Back in Britain

Back in Britain for two weeks, during which it has rained every single day. What are the ten most important things I learned from a year of travelling around Europe, meeting people, seeing new places, riding my bike, and paddling my surfboard?

1) France is really good, but the lunch thing is quite annoying. 12.30, everything stops. 2.30, some things start again. 3.30, almost everything's started again. (And 6.00, everything's closed again.)

2) The Basque Country is also really good.

3) Spain is actually a bit rubbish, except the bits where the place names have lots of x spellings that you pronounce 'ch' and pelota is a religion. The thwack of those pelota balls hitting the wall is the most evocative sound.

4) If you're going to spend a year living in a camper van, get one with a shower and toilet.

5) Drivers in Europe either don't mind cyclists, or actively like them.

6) Viewed as a whole, British drivers really seem to hate cyclists. And motorcyclists. And, now I think of it, other drivers.

7) TV in general is better in a foreign language, because there's a lot more room for you to imagine what's happening. The plots are better when you're making them up yourself.

8) Not watching the evening news or reading a newspaper is very good for me. 

9) Watching/reading them really isn't.

10) All Tories are heartless shits. Plus ça change. I think this lot is actually worse than the last bunch. At least some of the 1980s Tories climbed up the ladder under their own steam before booting everyone else in the face, rather than being carried up by Daddy's servants.

Hiding from the heatwave

We've spent the last few days hiding from the heat, high up in the French Alps. Since we were last here a large hole has appeared in the ground next to Hammy's chalet. This has made late-night returns hazardous, as we used to short-cut across the adjacent plot. Must remember to go round...

Bits and pieces here, mostly work: good, because I don't want to become one of the town drunks down by the fountain outside the tourist office, and without money to pay for stuff that's what could happen. Also because it's been too hot to do much else. We've done a bit of biking, a bit of walking, and one gorge exploration that ended in a wonderful swimming hole underneath a waterfall. The Glamorous Companion, and even the dog, took the plunge. Chilly, but that's what you want when it's 40 ºC and rising.


Now we're en route for the Basque Country. Waves! Too long since I got my scales wet, over a month. In a ritual every surfer knows, the board has been taken from its cover, inspected and replaced. The van has been reorganised in a get-into-your-wetsuit-quicker way. And I've woken up dreaming about dawn patrols on a little reef break south of... Ah, but I can't say, can I? Not without risking a car bomb. It's a spot between Guéthary and Lafitenia: easy to find, with a bit of wandering, but a long paddle over dark water. Bigger than it looks from the cliffs.

Soon come.

The world's best swimming pool

Two weeks in Chamonix, mountain-sport capital of Europe, finishing a book about snowboarding. In August. We arrive to afternoon thunderstorms that roll around the valley, bringing the Mutt trembling and shaking to lean against my leg. Later, after the showers, a walk in the cooler air and perhaps an ice cream. Allowed, because every day the Glamorous Companion and I swim in the World's Best Pool.

Where else can you do backstroke looking up at the continent's tallest mountain? Well, nearly, if we forget about Mt Elbrus in Russia... and in Chamonix, everyone does. An outdoor, 50-metre pool of the kind most British swimmers can only dream of (hence the woeful performance of British swimmers in London: it may no longer be true, but there used to be more 50-metre pools in Sydney than Britain).

In fact, the mountains loom everywhere here. I'm writing this in a shoebox apartment (the block is shown on the right) with a view of the glacier below Mont Blanc and the Aiguilles du Midi. It's easy to forget – you're walking along a normal street in a normal mountain town, then suddenly you look up and there they are, towering above.

We're leaving tomorrow, heading back to the Southern Alps for a few days and then out to the Basque Country. Too long without waves! We'll get a few days in Guéthary, then north an hour to meet up with my friend Moose, his partner Nicola and their shared horde of children, all jammed into his new-old pride and joy Hymer. Then, sadly, we're on our way proper north, slowly back to the UK in time for winter. Boo.

You've got to love this...

Hubris I and II

A few days in the old stomping ground of Allos, and I take the opportunity to get my cycling legs back with a climb of the Col d'Allos, down to Barcelonette, and back. It's 12 km up to the col (which is the penultimate of the five that did for Eddy Merckx in the 1975 Tour). Then 25 km down to Barcelonette, then reverse the route for home.

Any sportsman, of any stripe, knows to beware of hubris. I know to beware of hubris. Nonetheless I expect to manage this beast of an afternoon, near 40 km of relentless climbing, without having ridden a road bike for 2 months. The idiocy of this is brought home about 2.5 km from the top of the col, coming back. Suddenly, I start to feel like Dorando Pietri, the Italian marathon runner who was so exhausted that it took him 10 minutes to cover the last 350 metres of the 1908 Olympic race. I push on the accelerator, but the vehicle doesn't really move much.

I eventually grind over the top too tired even to pedal one more stroke, and coast all the way back to Allos. Tomorrow is declared a rest day.

Two days later, more trouble. My friend Hammy and I decide to explore the woods around Allos on mountain bikes. We grind up out of Seignus, where in theory the Tour du Verdon bike route should take us all the way down to Colmars for a coupe. In practice the Tour du Verdon bike route only makes infrequent appearances, signposts even fewer, and we very quickly get lost.

Six hours later, we roll down through Seignus again, bloody, battered and weary. We've manhandled our bikes further than we rode them, at least it feels like it. Having rekindled my love of off-road riding in the first hour, I now never want to see a set of suspension forks again.

It'll wear off, though.

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.