On top of the world

In the 24 hours to 3pm on July 16, I learnt a lot.
1. No matter how comfy a car may be for a nap while on the road, it is not a comfortable place to spent the night.
2. If a track up a mountain “doesn’t look that far/hard”, it is at least 65% further and harder than your prediction.
3. Sometimes the rewards are worth the effort.

After a grocery shop in Saint Girons (about 10km from Audressein), we headed up to the Col de la Cote to check out the course for Stage 14 of le Tour de France. We’d passed a lot of campervans in Saint Girons and found out when we got up the mountain where they’d all went. The road closes at 10am the day of the stage but if you want a good spot, you’ve got to get in early. The peak was already filling up with vans and a few tents so we had a decision to make. Either get up super super early, with still not guarantee of a good spot, or camp. We chose the later. The plan was that Kim, Toby and I would camp the night and Toby would drive down to pick up mum and dad in the morning while Kim and I manned the spot.
We headed back down to Audressien and prepared for overnight: loaded up with food, hid the blankets from the hotel in our luggage and dug out all our warm clothes. We arrived back at the peak shortly after 3pm and got a spot on the inside of the road (the outside didn’t appeal to me given it’s a long drop down if the brakes don’t work) about 200m from the top. A great spot to watch them coming around the corner and up the hill.
We folded up the seats we didn’t need and swung the front passenger seat around to make more room for activitites. Then we passed the time with cards, exploring, walking down the road, walking back up the road, eating snacks etc. About 9pm we all snuggled in and tried out best to sleep. Unfortunately, between the bells around the necks of the cows in the paddocks above us, and the cars that raced down the hill in the middle of the night, horns blaring, it wasn’t the best nights’ sleep any of us have ever had. Add to that I kept hitting the door open button with my butt and it would beep because the doors were locked.
At 5am Toby kicked us out of the car and we retreated with a sleeping bag onto some towels by the side of the road, using the Aussie flags to mark our territory. He returned a little while later with the parentals so Kim and I had breakfast and had another nap in the car while Toby slept outside.
After the best crepe I’ve had in France (so much nutella I couldn’t finish it) we found a way to work it off.
“Look at that guy in the yellow up that mountain. That doesn’t look that high up.”
“I think it’s a lot higher than it looks”.”
“Na, it’s not. Look how fast that guy is going up, he’s at the rock already.”
“Ok, well lets go up after our crepe.”
“Ok.”
It doesn’t matter who said what, the plan was sealed and up we went. The mountain, which looked more like a hill from where we were, was above the paddocks behind us. So we left a note for the parents (we had both car keys and couldn’t find them), grabbed the Aussie flag and an umbrella so they could see us and set off.

At the summit

I won’t relay all the details, but lets just say, it was not as easy as the little yellow dot of a man climbing up before us made it seem. Legs were burning, chests were heaving, and feet were trying to avoid stepping in cow poo.
We’d estimated it would take us about 40-45 minutes based on how quickly we’d seen the other guy go up and we weren’t far off that. It was just a few tough 40-45 minutes. But the view at the top was unbelievable. A marker at the top told us we were at 1873m. The Col de la Cote was 1300m. We caught our breath at the top, took some pictures, tried to work out where Spain was, and then raced back down to see the caravan.
Racing down wasn’t as easy as it seemed either…step, step, slip, land on bum, up again, step, step, slip…you get the picture.

Our own mountain climb

Seeing five stages of the Tour has taught me a lot about waiting. Not all waiting is created equal. There’s waiting for Christmas, waiting for bills, waiting at the doctors surgery etc. Some of it’s good, some of it’s bad, some is plain annoying. But waiting for the tour is different. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, how hot it is, how wet it is, how hungry you are, how badly you need the toilet – you spend hours standing at the roadside but it’s irrelevant. The fun of the tour makes it all worth it.

Soon enough, the caravan arrived. The five of us spread out and managed to secure our biggest haul of freebies yet. Hats, lollies, cakes, bandanas, things to wave, magnets, newspapers etc. Some things were thrown straight in the car window. Because of the windy roads below us we had a bit of warning of when the riders were near. First came the helicopters, in such number that any Vets with PTSD

Here comes the peloton

After the last official had driven past we packed up our camp and set off for Andorra. Unfortunately we had to follow the same route as the tour and when we got to Tarascon we found the road to Andorra was closed. We drove through some back roads for a little while but got held up again at Omolac. This time there was no escaping it and we were directed to wait on the side of the highway. The wait turned out to be for three hours as every car involved in the tour (tour buses, officials, caravan floats, police etc) came past. It was a double lane highway so we couldn’t understand why we couldn’t go yet. But once the road opened at 8pm we saw why, the road out of the finishing mountain of the stage was ahead of us and had a backlog of traffic coming down. Traffic heading in the opposite direction to us was still held up beyond this point, waiting for it to clear from where we’d just come.
It made the slow trip to Andorra even longer, but the scenery through the Pyrenees was enough to entertain us. We climbed to a top of 2020m and at some points it seemed like the clouds were level with us. Once we hit Andorra the roads were fairly impressive. Very nice roads, although the speed limit rarely hit over 60 or 70kmh. This country, only 35km from border to border, has about 88,000 people and is basically built to cater for the ski season. We just passed ski village after ski village on the way to the capital, Andorra la Vella.
We arrived late but luckily for us, the Andorrians? Andorrites? The people of Andorra don’t mind a late tea. We found a restaurant that was open until 11.30pm.