ride to the start. The air was cool but not cold, and the extra layer I'd packed for the pre-race wait and the mountain descents would stay in my pocket all day. The sun stayed behind a thin veil of cloud until midday, keeping us from getting too hot too early, and the strong westerly winds of the previous week had miraculously reversed and almost died, leaving the gentlest of tailwind for more than half the race. There was the minimum of chatter among the 8,000 or so entrants as we assembled in our start areas and listened over the public address to the introductions and commentary, and finally at 7 am exactly, the start gun. At 7.15 I started to move, and at 7.23 I crossed the start line and was on my way.

Even at this early hour the streets were thronged with cheering spectators, and every village, every bit of road was the same, right up to the end twelve hours later, such is the passion of the French for the sport of cycling. The first climb, the Col de Port started at the 20 km mark, and was the easiest of the day, but was still enough to get the heart pumping and to give a feeling of satisfaction at the summit. After a long speedy descent I reached the first feed station in St-Girons well ahead of my personal schedule. The town was in party mood with music and dancing in all the streets and squares as we headed out towards the Col de Portet d'Aspet. Again an easy climb, but the descent was another matter. It was here in the 1995 Tour that Fabio Casartelli died when he slid off on one of the steep hairpin bends and split his head open on a concrete bollard, only the third ever death in the history of the race. Thankfully no such fate befell any of our participants, though there were several non-fatal but rather nasty-looking prangs throughout the day. At the bottom there's a sharp left hand bend and immediately we were into the next climb, gentle at first, but I could tell the Col de Menté was going to be a hard one.

The sun was now blazing down, the climbs were getting harder, and the legs were starting to weaken. I went to change down a gear, but there were no more gears left. I knew I should have fitted a 27. The short walks I had indulged in on the previous two climbs just to help relax the muscles for a few minutes, were becoming longer and were now the only way to keep moving at all on the steeper sections. I was now struggling to keep up with my time schedule, but the feed station at the top and the thought that Ruth would be waiting to give me extra support and encouragement at the bottom kept me hopeful and positive. This descent was my fastest of the day: no-one overtook me as my speed touched 70kph! Down in the Garonne valley the route turned to the north and into a slight headwind, but for a chap who had started his training on the wild, exposed tracts of Port Phillip Bay it was nothing, and I found myself leading a small groupetto down the road to where Ruth was waiting. Drink bottles were replenished, sandwiches stuffed down and sunblock renewed, and after ten minutes I was on my way again, heading for the fearsome slopes of the Col du Port de Balès.

This climb was included in the Tour de France for the first time this year; the road has only just been surfaced. It is rated as "Hors Categorie" (out of category) meaning that it is even harder than category 1, which was itself defined as requiring first gear in a car of the 1930s when the grading system was first devised. It is signed as being 19.2km long, but before the official start there is 6 km of road rising gently through villages given their first opportunity to party "Tour de France style". With 60 km still to ride including this climb and the Peyresourde, I was astonished to see people having given up long before the summit, heading back in droves towards me, and making for the elimination point in the village and a nice comfy coach ride to the finish. As the road climbed relentlessly out of the trees, magnificent views were surely opening below me, but my eyes were fixed on the road ahead, snaking up towards the final feed station at the top. By the time I reached it I had fallen 20 minutes behind my own schedule, though still just ahead of the "Broom Wagon" signifying the end of the race. Descending on the fresh tarmac demanded absolute concentration: the road was open and exposed, and one lapse would have meant oblivion. But I reached the bottom safely, knowing there was just the Peyresourde left to tackle.

Though tired beyond belief I found I could still pedal happily at any gradient up to about 6% and keep up a good speed. Anything steeper however demanded that I walk for about one third of any kilometre, and just three klicks from the top the inevitable happened, and I and the hundreds of others around me were overtaken by the timing car and instructed to pull over and wait to be picked up. My unprintable reply was echoed by many and I put in a valiant attempt to re-pass the car, before resigning myself to my fate and continuing to the top by my now well-established ride/walk routine. To my great delight no official attempted to drag me screaming from my bike, and after overtaking several cars on the descent (the road was now re-opened) I finally rolled in to Loudenvielle nineteen minutes after the timing clocks were shut down, but still in time to receive a medal for my efforts. Crossing that line after 11 hours 56 minutes was the most exhilarating feeling I could imagine, and as the endorphines flooded my brain, all pain vanished and I headed purposefully for the beer tent and some long overdue refreshment.

On!On!

Crabbo

The Étape du Tour de France is undoubtedly one of the hardest, most challenging amateur cycle races it is possible to ride. When entries opened at the end of October I was in no fit state to make a sensible decision about anything, having just the previous evening celebrated my 60th birthday in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But off went the entry form, and the holiday continued in Laos and Cambodia.

When I eventually arrived in Australia three weeks later my first job was to buy a bike, and the next to find some training territory that bore some similarity to the mountainous terrain that I would be faced with the following July. Fortunately the Yarra Ranges National Park a few miles to the East of Melbourne has a superb mountain of just about the height and gradient of the Port de Balès, the hardest in this year's Étape. So my weekly schedule soon revolved around at least one visit to Mount Donna Buang: an early start, a train ride with the commuters into the city, then out the other side to the end of the line at Lilydale. From here the ride starts with the Warburton Trail, a disused freight railway line converted to a dedicated 40km cycle track that is better surfaced and maintained than many a country road in Norfolk. It finishes in the old town of Warburton at the foot of the mountain, and after a brief stop for water replenishment it was on on and on up!

Mount Donna Buang is 1,249 m high, an outlier of the Great Dividing range that runs from North to South the length of the continent of Australia. There is a forest fire lookout tower at the summit, and for rapid access in case of emergency a tarmac road all the way to the summit. The climb has an average gradient of about 6%, and winds through spectacular eucalypt forest with the oldest straightest trees exceeding 200 feet. Even on very hot days (I experienced a few), there is always shade on the way up, and plenty of opportunity to replenish water bottles from springs gushing from the rocks by the roadside. Bird song fills the air, and occasionally the dense forest opens out to grand views of the Yarra valley far below. I once caught a brief glimpse at the forest edge of the elusive Lyrebird, often heard but rarely seen.

After five minutes at the top to stretch the legs and regain some composure it was time for the boneshaking descent, to be taken with a certain amount of care in spite of the temptation to let everything go. 50kph was normal on bends advised as 30 for cars! Twenty minutes later (a quarter of the time taken for the climb) I was back at the bottom, where if I felt like more punishment I could make my return through the hills behind the old town of Warburton to rejoin the rail trail back to the station and home. All this added up to a round trip of about 120km, plenty for an old boy who was recovering from a month's holiday in south-east Asia!

Ruth also bought a bike on her arrival in Oz, though her outings were less demanding: a trip to the shops, a bimble by the beach, occasionally meeting up with me towards the end of one of my training rides. Port Phillip Bay on the Northen shore of which stands Melbourne has newly constucted cycle tracks around much of its 200km circumference. Some of this path in the suburbs becomes quite conjested with bike posers, but to the west where we stayed we often had the path to ourselves for the whole day. The ride out to Weribee and back was about 80 km, and though flat it was always challenging on account of the strong winds that blow in off the Southern ocean. Ruth used to catch the train out to Weribee, then after a coffee or two ride back with me and a tailwind.

The creeks which flow down through the suburbs of Melbourne into the Yarra river have also now been furnished with cycle paths, and another favourite ride took in the Moonee Ponds Creek Path out almost to the airport, then a spin round the hills of Brimbank Park, followed by a return to Footscray via the Maribyrnong River trail. This ride eventually became the basis for a Bikehash trail which we laid a few weeks before our return to Blighty. It was a hot summer day peaking at 37ºC, and we worried that this might discourage people from turning out; but sixteen made the effort and were rewarded with a typically devious Crabbo trail with a picnic lunch instead of the more usual pub stop.

On!On!

Crabbo