Tour fever

“Wiggins is four minutes down. Nibali’s attacked.”

“Wiggins has cracked.”

Rumours fly up and down the mountain, word of mouth flashing through the atmosphere faster even than modern electronics. British faces start to fall. A Swiss driver in one of the Tour cavalcade cars sees the Union flag on the road and slows to enlighten us: “Cadel! Cadel attacks! Wiggins – twelve minutes down already!” He zooms off, blasted away by a welter of honking from behind. The heat – nudging 40 º all day – beats down.

Even watching the Tour is a marathon of endurance. We arrived here 3 days ago: driving up, all the parking spots on the roadside are full. Places that aren’t parking spots are full. Cars and vans are stopped at crazy angles, or with one wheel hanging over an abyss, advertising their owners’ non-sleeping intentions. People have laid out sleeping bags on the roadside, £3000 carbon-fibre race bikes are parked in bushes, naked men are showering using tins hung in trees. The whole mountain has been transformed into some kind of crazy vagabond camp.

Our van ends up parked in a field, where we and about 3000 other vans and campers have paid €35 to stay. The money’s apparently going to repair the local church; tours are offered. There are a lot of people in this field, and others like it up and down the mountain. Not all the vans and tents are self-supporting. There are no facilities. The sun’s been baking down all day, every day. It smells like a London back alley in the 1600s.

On the third day the organizers realize their mistake and bring in some Portaloos. Eight of them, reserved for the use of those without their own toilets. But give the owner of a white-box camper van a choice between: a) emptying the van’s waste cassette and b) shitting in a Portaloo, and he picks – extraordinarily – b) every time. Within hours the four Portaloos the organizers have opened – the others are being held back against some future poonami – are an overflowing poomageddon. The queue to use them is notably free of female customers, heavy on massive-bellied Frenchmen wearing unsuitable sports shorts. Back to a trowel in the woods, then.

The day of the race’s arrival, the endurance challenge ramps up. It’s baking, the sun hitting open spaces like a blow, but by 11.00 in the morning the roadside’s starting to get jammed. The riders aren’t due for another five hours.

We head down at about 3.30 in the afternoon, having sent an umbrella-ed, be-flagged advance party down to claim territory. Muscle in at the edge, between them and a bunch of plastered Basques (how did this get to be the richest region in Spain? They’re always drunk). The Union flag on the road, British bunting, nylon football tops, cheap lager, inappropriately large and brightly coloured trainers, and shouting all mark this out as a little corner of England in a hot and foreign land. I don’t spot any pickled eggs, bomb craters, cloth caps, plump ladies playing pianos in pubs, or ferrets, but they’re here in spirit.

And spirits are low, due to the rumour mongering. Then, thankfully, we’re all distracted by the arrival of the publicity caravan. Yippee! A chance to get loads of free plastic tat. I bag an inflatable beach pillow advertising a hire-car company, a money-changer’s shopping bag, a dog-food rubber keyring thing, a rubber wristband, and two sachets of fruit-drink sirop – though I do have to wrestle a small, fat child for the rare and sought-after tangerine-flavoured one.

Then, at last, the race arrives. Voeckler goes past looking, as always, like a demonic child. He’s ridden away from some of the world’s best riders, over four fearsome cols, 197km in 40 º heat. Tomorrow every French newspaper will have a photo of him on the front page. 

Then a group of three, then, a couple of minutes down, Nibali, Wiggins and Froome. They’re clearly moving faster up this final climb than anyone we’ve seen yet, or will see later, but Wiggins – Wiggins is smiling. I think at that point, with the hardest stage behind him and his biggest rival unable to shake him, he knew – rightly or wrongly – that the Tour was won.

The next day, Basso and Nibali do everything they can, but the Englishman won’t be shaken. In the end it’s Nibali who cracks, and Wiggins takes more time from him. The day’s marred by Froome’s showboating in the final kilometres, but nothing can really take the shine off it – barring disaster, Wiggins converts Olympic track gold into stage-racing yellow. I can’t, for now, think of a more incredible British sporting achievement. Answers on a postcard, please.

Portugal and Spain

Long time, no blog. We’ve been in northern Portugal, which was too nice to spend much of our time there writing about, and northern Spain, which definitely wasn’t because our time was mostly spent leaving. Readers who also follow me on Twitter will have seen the photo, shown left, of the official* Worst Campsite In Spain. It may be of interest that we actually drove round an even worse one (though this is a bit like saying that the Somme was worse than Verdun). Probably it goes without saying that we chose not to stay there.

*not actually official at all.

Portugal, in contrast, remains a favourite place to visit. The people have a tinge of amity and engagement that reminds me a bit of Australia: helpful, but not too much so. Staying with Sao near Ericiera was as much a treat as always – the best breakfast fruit bowl in the country. A larger one was pressed on us as we left: “I got up early to pick them, I know you like the fruit.” 

From there we rolled up through the Minho, green, green Portugal. This was a new landscape to the Glamorous Companion, though I’d visited it years ago with my friend Bonga. In retrospect I’m a bit embarrassed that we didn’t explore more, even just in surfing terms: we surfed pretty much the same break every day, in an area I now know is rich in waves. Mostly I surfed standup, but once in a while I managed to find an un-lifeguarded beach and get out on the mat. Image below, shot by the GC from the comfort of her beach towel – which is why it’s rather distant.

One change in Portugal: the people have, in general, got tremendously fat. It was like Chubby Night at Brighton’s Wild Fruit night club, all day, every day. I think they must have spent the EU cash on cakes. The country’s similarly bloated with empty property: beautiful modernist apartments and houses, all unoccupied, all for sale. Someone somewhere made a bundle on this, but it’s not – of course – ordinary Portuguese, who are suffering badly.

Spain saw us make first acquaintance with a gloomy band of drizzle that followed us across the entire country like a rheumy-eyed, smelly old dog. This will clearly elicit little sympathy from British readers busy building Arks in their back gardens. It’s a tough place to travel with an actual dog, Spain: they’re not allowed inside anywhere, so the pavement table is the dog-owner’s domain. OK if it’s sunny, but it wasn’t. The campsites – stop me if I’ve mentioned this – are also dire. The best night we spent in Spain proper was in a beach car park; also the last night before we reached the safety of the Basque Country.

The highlight of non-Basque Spain was probably Galicia. It’s a wild, wet, rugged country, where the grain stores have to be off the ground to keep them safe from vermin and damp. Two or three jaw-dropping surf breaks, out in the far west, made me think this would be a good place for a full-on surfing exploration.

The Basque lands always feel like a good place to be, and after a not-particularly wonderful time in the rest of Spain, it was very welcome to reach them. The coast road between Zumaia and Zarautz is an Amalfi? What Amalfi? treat, and the campsite in Zaratutz is a real gem. A few days there to recharge in the sunshine, and now we’re in the Pyrenees, waiting for Wiggins with about… actually, I have no idea how many other people. We’re camped in an enterprising farmer’s field near the top of the Col de Peyresourde, and there must be at least 1000 other camper vans within sight already, more arriving all the time. I can see about 10% of the col from where I’m sitting. Go figure.

I rode up the col this morning, feeling slightly out of place among the lycra and carbon fibre, then sat in the sun at lunchtime, alternately writing and watching the amateur riders going up and down the route the pros will travel at double-quick time on Wednesday. All the lovely bikes on display gave me that terrible itchy-credit-card feeling.

Oh no, not again. 

Strange days

Met a red-eyed South African, out in the dawn surf this morning – let's say his name's John. I called him into a wave; he paddled back out and we started chatting.

"Thanks, bro. Stoked to be out here. I live outside Madrid, just back from three years in Iraq. Not too many waves there." OK, I'll bite: what were you doing out there? "Bomb disposal."

Just stop myself asking what he thought of The Hurt Locker, and instead say I hope it was well paid? "Shit, yeah. At the end I was pulling down $15,000.00  month. But I can't do it any more; I'm retired."

So here's this guy, taking home (tax free) $15,000.00 a month, for disarming bombs that are probably only there, in some sense, because he is.

Strange days, these.

So long, old friend

Warning: this post is only of the remotest interest to surfers. Everyone else, move on please; nothing to see here.

It’s a poignant thing when a much-loved surfboard leaves you. Surfers and their boards go through a lot together. Nightmare sessions when you couldn’t catch a single wave, or the locals were ganging you, or your leash broke and you had to swim in and see whether the board had come to rest on rocks or sand. Epic sessions where you seemed to hoover up everything that came through, or you caught just that one wave that made it worth paddling out, and which stuck in your mind for a long while. Most of all, those regular go-outs – onshore, crunchy, too small, closing out, dirty, cold, rainy, foul-tasting, shivery, aggro – which make up the median life of a British surfer.

The Fat-Assed Wombat and I experienced it all. It was a pretty short board for me at the time I bought it – 6’4”. No one ever believed it was that short though, because it was so, well, fat-assed. It looked more like a longboard than a shortboard, and latched on to waves like one, too. I took it to the Outer Hebrides for the best-ever (so far) surf trip. It endured many skunky sessions huddling away from southwesterly gales in the lee of Brighton Marina (and once got blown along the undercliff path by a wicked gust). I lent it to my friend Bonga, and he dropped his microwave oven on it. Portugal and Morocco both saw the Wombat making me look a much better surfer than I really am, by virtue of its design. And now it’s gone; gone to the second-hand rack at 58 Surf in Baleal, though probably not for long. Someone will snap it up, and André’s immense turnover of boards will continue.

Disloyal to say it – but I’m glad. The Wombat, you see, had become a bit of a crutch. It worked in just about every kind of surf, from knee-high to a little bit overhead. It always caught waves, performed reliably, resisted airline baggage handling’s every attempt to crush it (I once saw it being thrown nose-first to the ground from the top of a teetering luggage stack, then having a load of prams and golf carts chucked on top: not a mark). But if it did everything well, it didn’t do anything brilliantly. It was slower down the line than my twin-fin; harder to turn on steep faces than my 6’7”; didn’t ride bigger waves as well as my 7’6”  – all in all, a bit of a Ford Focus.

So, we’ve both moved on. No hard feelings, on my part at least, only gratitude for all the things I learnt while we were together. The Wombat will find someone new: a neo surfer from one of the schools in Baleal, perhaps, keen to change up after an intensive couple of weeks learning. It’ll be a bit much at first, but they’ll grow together. Ride on, Fat Ass – ride on.

Twice in two days!

Told off by the lifeguard again, this time at Baleal, for bodysurfing when an orange flag was up. At least he waited till I'd got out, and said he hadn't come to order me out of the water because "I can see you don't drown." An improvement, I think.

Meanwhile, England claw their way to group-match victory against Sweden. There's no pleasure in an England win, just a release of pressure. It's like riding an Italian motorbike: you spend your time in the saddle with buttocks clenched, constantly wondering what new way it will find to break down before you reach your destination. If you do actually arrive, you can relax – until it's time to climb back on and go home.

Kooksville

Did I really write the sentence, “I never, ever have a bad surf on the mat” in the previous blog entry? Consider this a correction.

I knew I shouldn’t have bothered, but sometimes you just need to get your scales wet. It’s onshore surf, crunching on to some kind of sandbank. The wave are really just folding over all along their length – but once in a while, an unpredictable shoulder appears. It’s just enough to tempt me in.

After last week’s glorious mat session, I elect to go in on that. Getting out through the crunchy shorebreak turns out to be really hard work. Several minutes of paddling and about halfway out, I’m starting to feel a bit like Katie Price: the airbag seemed a good idea at the time, but now I can’t get rid even though I’d like to.

I finally make it out the back just in time for a cleanup wave to sweep through. Unlike the Buddha Wave, I’m most definitely not in the spot. I make a try at getting through the cresting lip, but without really thinking it’s going to work. Almost straight away I get the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that Captain Matthew Webb must have had, the moment when he realized halfway that his attempt to swim across the rapids at the foot of the Niagara Falls wasn’t going to come off.

I’m pulled back over the falls, and get royally rinsed. Bounce on the sandy bottom a couple of times, and come up in waist-deep water, still clutching Katie to my chest. I’m standing in the shallows trying to decide whether to paddle out again when I hear a whistle. Turn round with a sinking feeling: this can’t be happening. But horrifyingly, it is; the lifeguard’s whistling me in. The thing is, I qualified as a lifeguard myself, years ago, and I’d be whistling me in too. What a kook.

In the end we have a chat. His name’s Junior, which is a hell of a misnomer: he’s the biggest, most muscle-bound, most heavily tattooed Portuguese man I’ve ever met, and looks more like a member of Da Hui than a municipal lifesaver. Junior tells me it’s OK to come back with a surfboard – but “Not this thing”, he says, pointing at Katie. I can’t blame him for doubting.

Poor Katie: some you win, some you lose.

Buddha wave

The thing about the Buddha Wave is, you have to know it when you see it. Most sessions, you won’t catch it at all. It’s a good wave, and a wave you couldn’t have ridden better. If you catch the Buddha Wave, paddle in. Anything else will be a diminution.

Yesterday a new swell hit the coast: about 2 metres, a good size, but lumpy and bumptious. A good day for sightseeing – so that’s what we do.

Back that evening, I wander down to the beach to have a look at the waves. Still junky, still big and a bit wild, but I decide to go out on my surf mat. This has been an object of guarded reaction on several continents, notably Australia, where one surfer took a look at it and said: “Jeez, I thought those were only for kids.” I tried to take this as a compliment on my youthful exuberance, but I’m not sure that’s really how it was meant.

To be fair, there probably is something childish about going surfing on what’s basically a cut-down li-lo. I like the portability, though: last night’s full kit is shown in the photo: board shorts, fins, thermal rash vest, short-sleeved wetsuit top, surf pursuit vehicle. Also, I never, ever have a bad surf on the mat.

The shorebreak was a bit tricky: chest high and heaving with sticks, bits of weed, small pebbles, etc. I stood there for a while working it out, charged ahead when I thought I spotted a gap, tripped over my fins, splatted, and got washed up the beach, hoping no one had noticed. There was an older couple on the beach, and one of those general-issue blonde-dreadlocked surfers you get living in beach car parks around Europe. He’d studiously ignored me as I walked down the ramp to the beach: one of the Mat Haters, clearly.

There’s a knack to getting out through big waves on a mat. On a surfboard you duck dive, shoving the board under water. That’s pretty much impossible with a mat, which is basically a giant bag of air. Instead you can either swim out with the mat tucked into your wetsuit and blow it up out there; or roll over as a wave hits you, clutching the bag in the kind of death hug the wrestler Giant Haystacks once used. The second option is my preferred technique: I get scared of sharks if I have to tread water too long while blowing up the mat. I know this isn't the reaction of a strong, powerful man, but I can't help it.

A couple of waves ridden, I start thinking how smooth and fast the mat is compared to this morning’s surfboard session. Then the horizon darkens: a whopper of an outside wave is pitching up, approaching the crease like Dennis Lillee wearing a pair of uncomfortably tight trousers. Amazingly, I’m in the spot.

The wave lifts me up, up, six, eight feet, and then chucks me at the beach. I’ve got the mat at such low inflation that it’s more like bodysurfing than anything; we take off together, bounce once about halfway down, then again near the bottom. For a moment I wonder if the mat might burst – but then it finds the sweet spot about two-thirds up the face, and we’re flying along.

How do you measure a wave? Height, speed, distance travelled? This one is big, long, steep and fast. It breaks perfectly, all the way to the shorebreak. Given a hundred chances, I couldn’t ride it better. It’s a Buddha Wave. I paddle in.

As I walk up the ramp giggling like a schoolgirl, dreadlock man leans across. “Eh!” I catch his eye. “Mat man. Bonne vague.” 

[Bonus photo of Glamorous Companion enjoying The World's Biggest Beer on the terrace above the beach.]